Cloudscape

The goal is always love. You can either search that which you love, or love that which you find. If there is nothing left which you love, for instance if everything causes you suffering, you have no more choice than to try to love that which you find, even if everything you can find brings you suffering. If you are suffering, it is not enough to accept your suffering: you must love it, especially if there is no longer anything else than suffering.

As everything is relative, so everything is in itself equal in value, equally beautiful and equally abominable — infinitely beautiful and infinitely abominable. Everything being equal in beauty, and having no real beauty of itself, the only thing that we should seek is the perception of beauty in itself, since that is the only real beauty we will find. Or rather, it is the closest to real beauty we can ever find — for no beauty is real. Beauty is but in our minds. It is something we imagine, and by imagining it, we make it real.

Outside our imagination, nothing is ever beautiful, and this is a curse we must bear; for whatever we may think to be beautiful, it is never beautiful in itself, and so no beauty we ever see will last outside ourselves; and it may be that when we think we have found beauty, it is only to find later that it no longer holds any beauty to us anymore. If beauty lies but in ourselves, it can never be certain, for nothing that lies in ourselves is. What lies in ourselves can always change.

The tragedy is that the perception of beauty, which is all that matters in the universe, is infinitely fragile, and it may shatter literally in a moment through the force of suffering, or worse, ignorance.

Because perception is so relative, so too is beauty, and beauty can be perceived in literally anything at all, no matter how ugly we tend to perceive it. Thus, to find beauty one must not only seek what one sees as beautiful, but also see the things you have already found as beautiful. The perception of beauty is called love, though love may also be many other things.

Things have no value of themselves whatsoever. Things can only have value to us when we give them that value, and one can only give something value through love. If life seems worthless, that is because you give it no value. If life seems precious, it is because you give it its value. Neither is an absolute truth. But why should we choose to give only certain things in life their value in the form of love, while not others?

Destruction is sometimes needed for construction. But if you destroy out of hate, destruction is your ultimate goal, and not a means to an end. If you destroy out of love, then creation becomes your ultimate goal.

The love of man and woman is the same as that of all things hard and soft in the universe.

Love, in its earliest form, still as a germ, usually inevitably comes with attachment, and so fear, and ultimately hatred for anything that threatens that which we are attached to, and these remain until our love has become perfected. Usually, it is only if our love grows steadily, so that it grows already being close to perfection, it does not cause attachment. Attachment arises when our love grows faster than we can deal with.

Perhaps we can so see the evil within us, in the form of fear and hate, as a good sign. It means that we are growing, and that we are growing fast. That we hate means that we love, and that we love so much that we are prepared to make the sacrifice of suffering for it. When we make this sacrifice, we must bear it, however, and not impose it upon others; it is our own burden. Others did not choose to share in it.

It is, in fact, easy to get rid of all suffering, but only if one gives up one's love. Love, once found, however, is so strong that one rarely finds the force to dispose of it again, unless one has descended into extreme tendencies of self-destruction, such as drug addiction.

Life is as hard as you are willing to make it. Life will never be easy unless you make it so. Remember this when you are suffering. It is the cross you bear to love. You can always be freed of it if you give up that love, and stop caring about anything in unfeeling emptiness. To suffer, until you are perfected, is your own choice.

Craving and fear can be converted into love through detachment. Do not therefore resist them, as they can precede love. Instead, allow them to grow into love.

Anything done out of craving or fear rather than love will destroy, whereas only what is done through love can create. This is a general rule because of how love, craving and fear are defined; love will do only that which is the best for that which it loves, whereas fear and craving will bring it harm in trying to do so. However, it must be noted that in everything we do there is both at least some love and some craving and fear involved, so that everything we do will therefore both create and destroy. We cannot be perfect in fully doing everything out of love alone.
We should to do whatever we do with greater love than we do it with fear and craving, to let our love be greater than our fear and craving in what we do; otherwise we should not do it at all, as it would then bring more harm than it would bring growth. If we really are to do something but our craving and fear to do so is greater than our love, then we should wait as long as it remains so, until our love has become greater.

Love in the form of craving or fear is worthless; true love is love that is purified of these. Craving is formed by male, yang energy that stands alone, fear by female, yin energy that stands alone; only when the two are combined can love be achieved.

Let life and all of life be your lover, and cherish all beauty it brings.

Yang seeks out what it loves; yin loves that which it finds. The yin side of love is to be thankful for beauty; the yang side of love is to nourish it.