The Undivided Heart

You divide the world into 'family' and 'stranger,' 'kin' and 'enemy.' 

This is the distinction that births confusion and bars the gate to the Inner Kingdom.

You believe your spiritual work is to love your family. 

But the mind that clings to 'family' also forges the 'other.' 

This preference, this division, is the disease of the heart.

I say to you, let your heart be purified. 

See the plank in your own eye that separates you from your brother.

When you love the one who curses you, show mercy to the one who wrongs you, and make peace with the 'enemy'—in that very moment, the two circles of 'family' and 'stranger' dissolve into One.

You become a peacemaker. 

And in this, you realize all are children of the One, and the entire world becomes your true family.

Reflection: The Undivided Heart

(The room is still. A single bell chimes, its sound fading into silence. Jesus the Zennist steps forward, smiles gently, and waits for the silence to be complete.)

Peace be with you.

We are, all of us, mapmakers. From the moment we are small, we take out our little mental crayons and we begin to draw lines.

We draw a circle around our house, our family. "This," we say, "is safe. This is mine. This is love." And it feels good. It feels warm.

But the hand that draws the circle of 'safe' is the same hand that, in the very same stroke, draws the line of 'unsafe' around everything else. The mind that forges 'family' also, in the same breath, forges 'stranger.' The heart that clings to 'kin' also creates the 'other.'

This is the blueprint of our confusion. This is the source of our deepest suffering. And we are so proud of our maps. We frame them, we hang them on the wall of our mind, we go to war for them. We call them 'loyalty,' 'patriotism,' 'righteousness.'

And the Great Way, the Kingdom, remains as far from us as heaven is from earth.

Today, we look at this blueprint. We look at the text given to us: The Undivided Heart.

It says: "You divide the world into 'family' and 'stranger,' 'kin' and 'enemy.' This is the distinction that births confusion and bars the gate to the Inner Kingdom."

This, my friends, is the "plank in your own eye."

We hear that teaching—"first remove the plank from your own eye"—and we think the plank is some terrible, obvious sin. A great crime. A monstrous act.

But the plank is not some great, dramatic thing. The plank is the tiny, subtle preference. The plank is the crayon. It is the mental habit of "like and dislike." It is the almost invisible judgment that flits through the mind a thousand times a day: 'good,' 'bad,' 'for me,' 'against me,' 'my side,' 'their side.'

The Hsin Hsin Ming, the verse of the Undivided Mind, puts it this way: "Like and dislike are the diseases of the mind."

This is the disease the text speaks of. And look how clever it is. It says: "You believe your spiritual work is to love your family." Of course you do. That’s what you’ve been told. And you work so hard at it.

But I say to you... even the birds in the nest love their own. That is not spiritual work. That is biology. That is instinct. That is the easy part.

The real work, the divine work, begins where your preference ends.

The text points the way. It says the healing of this division happens in a single moment: "When you love the one who curses you, show mercy to the one who wrongs you, and make peace with the 'enemy'—in that very moment, the two circles of 'family' and 'stranger' dissolve into One."

This isn't just a nice idea. This is the key that turns the lock of the Inner Kingdom.

This vision of the Undivided Heart is not ours alone. The truth does not belong to one map, one tribe. When the heart is purified, it sees the same landscape everywhere.

Look at the great path of the Buddha. A central practice is Metta, or loving-kindness. And how does this practice work? It's a systematic dissolving of the lines you have drawn. You are taught to send love, first, to yourself. Then, to someone you love—your 'family.' Easy. Then, to a neutral person—a stranger. A little harder. And then, the crucial step: you must send the exact same loving-kindness to an enemy, to the one who has wronged you.

Why? The Buddhist will tell you it is to recognize the truth of Anatta, or no-self. The 'enemy' and the 'self' are both part of an interconnected web of arising and ceasing. To hold hatred for the 'enemy' is to be chained to the illusion of separation, which is the very root of samsara, the cycle of suffering. By dissolving the preference, you dissolve the chain. You move toward Nirvana, liberation. The two circles merge.

Look, too, to the mystical heart of Islam, in the path of the Sufi. The great masters speak of Wahdat al-Wujud, the Unity of Being. They read in their scripture, "Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God." Not just in the mosque. Not just in the beautiful sunset. Not just in the face of your child. Everywhere.

The Sufi poet Rumi writes, "I looked in temples, churches, and mosques. But I found the Divine within my own heart." And what did he find there? He found that the 'other,' the 'enemy,' was just a veil, a disguise for the One Beloved. The Sufi’s work is not a social ethic of 'being nice'; it is a radical act of recognition. To love the 'enemy' is to see God in that most difficult disguise. In their unique vision of Tawhid, the Oneness of God, there are no two circles. There is only One. All else is illusion.

The Buddhist dissolves the distinction to find liberation from suffering. The Sufi dissolves the distinction to find union with the Beloved.

And what do we do?

(He smiles gently.)

We... we are perhaps a little simpler. We just remove the plank. We stop judging. We stop preferring.

And in that moment of non-preference, the Inner Kingdom is right here. Not as a future reward, but as a present reality. When you love the one who curses you, you are not doing it for them. You are not doing it to be a 'good person.' You are not even doing it for God.

You are doing it to heal the disease in your own mind. You are doing it to see clearly.

This is the great challenge of contemporary life, is it not? We live in a world that is addicted to the plank. Our entire modern life is an engine for generating 'like and dislike.' Our social media, our news feeds, our politics—they are all giant, flashing signs screaming "CHOOSE A SIDE! BE FOR! BE AGAINST!"

These systems are designed to find your 'family' and show you your 'enemy,' over and over, until your heart is a tight, clenched fist. They run on the fuel of our outrage. They thrive on the disease of the mind. And we scroll, and we click, and we draw our circles harder and harder, in permanent ink. We build our house on the shifting sands of opinion, and we wonder why our world feels so unstable.

To be a "peacemaker," as the Beatitude says, is not just to negotiate treaties. To be a peacemaker is to have the courage to defy this engine. It is to be the one person in the room who refuses to draw the line.

This is messy. This is real-life. This is not floating on a cloud.

This is when your co-worker, the one who undermines you, is in trouble, and you feel that little spark of joy... that's the plank. And the work is to see it, and bless them instead.

This is when your family member, who holds those political views you despise, starts talking at the dinner table, and you feel the anger rising... that's the plank. And the work is to listen, to see the human being behind the 'enemy' label.

This is when you turn on the news. This week. Any week.

You will see a world on fire with its own preferences. You will see two circles drawn in steel and blood. You will see 'family' and 'enemy' on a grand, terrible scale. The entire world will scream at you, "Whose side are you on? Who is right? Who is wrong?"

And the Way, the Truth, whispers: "Let go of longing and aversion."

The world says, "You must hate your enemy." And I say to you, "Love your enemies."

Why? Because if you do, they might change? Maybe. But that's not the point. Because if you do, the war will stop? Perhaps. But that is not the reason.

You do it because as long as you hold 'enemy' in your heart, you are a prisoner. You are blind. You are barred from your own Inner Kingdom. The one who curses you is your teacher. They are the mirror showing you the plank, the disease, in your own heart. They are your opportunity to be free.

When you can look at the 'enemy'—the political opponent, the personal rival, the face on the news—and see not an 'other,' but a child of the One... when you can feel compassion for their suffering, which is the root of their confusion... in that instant, the plank dissolves.

The two circles become One. The house is built on the rock. The mind is no longer lost in confusion.

And you realize, as the text concludes, "all are children of the One, and the entire world becomes your true family."

This is the Undivided Heart. It is not a belief you hold. It is the peace you are.

Go, and stop drawing lines.

Peace be with you.