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To be a spiritual warrior, one must have a broken heart; without a broken heart and the sense of tenderness and vulnerability, your warriorship is untrustworthy. – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

But I have been suspicious of “falling in love” because I have at times embraced the negative connotation. This produced a struggle between my genuine nature as a romantic on the one hand and my concept of falling in love on the other. Read the rest of this entry »

(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

I’m starting a series today about relationships because nothing touches us more deeply. At the same time, nothing gives us a better opportunity to discover and understand our own basic goodness and that of others.

The first realization on the Buddhist path is our own emptiness — we look at the self and find nothing permanent. The next step is the egolessness of other, says Sakyong Mipham, and the way we discover it, interestingly, is through love and compassion.

People sometimes ask me why I’m not in a “relationship.” I’m surprised! I have lots of relationships. So does everyone. It’s choiceless. If you’re a human being, you have relationships.  “Oh, I don’t mean just any relationship,” they say. “I mean a romantic one.”

My reply:

First, when someone whispers sweet nothings in my ear, I don’t feel comfortable saying “I’m sorry. I have a hearing loss in that ear and can’t hear you!” As we all know, sweet nothings are meant to be whispered. Not shouted. I suppose I could put my hearing aid in, but that’s probably not very romantic. And it would take time. Maybe he would forget what he was going to say in the first place, especially if he is as old as I am! (to hear the song Sweet Nothings by Brenda Lee, click here please.)

Second, I’m a light sleeper. I awaken several times during the night and have had to train myself to go back to sleep. I did this by listening to books-on-tape. I fall asleep listening to a story. My ex-husband and I were able to spend some time together before he died at age 61. When we turned out the lights at night, he used to say to me “OK Marg, what bedtime story are we going to listen to tonight?”

On a little more serious note:

I wear the wedding band given to me by my late life partner a few years before he died,  not because I am clinging to “us,” but because it sends a perspective that I embrace, namely, that I’m not looking for love. I am love. I am basic goodness.  So are you.

Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it — that you are it. <source: Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is)

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(Prologue: I’ve got first-hand experience that a real understanding of the laws of karma can substantially change our lives for the better. I created this weblog to share information and personal experience with others. May it be of benefit!)

Olympus, a friend of mine since 1969, moves into a rather rough area of his city in the early Autumn of 2011, an area where you do not go out after dark unless you have a car. And even then, you still have to get from your apartment to your car and vice versa.

He walks outside onto the street one day — and sees the same thing the Buddha saw when he took a stroll for the first time outside his palace grounds over 2,500 years ago! Suffering of all kinds. People poorly dressed, without boots and wearing thin clothing [ it’s now the middle of winter]. Those who are seriously suffering around mental health issues and addictions. Or, to quote the words of a buddhist chant:

An evil time, when relatives quarrel,
When people dress sloppily in clothes of rags,
Eating bad, cheap food,
…………………

Olympus’ experience of their suffering is raw.  He wants to run back into his apartment.

I think about the practices of wishing health and well-being to others. In other words, he can use his experience of rawness created by the suffering of others to change the default setting from thinking about himself and his own concerns to thinking about others.

If you want to be miserable, think about yourself. If you want to be happy, think about others. <source: Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche>

I write to Olympus about this: Read the rest of this entry »