Friday, January 14, 2005

Why Feel Contempt?

Come to think of it, why feel contempt even for my or anyone else's deficiencies? What is to be gained from it? Will it make the deficiency magically disappear? 

I'm reminded of the old biblical saying, too often quoted, of "Hate the sin but love the sinner." If one hates the sin, how easy is it not to also hate the person who commits it? And how does hating even just the sin prevent it from recurring? Doesn't hatred of any kind for anything help to create the very conditions that give rise to more sin of all kinds? Why not just dispense with hatred altogether? 

In the same way, when I see a mental or other kind of deficiency in either myself or anyone else, why hate it or regard it with contempt? Why not simply see it in terms of the old Zen saying?: 
In the landscape of spring, there is nothing superior, nothing inferior. 

Flowering branches grow naturally. Some short, some long.

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