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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!)

I usually buy my perfume in a shop where a profusion of bottles are stored in lighted, sparkling glass cabinets.

But on December 23, 1997, exactly 15 years ago today, I have a rather unusal experience around perfume.

It’s a day like any other day, except that I’m starting a new job. Get up. Get dressed. Eat breakfast. Brush teeth. Put on winter things. Lock door. Go down the wooden stairs and walk north.

About half-way up the block, I notice a bottle of perfume. It’s sitting atop a garbage bag.

Being a lover of perfume, I am immediately attracted to that bottle, especially when I read the name of the perfume. Devachan. It means dwelling of the gods. (Please click here for fuller explanation.)

I am drawn by the juxtaposition of the perfume and the garbage. From ego’s point of view, it’s sort of like beauty and the beast! Nice and not nice. Attractive and ugly. Pleasant and unpleasant. Sensual and tacky. Sweet and smelly.

Contemplating this, I realize that perfume and garbage are not really opposites as we conventionally think of them. Nor are they separate from each other. Both these phenomena arise from the same primordial ground, ultimate basic goodness. (Please click here for explanation of term.)

Seems that some entrepreneurs are discovering the same thing: one company is making perfume from garbage. (Please click here for more details.) Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche used to remind us that whatever comes up is a workable situation. We don’t throw anything out.

After September 11, 2001, the Smithsonian discovered that there is the perfume of garbage. (Please click here for more details.)

I have renamed December 23 Devachan Day. It reminds me that it is I who have created a dualistic world. And that world is reflected back to me everytime I fixate on so-called opposites. It is this fixation that creates karma.

I have never been able to find a bottle of this lovely perfume in any store or garbage bag since 1997.

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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!)

In high school back in the late 1950’s, a pupil used the word “need” when answering our teacher’s question.

I’ll never forget the teacher’s answer: “What do you need it for?”

We were stumped! I mean, we all use the word “need” and expect that everyone knows what we mean.

It’s “common sense,” isn’t it?

Apparently not.

In my last webpost (please click here for that post) I said

I must confess that there is one area where I do not have a lot of experience: romance. A long time ago, I had decided that it was not part of my karmic path in this lifetime. I was dismissive of the idea that one “needs” a partner.

I had to question that view after a clear and vivid dream— a dream that triggered a personal crisis.

Let me clarify: I simply have become less dismissive of the idea that one “needs” a partner. Whether we actually need a partner is the subject of this webpost.

Two points here:

• I don’t believe that we “need” much. I think that most “needs” are manufactured by our culture; and
• The notion of romance is also a manufactured one — propped up by a huge music industry of “love songs;” movies; massive fashion industry, online dating services, books, etc. etc. In short our whole culture not only supports this notion, but promotes it. However, there is no such phrase as “falling in love” in the Tibetan language.
  

[For a fabulous presentation of this subject please watch this video by Dzongsar Khenyste Rinpoche on Love and Relationship, director of the award-winning movie The Cup. It takes a few minutes for Rinpoche’s presentation to begin. But it’s well worth the wait. At some points, it was a laugh every five seconds.]

I believe that we are primordially, inherently complete and whole in ourselves. We are not “half a person” waiting for someone to “complete” us.

But we are relational beings. Or “social animals,” as some would have it. That  seems to be very much part of our DNA.

So while it can be wonderful to share your life with a partner — and simultaneously practice the six paramitas (perfections) — I don’t believe that having a partner is necessary in order to live a “good” life. We can practice the six perfections everyday in any situation. Having said that:

1. Please click here to read about the role of the paramitas in the relationship of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and his wife Khandro Tseyang. The article offers a helpful perspective. But if you just want to read about the paramitas, go to the last three paragraphs of the article.
2. If you want to read a more expansive description of the six perfections, please click here.
   

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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!)

When I was fourteen years-old, my father used to call me “Ann Landers,” the late advice columnist. He remarked that it was amazing that I passed my school exams because of all the telephone calls I’d get everyday. (Please click here for information about Ann Landers.)

We all have particular “best ways”  that we help people. Mine is in the area of crisis support. Any kind of crisis.

Of course, my own lifetime crises help me to help others. I don’t have to have had exactly the same experience myself to be able to help others with theirs. A crisis is a crisis. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering.

That’s the general level.

On the specific level, as I just noted, while I don’t have to have experienced the exact, same type of crisis as those who come to me for help and support, it can add depth and richness to that support.

So, before I continue, I must confess that there is one area where I do not have a lot of experience: romance. A long time ago, I had decided that it was not part of my karmic path in this lifetime. I was dismissive of the idea that one “needs” a partner.

That changed with a clear and vivid dream— a dream that triggered a personal crisis. (Please click here for the dream and the shock waves I experienced.)

Rather than adopt the usual tactics and remedies to ease my pain, I decided that I had to make good use of this crisis rather than waste it by sliding back into habitual patterns that return me back into my comfort zone, my cocoon.

In my generation (the cusp of wartime and “baby boomers”), we were taught to view feelings with suspicion. I found that I had become somewhat numb, another version of falling asleep.

When I had a game-changing dream, I made a game-changing move: I tried to ride the sh0ck waves I experienced by continuously acknowledging my feelings without indulging in or rejecting them.

……
The everyday practice is simply to
develop a complete acceptance and
openness to all situations and emotions.
……
……
source: The Vidyadhara, Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, excerpt from Maha-Ati text

How to do that?

1. In seems to involve aligning myself with the energetic quality of the feeling, rather than just identifying the feeling itself, e.g. depression, joy, fear, panic etc., itself. To me, it’s like lighting firecrackers — we not only see the full-blown display of the firecracker (feeling) in the sky, but we catch the sizzle (energetic quality) too.
2. Also, I used my own personal identity crisis to get in touch on a continual basis with my own basic goodness. (Please click here for description of the term basic goodness.)

The Ace of Cups from the Motherpeace Tarot card deck gives us a graphic illustration of these ideas:

The Ace of Cups is the gift of love — a dive into one’s deepest feelings, which are spilling over in abundance like a fountain…good [ultimate basically good] feelings are assured. The soft blues and greens [of the card] signify that peace and purity [unfabricated nature of mind] dwell here…This Ace represents a surrender [acceptance, not fighting, stuggling, rejecting] to emotions….The silver cup is the vessel, the chalice, the grail [that symbolizes the womb] — the archetypal feminine receptive mode. It promises ….[an] experience of letting go into unconditional [ultimate, primordial] love [basic goodness], the spaciousness of the open heart.

 Please note: the words in [   ] are my own.

The result of aligning myself with the energetic quality of whatever I was feeling, and getting in touch with my own basic goodness, is that I have more opportunity to live in the NOW rather than in my concept of what is happening. (Please click here for description of NOW.)

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