Love Thyself

I'm delighted that Nietzsche and I are in perfect accord that one should love should love oneself before any talk of love thy neighbor. After all, the Man said “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

My teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche is about to publish something on that, on what he calls essence love. It has no object, as it were—it's just this sort of inner glow, of health or what in medieval Europe was called virtu(e). Like in, “What are the healing properties of this plant, its healing juice?” Nietzsche uses the term virtue in a similar way. Nietzsche is probably the only Western philosopher who really gets that Buddhism is profoundly physical.

It's a big, big problem of modernity. We fuck up education of the first vital stage of being human. Take it away Friedrich:

Almost in the cradle are we presented with heavy words and values: this dowry calls itself “Good” and “Evil.” For its sake we are forgiven for being alive.

And we suffer little children to come to us, to prevent them in good time from loving themselves...