The Sutra on the Causes and Conditions of King Surupa says:

It is due to love that sorrow is produced;
It is due to love that fear is produced;
If there are those who are free of love,
They will be without sorrow and without fear.

Confucius said, “When you love someone you want them to live, when you hate someone you want them to die.” Love and hate are often entangled with one another. One day two people may love each other so much that they cannot bear to be apart, but the next day they might mix like fire and water. Now she hates him beyond all hatred, but she may still need his help in the future. When love and hate are present, the mind can never be free. Let me quote a poem by Su Manshu:

This Chan mind has evoked jealousy from the beauty;
The Buddha said, in the end, even our enemies are family.
With bamboo hat and cape, I return,
Without love or hate for anyone.

During the time of the Buddha, there was a young monastic who found it impossible to control his lustful thoughts towards the opposite sex, and this vexed him greatly. When he tried to meditate distracting thoughts would well up in his mind and he would no longer be able to concentrate on his practice.

One day this young monastic got to thinking, “If I cannot eliminate the affliction of such desires, these desires will destroy my morality. In order to preserve my pure morals and end suffering, I had better cut off my sexual organ. All at once I would feel peace and happiness, and be free from worry.”

Just as the young monastic had found a knife and was about to do the deed, the Buddha walked in.

“Don’t do such a foolish thing;’ the Buddha said. “The source of good and bad lies within the mind, not outside of it. You cannot eliminate the turmoil of your thoughts by seeking a solution outside the mind. You are not going to eliminate your afflictions that way.”

In our lives we should simplify our desires, but the feeling of love is very strong. Human beings need love; love is after all the source of life. Without the love between our parents, how could we be born? Buddhists sometimes speak of a certain spiritual resonance, an emotional connection that is similar to how people say they “click” with one another. This too is a kind of love. If we did not have a certain love for the Buddha, how could we venerate him? If we had no love for our spiritual teachers, how could we treat them with respect? If we had no love for the temple, how could we be willing to work hard and make sacrifices for it?

This kind of love is a greater love than the love that comes from desire. This love is like the love we have for nature: we love the mountains, oceans, trees, and flowers; we enjoy being close to them but we do not need to possess them. On the other hand, desire is selfish and is derived from craving. It is always tangled with happiness and frustration. Pure love untainted by desire is very precious, for it can nourish and strengthen people without any selfish motivation or confusion. Love that seeks nothing and is always refined is compassion.

When the mind is tainted by and bound up with desire we experience sadness and fear, and we wander forsaken and alone amid the turmoil of the three realms. The Diamond Sutra instructs us to not let the mind abide in anything so that we do not develop desirous love, but instead can refine our love into the great compassion of giving.

Once there was a king whose beloved queen had fallen ill and died. The king was stricken with grief beyond all measure, such that he no longer ate or drank. Every day he would cry beside the remains of the queen, and though his many ministers would try to persuade the king to temper his grief and accept the queen’s death, their words did not have the slightest effect.

Some time passed, until one day a sage visited the court. The king’s ministers informed him of the situation, and the sage said to the king, “Your majesty, not only can I tell you in what realm your queen has been reborn, but I can make it so you can speak with her directly.”

The king was overjoyed, and asked that he be brought to speak with his queen immediately. The sage then led the king out of the palace and pointed to the ground where two beetles were busy moving a piece of cow-dung.

“Your majesty,” the sage began, “This is your queen who died not long ago. She has already been reborn as the wife of a dung beetle.”
The king was stunned, “How dare you malign my queen?”
The sage responded, “Your majesty, you must believe me. Listen carefully.”

The sage then called out to the beetle, and the king could hear the voice of his queen answer back. The king then asked the beetle, “Whom do you prefer? I, from your previous life, or your current husband, the dung beetle?”

The queen answered, “In my previous life I received your majesty’s royal kindness and lived a happy life. But the past has faded like mist. Of course I now prefer my dung beetle husband.”

Hearing those words, the king awoke as if from a dream. He then returned to his palace and ordered his ministers to bury the queen’s remains.

There is an old Chinese saying that goes, “A speck of iron can obscure one’s vision, but so can a speck of gold. Dark clouds may obscure the sun, but white clouds can also.” Whether clouds are dark or bright they can still conceal the sun, and all chains can shackle us whether they are made of iron or gold. Both favorable and adverse circumstances are part of the Buddhist path. If good or bad situations are employed in the right way they can become skillful means to teach living beings. When we look upon the world we should do so in a way where we can look beyond the world, for only then can we be free from abiding.

Each day our lives fall more and more into a routine. So when the express train stops or volcanic ash disrupts air travel, we feel like the world has shattered and fallen into chaos. We become fixed in our habits and dependent on them, and this brings frustration and worry to our lives. For example, when we become accustomed to being loved by a certain someone, when that care and love are gone, we can become completely grief-stricken over the loss.

In ancient India there once lived a king who wanted to test just how strong the mind could be. One day he sent one of his ministers to the prison and told the minister to bring him one of the prisoners facing execution.

The king said to the prisoner, “You have been sentenced to death, but I will give you one chance to save yourself: I shall have placed upon your head a bowl filled with oil, which you may support with your two hands. If you walk down every avenue and street of this city without spilling a single drop of oil, I will pardon your crime.”

The prisoner had been hopelessly awaiting his execution, and was overjoyed to be given this chance. He started to balance the bowl of oil on his head with great care and began walking the streets. The king attempted to distract the prisoner, and sent people to line the streets to showcase all manner of games and spectacles to the prisoner. He also chose the most beautiful women in the country to dance alongside the streets to melodious music right next to where the prisoner would pass.

The prisoner wanted nothing more than to live, and his only fear was that some of the oil would splash from the bowl he was balancing on his head. As such, he concentrated on every single step as he moved forward. All the beautiful sights and sounds were like a fog to him. None of it held his interest in the slightest.

Finally, the prisoner completed his circuit around the city and returned to the palace without spilling a single drop. The king asked, “When you were walking around the streets, did you not hear anything or see anything?”

“Not at all.”
“Don’t tell me you couldn’t hear the pleasant music or see the appealing beauties?”
“Your majesty, I heard and saw nothing.”

To have single-minded focus is to be like the prisoner balancing the bowl of oil on his head. It is complete and total concentration. If we wish to live a life without abiding and be able to receive the unsurpassed Dharma of prajna we must be able to learn from the prisoner in this story: while trying to balance the bowl of oil in the mind we face the temptations of the five desires and must remain unmoved-looking but not seeing, listening but not hearing. We must protect the purity of the mind the same way the prisoner single-mindedly protected the bowl of oil balanced on his head. Then we will be able to go beyond life and death.

Source: Hsing Yun. Four Insights for Finding Fulfillment: A Practical Guide to the Buddha’s Diamond Sutra. Los Angeles: Buddha’s Light Publishing, 2012.