Love Is Like a Mirror
The Mirror, as Zen masters say, is without ego and without mind. If
a face comes in front of it, it reflects a face. If a table comes
by, it reflects a table. It shows a crooked object to be crooked
and a straight object to be straight. Everything is revealed as it
really is. There is no discriminating mind or self-consciousness on
the part of the mirror.
If something comes, the mirror reflects it; if it moves on, the
mirror lets it move on. The mirror is always empty of itself and
therefore able to receive the other. The mirror has no
preconditions for entry, no preconditions for acceptance. It
receives and reflects back what is there—nothing more or nothing
less. The mirror is the perfect lover and the perfect
contemplative. It does not evaluate, judge or act. It takes the
advice of the philosopher Wittgenstein: "Don't think, just
look."
If we are to see as God sees, we must first become mirrors. We must
become no-thing so that we can receive some-thing. That is probably
the only way that love is ever going to happen. To love demands a
complete transformation of consciousness, a transformation that has
been the goal of all religious founders, saints, mystics and gurus
ever since we began to talk about love. And the transformation of
consciousness is this: we must be liberated from ourselves.
We really need to be saved from the tyranny of our own judgments,
opinions and feelings about everything, the "undisciplined squads
of emotions" that T.S. Eliot criticizes in his poetry. We must stop
believing our false subjectivity, which chooses to objectify
everybody and everything in the world—including God and our own
soul.
(The likely reason why most Western individualists hate
themselves: we treat our own souls as objects to be dissected,
judged and perfected.)
from "Image and Likeness: The Restoration of the Divine Image"
