... its safe to assume you guys wont mind wasting hours on here explaining to me why Hate is the truth and Love is pure sentimental nonsense...
Ah. I assume that is, in part, addressed to me?
Let me clarify for you:
Hate is classically one of the 'seven deadly sins' (commonly: wrath). Like all sin, it's addictive, toxic and self-destructive.
Love, on the other hand, is the Spirit of and Participation in the Divine.
Look, I would request, at the
Pieta a bit deeper ... contemplate a moment longer ...
Mary cradles her dead son in her lap, there is sorrow in her face, but also serenity. She offers her dead son for our gaze — She does not clasp Him to herself as a more sentimental artist might have portrayed her — Her left hand invites us to look. I could speak further about precisely what she is inviting us to look at, but this is a secular thread, not the place for mystical contemplation or speculation.
(And we must, of course, acknowledge Michelangelo's genius.)
Keep looking: her knowledge is not 'total', how could it be, that which she comprehends is Infinite, Unknowable because in its depths there is nothing to be known, it's not knowledge, it's faith that underpins her certitude. Absolute bliss? I don't think so. There is only one Absolute. I think this is a modernist chimera, pedalled in the west particularly by charlatans from the East. In the
Paradise of the Desert Fathers its says: "
One of the Fathers asked Abba John the Dwarf, ‘What is a monk?’ He said, ‘He is toil. The monk toils at all he does. That is what a monk is.” I think that's as true in the sangha as it is the monastery. The advice of the illumined seems to be 'Begin every day as if you are just beginning'.
Peace, that I'll grant you, as long as we're talking "the peace of God, which transcends all understanding" (Philippians 4:7)
Prosperity? Too close to the 'prosperity gospel', aka the American Dream, for my liking.
And freedom from suffering? ... I suppose to the outsider it appears that way.
