Words divide; Love unites.

I haven’t posted for a while so I thought I’d copy/paste one from my other, mostly inactive, blog. This was published there on May 25, 2010. It is primarily about religion, but applies to any groupings or divisions shaped and defined by words, such as ethnic, racial or political differences, sexual orientation, beliefs about educational philosophies, child rearing, debates about global warming, conservation, etc.. We are all in this mysterious thing called life. We need to pull together. Let’s let Love prevail.

Here’s my old post (slightly modified):

I have heard that there are well over two thousand Christian denominations and countless divisions in other religions too. And I ask what causes the divisions? Both within and between religions? Words. That’s it. Just words. And they are man-made words. Words thought up by (mostly) men. Human ideas about how it should be. People’s ideas about how they have it right and everyone else has it wrong.

These words cause “us-and-them” groupings and divisions. People gather around one set of words and take comfort in the false certainty that their words are “right” and others’ words are wrong, or at least mostly wrong. Then they get puffed up with pride in their superiority and feel they must defend and assert their “words” even at the cost of shunning the “others”, or even killing them. See the Inquisition, witch-burning, pogroms, suicide bombings, communist re-education camps,the KKK, the Holocaust, Rwanda,… just for starters. 

But words are just symbols. They just stand for reality. They are not reality. The map is not the territory. Reality doesn’t change. Words do. We used to describe the world as flat. Everyone believed that. Now we describe it as a sphere, a ball. The world hasn’t changed but our words about it, and our beliefs, have changed a lot.

I can count on reality but I can’t count on words. Words are useful to the extent that they provide a predictive model that helps me prepare for what is coming next. But in the history of humankind the models have always required updating and improving as our understanding grew. Clinging to a model and defending it with one’s life betrays a lack of understanding of the tentativeness of models. Even worse is defending it by taking the lives of others.

There is an analogy from the East:  words, dogmas, doctrines, beliefs, creeds, are seen as a finger pointing to the moon. The moon is Love. It’s the moon that matters. It’s the moon that is the object worthy of attention. It would be silly to stare at the finger (words), polish its nail, put a ring on it, worship it… all the while failing to notice the moon (Love)!

Now suppose there are six, eight or ten of us standing in a circle at night. We are each pointing a finger at the moon and at the same time we are each gnawing on our neighbour’s finger trying to destroy it, while at the same time trying to protect our own finger from the teeth of our other neighbour. Nobody has time to look at the moon (Love)!

Fingers (words, beliefs) will all age, wither and die. 

Only the moon (Love) will remain!

Words, dogmas, doctrines , beliefs, creeds, will all age, wither and die (how many revisions have there been down through history?). Only Love will remain. Only Love is a constant.

And so with gratitude I will focus on Love. I will practice returning in gratefulness to Love whenever I wander or deviate from the path.

Love is a fire. May my divisive words be consumed by the fire of Love.

May Love abound. May Love flourish. May only Love remain.

May all beings everywhere be filled with Love.

  

I did a follow-up post later called “Bent fingers, Blind eyes.” It was about corrupt or misleading beliefs (crooked fingers) and about some people’s inability (blind eyes) to put even good beliefs into practice (inability to see the moon or Love). But perhaps that’s a post for another day. 

I hope this post isn’t divisive. I hope it fosters unification in Love. Let me know what you think.