The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however,
and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth
then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The first stanza of The Great Way - Sengstan (Third Zen Patriarch)

This is brilliant. If there is any one thing that i could think of to allow peace into the world it would be having no preferences. i can hear people shouting "What about love. We must have love!" Well, i contend that 'real' love is total and complete acceptance of 'what is' without a desire to change it or keep it or take meaning for my idea of myself from it.
Doing it (?) however is another story. As i asked in a previous post, 'can allowing be done?'
Being aware of preferences as i am confronted with circumstances is all that is necessary to expose them and then i have a choice (do i really have a choice about anything?) to consider not having a like or dislike for it. To consider that whatever my idea of 'good' (or bad) is just that, my idea.
Just like my idea of myself is just that, my idea.
Thoughts, nothing more.
It is my reactions to those thoughts where 'reality' enters.
If i have no ideas of good or bad regarding anybody or anything then my reactions are not likely to provoke reactions in others. (but then again they will probably react to their own idea of what my reactions mean. Maybe this way of being has to be better understood before people are less likely to misinterpret lack of judgmentalism. )
So, if i intend to be aware of my predilections or aversions to what or who appears in front of me (or what i think about), perhaps that intent to be aware is all i can do? From that maybe something can grow...


have an intention,
to be aware of dis like.
then may be what is.