“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Love Thyself

I'm delighted that Nietzsche and I are in perfect accord that one should love should love oneself before any talk of love thy neighbor. After all, the Man said “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

My teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche is about to publish something on that, on what he calls essence love. It has no object, as it were—it's just this sort of inner glow, of health or what in medieval Europe was called virtu(e). Like in, “What are the healing properties of this plant, its healing juice?” Nietzsche uses the term virtue in a similar way. Nietzsche is probably the only Western philosopher who really gets that Buddhism is profoundly physical.

It's a big, big problem of modernity. We fuck up education of the first vital stage of being human. Take it away Friedrich:

Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself “Good” and “Evil.” For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.

And we suffer little children to come to us, to prevent them in good time from loving themselves...



1 comment:

Schizostroller said...

I personally prefer to 'love my neighbour as my neighbour' whether i love myself or not. Although if I do happen to be at peace with myself it is a bonus, although not all the time otherwise how the hell are gonna learn? Today i love myself, tomorrow I may be a bit of a dickhead...

It's like the Golden Rule, sorry I'm not you please don't treat me as you would it's an insult to my autonomy. I believe Karl Popper of all people was with me on that.

The difference between sympathy, when you put yourSELF in someone else's shoes, and empathy when you try to hear what it is for that person to be themself.

Haven't read enough Nietzsche to know what he's say about that but reckon he's kinda like it. What about Rinpoche?