Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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This kind of sympathetic joy is therefore very sublime, as there
is hardly any trace of a thought for oneself. Such sympathy with
gladness is not directed by personal feelings, for there is no emotional
substitution possible. Hence, in the absence of envy there is the
absence of ill-will and hate, which forms the natural basis for loving
kindness. Only when there is love can there be joy; and only in the
absence of selfishness can there develop the right relationship which
is the basis for understanding and insight. Appreciation of virtue,
admiration for spiritual attainment, gladness over moral victory, as
well as rapture in the experience of beauty, ecstasy in discovering a
truth, no more desire in the presence of peace, all are expressions of
this joyful sympathy in which there is no feeling and no thought of
achievement in oneself.
Thus, sympathy is like a symphony which has all the ingredients
for harmony, the soil in which conflict cannot grow. The fact of
interdependent conditioning in the arising and cessation of all relationship
shows that no event is self-sufficient in its cause and in its
effect. Thus, being mutually interdependent and complementary,
there can be no essential conflict with another. Conflict, which is
disharmony, is brought about by a discord in sympathetic understanding
of dependent origination. As always, it is the ‘I’-element
which disturbs the harmony in its opposition, it its urge for continuance,
destroying all creative activity.
In symphonic harmony the composer may perhaps introduce an
apparent discord, only to solve it in the joy of sympathetic accord.
Such is the challenge in life which in its challenge may appear disturbing,
and yet provide the opportunity for creative understanding
and a harmonious solution. To achieve that, the discord must be dissolved
by allowing it to play out its force whereby the true harmony
of understanding is established.
This sympathy of love and understanding cannot accommodate
any feeling of conflict or a continuation of opposition. Then, in the
absence of conflict there is the characteristic joy of peace which is