One of the major pitfalls of every religion is to try to make yourself a better person.

You have to be a respectable person, you have to love your neighbour as yourself, you have to make good deeds, you have to practice the precepts, you have to purify yourself with so many practices.

A lot of standards to live up to.

The problem is that you cannot force yourself to love anything or anybody, because you cannot force yourself to be different from who you are.

At this moment, you are who you are, with your preferences, opinions, dark sides and and your visions of the world.

Trying to be different from who you are, is violence. Towards yourself.

From different spiritual teachers, I have heard the metaphor of the Ocean.

I would like to expand on that.

The Ocean is made of two parts, the waves at the surface, and the depth below.

The agitated rough surface and the deep calm of the abyss.

As individuals, we can live on two planes.

We usually live at the surface level, where we feel like separate waves.

A young wave going up, an old wave coming down.

A big one looking down on other waves.

A small one, feeling inferior to the big ones.

Always comparing ourselves to other waves.

Creating discrimination and suffering.

The wave has forgotten that is part of the Ocean.

At a deeper level, all waves are connected by the calm profundity.

The deep ocean is always there and sustains the frantic surface activity.

Without it their would be nothing.

At this level all waves are one with the Ocean.

When you connect there, you still see the differences among the waves,

but you do not have to love every wave.

You just need to love the Ocean.