Religion:
Love and Hate

Love and hate are opposites. That's why they're alike.

You care what happens to the people you love and to the people you hate.
The people you love are on your mind, and so are the people you hate.
You can feel love in your chest, as you can hate.
The capacity for both is innate.

The Tao Te Ching trains one to see how opposites are alike, yin and yang. Opposites arise together and are part of each other.

A Christian once told me that love and hate are not opposites at all because they are similar. Love and apathy, she said, are the real opposites. This expectation that opposites not be alike is a hand-me-down from Zoroaster. His dualistic religion portrayed the god of light fighting the god of darkness.

You can divide the world into light and dark.
Lao Tzu said that light and dark were opposites, and so they were part of each other and part of the whole, yang and yin.
Zoroaster said light and dark were at war, and that one day there would be nothing but light.

—JoT
November 2001