15 Faith and Love
Faith opens the heart to the present moment and brings healing of the past, trust in the future.
The conflicts of the past are healed when they no longer have to be denied.
Faith is an attitude of mind which accepts the totality of life as it is lived.
Faith gives you the courage not to worry about who you are; and when you realise who you are, there will no longer be any need to worry.
Knowing the totality of yourself and not denying it is the work of faith;
for faith is a way of seeing that is beyond judgement.
Faith does not deny the questioning mind, but rather is a prerequisite for it.
Belief puts an end to the questions because the answers are already supplied; faith on the other hand dares to question those answers.
The first think you must question is the mind itself; and the result of questioning is faith, which is transcendence of the mind.
When you have faith you don’t need ideals.
Faith is a complete dying to fear at all levels.
To have the courage to live even while you are not perfect is also the work of faith.
Faith is a stance in regard to the world, not an answer to its mystery.
Belief is the very opposite of faith.
Belief is trust in mind, faith is trust in life itself.
Belief fears life and seeks to control it, while faith accepts life in all its ambiguity.
Ambiguity is real, and faith has the courage to work with reality.
Faith is having a don’t-know mind.
Why can you never say you don’t know?
Even when you don’t know you think you must have an opinion.
To know what you don’t know is great wisdom.
Love is a very natural thing, a very human thing.
Love, like truth, is not and cannot be a long way away from you.
Love is not difficult to achieve, indeed when the struggle to achieve ends, you may find that love is there quite naturally.
Suffering is overcome by love, not fear.
Fear simply reinforces suffering.
When you no longer have to flee from what hurts you then the transformation can take place.
Love overcomes all divisions, all conflicts.
Transformation of self, transformation of the other, and transformation of the world – all this is necessary, is it not? and it must begin with self.
When you simply love the person you are with, that will bring about the transformation.
Love gives birth to love, this is only natural.
Until you have learned to love yourself you will find it hard to accept your poverty.
Poverty even though you fear it, is the basis of freedom.
Poverty is hard to accept, is it not? Only love is free enough to do so.
Love which is born in the silence is a self-giving that seeks no return.
Love is the only thing you can give another without getting something in return.
You cannot love for a reason or else it is not love but a means of self-gratification.
Love is not self-directed and therefore it is free.
You cannot renounce what you do not love, and if you truly love something you have renounced it already.
To renounce what you do not love is either indifference or aversion.
Love does not, cannot, possess anything.
Let go of what you love, and that is truly love.
Desire is marked by holding, love by letting go.
Love does not reject anything obviously, but neither does it cling to anything either.
The nature of the mind can be discerned by watching for these characteristics.
To stay in the moment you must stop trying to shape the future – and that is love.
If you act today only because of tomorrow’s gain, that action cannot be right, can it?
If you do what is right today, tomorrow will take care of itself.
Love does what is right solely because it is right.
Do not invest in the future: do what you do for the sake of the moment, for that is love.
As soon as there is investment there is corruption.
Investment is a child of calculation.
Action born of the moment, that is not orientated away from the moment, is the movement of love.
Three moments: passion, dispassion, and compassion.
Compassion is simply this: to open yourself to the fact of suffering so as to heal it.
As long as you cannot accept suffering in yourself or in another, you will not be able to heal it.
When you are whole once more you will be able to share that wholeness with others.
You will not be able to suffer (with) another if you cannot suffer (with) yourself.
First take pity on yourself, poor victim that you are.
Understand how you have caused your own misery, and you will have mercy on others too.
A vulnerable heart is a living heart.
Invulnerability is a sign of a hardened heart.
What is living is also vulnerable, only what is dead cannot be hurt.
Only a vulnerable heart can know compassion.
You do not harm what you are related to.
To do harm to another you must first see yourself as independent of the other.
Where there is unity there is compassion.
There is no end to the spiritual life.
If you think you’ve arrived in fact you are back at the beginning.
Holiness is not a thing of yesterday but of today.
Receive everyone with kindness.
Have respect for the world around you.
Then no more than you need and let go of what you need no more.