Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. Pain in the past is remembered as anger. Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety. Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held within, is called guilt. The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is redirected inward creates depression.
It's your choice, what you do with the moment. If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you can get angry and honk your horn, or listen to Mozart. But when you have a very specific expectation of how things should be, then, of course, you end up hurting yourself.
So, when you have that experienced knowledge you lose the ability to hurt people and you also lose the ability to be hurt by people. That's love.
If I find a green meadow splashed with daisies and sit down beside a clear-running brook, I have found medicine. It soothes my hurts as well as when I sat in my mother's lap in infancy, because the Earth really is my mother, and the green meadow is her lap.
My head monk asked how it was walking. I said it hurt without shoes. And he said, 'It hurts on the foot that's down, but the one that's up feels really good - so focus on that one'.
