Remember, love is appreciation. Attachment is desire. Strong desire aspects are: “I want this.” Love appreciates, and love may even want it. There is nothing wrong with that. I tried to make the difference that way, but I contradicted myself, as you probably noticed. I am saying, “desire.” The desire is very strong. Not only, “I want it, I like to have it, I wish I had it,” but, “I must do anything to get it.”
There is one true difference. Attachment and obsession will say, “If I don’t get it, no one will get it. If someone gets it, it has to be me.” That is of course, not simply attachment, but with influence of anger and hatred coming in. But this is just simply for you to consider. That is not the final word. Just very simply telling you.
Non-attachment is somehow when the mind does not have the strong desire. This and obsession you should be able to renounce. The mind itself making itself free of this sticky stuff – that is the fourth virtue of non-attachment.
The fifth virtue is very similar. In this case it is – not having hatred, which is non-hatred. So, hatred is normally developed because you could not fulfill your desire. Something is in your way. That first becomes irritation, then anger, then it becomes stronger and you begin to hate the person.
As you know, we are talking about hatred. Without hatred, whosoever you are working with or looking at, the mind of anger-oriented, strong disliking is totally destroyed within you. Because of that you don’t want to get that person.
Sometimes you draw that person’s attention, by making yourself suffer, by making that person suffer. We do that because, “If I do this and I suffer, he or she will notice.” Or, if he or she did not pay any attention to your suffering, you want to make sure they will experience the same suffering. We do that. That is actually hatred. It doesn’t come out as hatred. Many times it comes out as love or attachment. “I need to get the message across. Whatever I have been doing, the message didn’t get there. So I want to clearly send a signal by hurting myself.” That is not even so bad. The worst is by hurting that person and even killing. This is what hatred does.
~ Gelek Rimpoche, Jewel Heart Ann Arbor, July 14, 2013
