2002.01.11-serial.00067

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to see and listen to
the exact
the says
that
leave me everybody
i'm quite astonished to see so many people here on friday night
well i guess i was clever i i i put in the topic relationship than you could bring a day have at pretty cheap a date for friday night

well i want i would like to do is talk for a while and then i open open up the floor for discussion
and maybe somewhere in the middle i'll take a break and just be quiet for a while

a number of years ago i was that
guess so many abby the monastery where thomas merton
lived in practice for many years
blanche and i were there
with a whole bunch of other people and we will go to the
i barely office something i never experienced
and i that's when i discovered something many of you probably have always known are known for many years which is that the main practice in catholic monasticism is the recitation of the songs
so ah i was amazed by this because first thing that impressed me was how terrible and violent and awful the songs are
i couldn't believe that this could be somebody spiritual practice to
chant these things
so let's startled me and i that made me
become interested and intrigued
and then as i
read the psalms and looked at them a thought about them and became more familiar with them i realized that
what they really were was
love palms there a series of love bombs they remind me of shakespeare sonnets
there
ah poems that chronicle a very troubled and difficult passionate deeply passionate relationship between the speaker of the psalms and god although because of
our
i'm not so great relationship to the word god which becomes something like an some sort of a public official goddess sort of some sort of public official in the sky in a large very large bureaucracy oh so when you read the word god in assam's it tends to
obscure the fact that they really are love poems so when i began fool around with him i made my own versions and i hardly ever use the word god instead of the word god i used the word you which is the word in our language that most evokes the field
a relationship so the psalms when you when you
use the word you as though the word god become quite different
so i really got into this and i began doodling around and making more and more versions until ahead i lost one hundred
psalms
one hundred love poems so i want to read a few of them to give you a flavour and then i'll go on from there
this is my version of some number thirty six that the thirty six sixteen
sixteen
protect me from fear for i placed my trust only a new
my soul has said you are my guardian soul foundation of my happiness and i will find my delight in all that is yours on earth
as for all that shuts you out
greg will be their sorrow i will not pour out their offerings nor call their names even in my dreams you you only you
i'm i share and my cup you have drawn my lot and it has fallen out agreeably
lovely indeed is my estate my heritage is pleasant to me i bless you who brought me to this day and even at night and the trying times my trembling body is tethered to you
your presence is always before me in all the deeds of my hand i will not be shaken from it so my heart rejoices my spirit is glad and my body rests secure for you will not abandon my soul to darkness you will not suffer
for me to be overwhelmed and terror
you will teach me the path toward life
your presence is my sweetest joy
you're right hand my chief delight
always
sounds like a love poem it
some nineteen
the heavens express your fire
the night sky is the work of your hands day after day as your spoken language night after night your perfect knowing there is no speech there are no words their voice falls silent yet the music plays everywhere to the end of the earth it's clear notes
float out to the end of the world's the words pronounced become a tabernacle for the sun
that comes out like a bridegroom from his chamber a robust runner to run his days course
to the end of the heavens he raises
and back again he returns
and there is nothing hidden from his heat
your pattern is perfection
it quiets the soul that knows it and it's eloquent expression makes everything clear so that even the simple are wise
your ways are upright making the heart glad you're distances are clear washing off the eyes your awesomeness is pure and indoors constantly
what you require is just
for it is nothing but the truth and it is more durable and the finest gold sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb who serves you is inspired and following you finds reward
who is free from all error
you take hold of it and turn it right
and where there is confusion
let me not become entangled
and i will be blameless clear of any misdirection
may these words of my mouth and these meditations of my heart be acceptable to you my rock my release
so i got very interested in his poems and really spend a lot of time with them
reading them in the hebrew
which is very different and the sound of hebrew or another he bray so i can translate them
fluently from the hebrew but i can hear the sound of hebrew and i know some hebrew word
so i could hear how different they seemed in hebrew from the typical
english translations that we have
and they sound in hebrew to me they have an echo of the of the feeling of prayer so so the catholic monastic say they say today i prayed the psalms they say beside the samosas i prayed the psalms and in the psalms the same psalms
our
one of the main elements of also the jewish liturgy
only one said assumption on the the christian songs and the jewish songs as this and sauce how do people don't know that you know sums and christians and jews both use them in
in the jewish prayer service they're generally chanted and in hebrew and there are some of them have gorgeous gorgeous heartbreaking melodies
so i got me in interested in the idea of prayer then which is a kind of calling out you you prayer is words that are sort of set out to the universe
two yeah the implication is that that you're sending out your words to a trusted and utterly reliable other maybe they don't answer maybe they don't hear but that the nature of the of them however it is that we're sending our words out his trusted and utterly reliable
other
and i began to feel that
this is something that all human beings really need somehow is to call out to reach out to another who will hear
and somehow even just in hearing there's already a comfort and already something important has happened even if there's no nobody's he's fixing anything for you were doing anything particular just to call out to another and to be heard to be to be somehow received
ah i think that's a real human need and to me it's completely has to do with the whole language making faculty that we have we were speaking you know to some way always even lower alone as a feeling at words are formed because there is and
other and we're reaching out with to another with our words speaking are feeling or sorrow are pain our happiness
and then it occurred to me that this is exactly the source and the route
of poetry to which i i do i write poetry and i realized that
the same is the same feeling the same thing and what why does anybody especially
was poetry that in a very few people are interested in i read why would you bother but you have to do it because you need to just the same way why would you say a prayer really if you're not going go if you don't get results were we to do it because you need to do it
so now i realized that and the obvious fact i never really thought of it before the obvious fact that the songs are the source of western poetry with the gorilla with early greek palms the psalms are the earliest source of the lira
ik
in western culture
this a poem i wrote and today
it takes peace and quiet is the name and palm
it takes peace and quiet sometimes to learn one thing
so it can be forgotten
nearly dimmer than later
a stupor sets in whenever i told this bell that lingers and as limber
i can touch the runners as they course by carrying something too hot to touch
but you can't not wonder
for you need the food
how they make their rounds upon lilting numbers
their words abstract upon their hearts
i do not know and cannot count only reconcile their books and plunder
and call out on high for help

really hit it
all right through it it takes peace and quiet sometimes to learn one thing so it can be forgotten
nearly dimmer than later
a stupor sets in whenever i told this bell that lingers and is limber
i can't touch the runners as they caused by carrying something too hot to touch but you can't not wander
for you need the food
how they make their rounds upon lilting numbers their words abstract upon their hearts i do not know and cannot count only reconcile their books and plunder and call out on high for help
so this is in a words reaching out to the beyond
not to a person particularly
to a person
but still in a way the amazing thing is that we do exactly the same thing with human beings and our human relationships
the the model of the relationship of the psalms that reaching out with words to a reliable other
is exactly what we do in our personal relationships as well so i began to think about that about how in a way all our speech speaking to one another
is
perhaps and least seems to us to be a less exalted and yet similar
a kind of thing that we also need to do
so you know the relationship to god that we see in the psalms is kind of the ultimate perfect theoretically perfect
human relationship because god is by definition that which is not corrupt unreliable
ah you know people are very corrupt and unreliable and when literally that they they become corrupt they grow all day decay their bodies gonna get saggy and everything they might change their feelings they might be out to lunch when you call them
you don't mean people are really unreliable but a god is by definition that which is utterly and totally trustworthy and reliable
god doesn't change or grow older go away or divorce you or something
so anyway it but it occurred to me that the same feeling that one finds in the psalms is also
the sir rock bottom at the bottom the the feeling in essence of our human relationships and then so this is i'm thinking about all this and so summarizing you know
three years maybe if
study and thinking and amusing and then in the midst of all that i somehow stumbled again into the work of martin buber right read and was influenced by when i was a college student a long time ago
and he's i think pretty out of out of style and i think anybody reads martin buber anymore although if you're probably used bookstores you find many copies of his works because people read of a long time ago and get rid of the books and they're hanging around the bookstore because nobody's buying them but i found some copies of i and thou and began reading it and i was completely astonished
and how beautiful it was and how relevant it wasn't how true it was
so i began studying and going into much thinking about now mover and many of you are aware of his fundamental idea is relationship
that he that he a fundamental idea is that there's a certain kind of relationship between one and another
in which the to cease to be objects to each other fulfilling each other's needs or negotiating something between them but they become they actually encounter each other and an encountering each other they something transcendent happens
if a way out but speaking of this in it and i now
and and he
he he says that this encounter regardless of what it is one encounters whether it could be a person that could be a be mentions like nature you could see a tree or have a relationship with a cloud or an art object
and i would add to that
even even a feeling within oneself with feeling on it within the body or thought that kind of encounter and relationship
is the essence of the spiritual whether you're relating to a person or god it makes no difference
when the relationship goes that deep that's what is really spiritual sees his his life was a life of the emphasis on relationship dialogue conversation encounter and his works are really really pretty terrific
and i recommend you know that everybody is my idea of a campaign to everybody to rediscover martin buber and reissued his his books of which there are many many books
so
i wrote a talk from all that that i would now like to i wasn't planning to
give you this talk but i was trying to figure out what i was going to speak about tonight and i found this talk and i thought seemed interesting to me so i thought why not
saved me a lot of trouble you know
so i'm gonna share with you this talk
the title of it is
all real living is meeting
all real living is meeting which is a line from i now
so a lot of it says what i so that we get it begins with just what i'm saying that how i recently read
right now and how much it meant to me i was surprised by it
and also i was surprised by how much the ideas of the book although i had totally forgotten them had influence my life and shaped my life i didn't never i wouldn't said that if you asked me but rereading and i felt that way
because i must have somehow so thoroughly absorbed its message that i completely forgot about it and i kind of became it in
which happens
and that probably explains why although i've spent most of my life my adult life in the essentially monastic life or zen practice
without batting an eye lash i got married and had we had a family right away and it never struck me as contradictory or problematic or anything it just seems quite natural
so to summarize again the essential notion in boogers i and thou he says i'm going gonna follow relatively closely his argument although you should read it because it's very beautiful
he was they say that if you could read boogerd and german he's an and wonderful stylist in german
he one of his great works as a translation of the bible into german which is supposed to be one at a great literary works in german anyway
he says that human beings exist in one of two modes one of two basic attitudes
one of them as called actually caused them interestingly enough words we speak to words one at one of two words on the and any given occasion
and the two words are
one word is
i it
no it's two words it's these calls it a word i it and the other word is i you or i thou are you
he says now apart from these two words i it are you there is no i there's only i in busily the i have i it or are you alone there is no i
so when we say i it's always either really i it or are you
every moment of our lives it's one of the other
so what is this i it and i you i it is
relationship at arm's length
two objects separate an isolated come together across the divide between them for the purpose of accomplishing something
getting something from my own standpoint everything that i meet is it brother
i have to deal with it and i have to find my place in relation to it
i try to absorb it use it make sure i'm not used by it when the contest
i it is the usual way that we relate to everything and every one sometimes even to ourselves in this world it's a relationship based on separation and fear on distance and manipulation i
it is a bordered cramped
encounter
and it's always partial
one line in i thou is i it movers as can never be said with one's whole being only partially only part of your being can say i it
so that's what i have this are you on the other hand he says is borderless limitless relationship
a relationship that can only be said a word that can only be said by contrast with one's whole being
therefore wherever there's i you there's a profound encounter
and everything has called into question so there are no objects are no experiences
in the instance of are you there's no instrumentality there's no time nor space he says all these things
there's only the connection itself only the relation itself
and this is a quote from the book whoever says you does not have something
he has nothing
but he stands in relation
so as i said earlier for booger this iu relation is the realm of religion
a realm so ineffable it's beyond experience it makes a big point of this is not an experience he says not even a mystical experiences and kind of anti mystical he doesn't believe in mystical experience only in relation
because this are you is not an experience at all it's a relation it's a realm of ultimate truth and ultimate responsibility it's not some fantastic experience that we have it's a kind of calls us in the question and into relationship and into responsibility
what are you any sense of one's isolated separateness falls away there is only the eye as constituted and created co-created by the you
so who were points out that you know we're so we're all and you can all hear this and say oh boy i want to live in i you know realm but he says you can't do that
you can't i mean you can only live their life pass to have its instrumental practical dimension
in order to live in the world as we know it all of us once in a while sometimes maybe you many hours or that they have to live in the eye it world
is without without the i it relationship without the i it word without not speaking that word there's no way to get through the day pay the bills advanced in learning negotiate arrangements and so forth but if we only live in i it
when we're not fulfilling our destiny as human beings
our lives are hollow and complete so we can't not live in i am but if we only live in i it and we really live lives that are hollow and unhappy
so that's boomer go in the meditation traditions we seem to be dealing with something quite different from this
we seem to be plunging ourselves into ourselves sitting on our cushions emphasizing you know my own feelings and thoughts which are you know unique and different from everyone else's
any question of relationship seems like way beside the point where we're sitting down on our cushions
well we're emphasizing our meditation practice
and i think that it's really true you could say that in general buddhism and in general is in a particular while they're strong on inner cultivation
side and really when it comes to relationships and i remember one of the buber classes i gave john wellwood for is a psychologist in a a buddhist teacher
he i was talking him and he was saying that he was also really buber and finding a very interesting and so we and we've met together he came to one of whoa my mubarak classes and we had a very interesting discussions
about this because he's writing about this about how buddhism is weak on relationship
and other tradition psychology or even a judeo christian religious was stronger on the question of relationships
after all in buddhism the model practitioner is the buddha who lived his life as a wandering monk and preached constantly the virtues of silence solitude and celibacy
so seems like you know pretty different
kettle of fish
however if you really look a little more closely at the actual process of meditation especially as we understand it in our own as and tradition
and at the same time if you think through more deeply and more carefully the nature of relationship
i think the picture is a little different
for many years like many of you i've contemplated the stories of the enlightenment of the many of the great zen masters
and it is a curious but very noticeable fact that none of the moments of transcendence occur in silent meditation they always occur in a moment of encounter in a moment of relations
when consciousness is impacted by an object
that appears to be outside and then all the sudden it's revealed not to be a separate thing outside that is the moment of awakening in these stories
then you see with thundering clarity that there are no separate things
at that which appeared to be and has always been seen as that absolutely separate is not separate that is the sort of typical trope of enlightenment in the st stories
these moments in the story is usually happen in relation to people
somebody says something or somebody hears something was said by someone else
typically a teachers says something a disciple becomes awakened by those words
but sometimes it's not real relation to another person sometimes it's in relation to a sound or visual object even sometimes a mental object as the sixth ancestors awake and hearing a sound of this the sutra
i'm thinking about the sutra
in any case whatever the relationship is some something that appears to be outside is seen not to be outside
it is a sudden merging of outside and inside as one
that actually is the content of the enlightenment experience
so in a sense then if you think about this the an enlightenment experience isn't an experience of the absolute
it's instead the collapse of the absolute into the relative and vice versa
which sounds a whole lot like movers are you philosophy
it also you know in my own life is that has been my personal experience that meditation practice doesn't isolate or remove someone from war relations with the world around
quite the contrary if you practice for a long time what we can call in terms of my talk tonight the iu relationship with the breath
with one's own thoughts
with the sensations in one's own body
sights sounds smells tastes such a bulls
if you practice that way which i think really is our instruction in zaza
ben eventually this leads to a tremendous feeling of intimacy with the whole world and with all the creatures that are in it
who are now no longer seen as threatening but rather as
constituting one's own reality this is myself
so and then the word intimacy
literally the word intimacy is given as a synonym for enlightenment
and that's why i in my on a buddhism
bodhicitta or the spontaneous wow to practice endlessly and solely for the benefit of others were the warm and affectionate feeling is the essence of the practice
taking precedence over any personal quest for liberation

and i'm convinced from my own experience and of many people that i've seen over the years that the practice of
meditation carried out with sincerity and simplicity overtime does make a person
softer warmer and more capable of the kind of relationship that booger spoke of

still it's not that simple of course as any us who are in intimate relationships realize
to our meditation practice does provide a way towards the possibility of closeness with the world and with other people
she would relationships are never simple they're always difficult and fraught with peril
it may be a wonderful to see a cherry blossom
in bloom and become that cherry blossom
they also be wonderful to gaze into the eyes of one's lover and you know become him or her
but to remain in relationship to that lover over a period of time day in and day out through thick and thin
ah then things get little more difficult
which is why i think the difficulty that difficulty i think is very fruitful
for spiritual practice
one of the things that i really find an endlessly happy experience is looking at a baby
especially if it's your own baby but any any baby will do actually
you see that the perfect fingers astonishing in little tiny fingers absolutely perfect in a little toes so perfect with their precise nails
and the intense expression on her face
soulful
without any posturing or defensiveness
the soft round little body always moving somehow or if not moving somehow than totally in repose
a picture of pristine humanists that i think it's delightful to every human being who would take the trouble to to look to really look
and you know that favorite sport of new parents is sitting there and watching in hours on end this little creature
how can they were did to come from you know how could such a gorgeous thing exist in this world
how come it looks just like uncle harry this moment in the next moment dislike you know aunt rose and they're on different sides of the family how can that be
how can it already have such a clear personality two minutes after he or she is born at the same time be so completely unformed as a person
so you see spend time with little baby and you know you really could get very confused quickly about you know what our life is all about how it how it is
and everything that you know what does during the day seems quite pale by comparison with this little persons tremendous impulse just to exist which is all it's doing twenty four hours a day
and when you look at a baby like that
you feel i think the feeling of love which is such a healing beautiful feeling
and you lose yourself in it and in wonder
because the baby evokes and experience of pure human possibility
she this little baby just came up few months ago out of the empty era and there's still the marks of it the pure skin soft limbs the perfect feature features a clear and unadulterated karma before
formation of a complicated sense itself with allah messy anxieties and complicated desires that we all inevitably develop sooner or later
in a very similar feeling to that comes upon us when we fall in love
which is rare and special event in human life
at that time the person who were in love with know at that first blush of being in love doesn't look like just another person in this world she's a little brighter he's a little brighter and a little more present in a then that witches surrounding
the person is then becomes the occasion of be actual location of something unlimited
some feeling of connection and destiny
that has the power to dissolve our habitual loneliness and isolation
and we just cannot get around the powerful feeling that we feel at that time
and that distracts us you know day and night we can go without sleep eat and sometimes you know in the throes of such feelings
where were existing in a special zone of delight
as a result of this encounter with the unexpected force of love
which is the subject of almost all songs
no stories
and a little bit twisted way soap operas to
may all
sell copies because they feed on our
either our memory of this moment or are longing for it so we wanna hear the song
when i read the novel wanna see the movie
so you can say in a way and i don't think it would be too far-fetched that these
powerful and yet a temporary experiences
our flashes of enlightenment flashes of bodhicitta
the oceanic impulse toward enlightenment randomly for oneself but for others for all beings that i mentioned earlier
unlike everything else in our lives
marija to is not a creation of eagle
we don't decide we're going to fall in love with someone or we don't decide we're going to have this feeling when we look at it a child it happens
willy nilly it's a force of nature
we can't even say it exists in the ordinary sense of the word
it's something that lifts us up releases us from all that holds us to earth it just happens
hello we don't know what it is
we can only feel ourselves being overcome by him
the buddhism they say that love is generated by to
equally powerful impulses called emptiness and compassion
we could also call them a wonder and warmth
emptiness points to the miraculous nature of phenomenon
that things are not what they appear to be
but they are rather than separate connected that they are rather than fixed in heavy fluid and light and when we see a baby when we look into the face of our beloved we know that the way we've been contagious condition to perceive the world isn't right
the world actually isn't and problematic fearful challenge it's actually a beautiful gift
and we're at the center around with a little in the middle of it all the time
the world is an iu world
and this is a physical experience
so compelling that we are overcome with an urge to just throw ourselves into another person
and then through that person with to the whole world
we want to put ourselves out
of ourselves and into the other person
as if our body was water
so love is naturally connected with the sexual
we don't love with our minds not even with our hearts because these things are abstractions
whole bodies love and naturally we want to cuddle kiss touch hold field a literal warmth of the other person penetrating our body
so you really want to hold your child next to you
next to your cheek makes to your breast you wanna lie down with her child at bedtime or naptime
kiss goodnight maybe together faultlessly that's wonderful
think
in the parents love this child loves it it's important experience this big feeling of peaceful security of belonging and feeling warmth
and you can spend your life wishing to return to that feeling from missing it your whole life through
can the same way it's utterly relieving
and necessary to fall into the sexual embrace with the beloved
to enter each other with warmth and delight and finally peaceful release
and it takes a lot of trust
to give yourself in this way without holding anything back
it's a form of liberation
no sense of control
a reserve our separateness no feeling that there's somebody there who could stand aloof and somehow manipulate this thing
so i think all of that i'm saying is is true to life
i think you know that but i think you also would have to admit that
it's not what most of us experience most of the time
maybe our sexuality is the natural expression of a pure and selfless love but also in the deep economy of human emotion
ah is becomes different things according to conditions
and in the body only seldom operates in the pure service of selflessness more often
deliberative signals that are always potentially present because we can at any moment fall in love with the whole world
get distorted
my confusion of ego and we become conditioned to see sexuality as a replacement for so much else in our lives
that we need
but were unable to get
so sexuality becomes away
probably nothing in this life
produces more self deception
when sexuality
and when sexuality becomes deeply self deception self deceiving it becomes dark
and it began nothing you know it can cause more suffering
then sexuality
i think the buddha had an enormous respect for sexuality he really understood its power in human life
and he saw you know how disastrous it could be
if it was operating under the power of our confusion and attachment
and i'm sure that he felt that although the spiritual path naturally and beautifully contains an erotic element the chances for perversion of the erotic are tremendous
and that's why he taught the practice of celibacy as a path toward love
and i would say that celibacy has to be kind of path toward love and if it's not a lovely and warm practice than i think it's
ben is just a justification for a coldness or distance that we naturally feel maybe because we're afraid of others so we choose to be celibate but the to sell of practitioner as someone free because he or she is not attached to one person or a protect
or set of persons to develop a universal love and warmth that includes self and everyone all held in the way
for those of us who don't choose the path of celibacy
the challenge becomes to include
our significant other or our families
as a part of our practice as exactly
a path
for the development of a wider and broader love not just for these people but for everything
because the fact that matter is that there's no way that actual love as it grows and develops in the tours can remain exclusive in that way
there's a tendency to see love in a limited way in other words if we love or are loyal to one person or group that we can't love or be loyal to another but this is a perversion of loves real nature
because it's salient characteristic is it's limitlessness as the salient characteristic of love it's limitless limitlessness
and it starts local
but it becomes universal
finding through the local
the universal
if that natural process becomes a subverted and love becomes something small and narrow it has to grow or it falls it can't be reduced or him then
milka writer this tragic narrowing that love of another person can become
in the eighth do we know lg in that lg he's talking about this term because the open the open
which very similar i think to what booger meant by i you they open the experience of he's talking about that and he says lovers if the beloved we're not there blocking the view
are close to it
and marvel as if by some mistake it opens for them behind each other
failure of offers are blocking the view and it's opening behind the lover
but neither can move past the other
and it changes back to world
so that's mostly what happens
love opens us up enormously but then the door inside soon shuts
and the initial impulse limitless impulse becomes reduced
and we find ourselves somehow needing to domesticate to beloved
as if we could make them known and predictable subject to our needs possess a bull
then there's jealousy selfishness disappointment desire to control fear of change
what was in the beginning powerful love becomes a kind of conspiracy of smallness
and nothing is more common among long lasting and seemingly successful relationships than this embattled holding onto the past in a way that is usually quite unhappy
and it's debatable whether this is preferable to the endless seeking for the perfect mate
that goes on among those who see divorce or breakup or never making a commitment as a better remedy where the inner restlessness
so that's usually what happens
and yet given despite the terrible odds you know where all out the heck try to get this thing worked out you know you'd think that people will say this is to hearts and nearly impossible why try and yet everybody's always trying to make this thing work in one word trial as track so lonesome let's go out and sinister
i know i'm seventy eight and nine nine were still you ever know never too late
hope springs eternal
but i think that the way around all this is to conceive of oneself as practicing renunciation
within the context of a loving relationship
in other words within our own feeling making up our mind that our love is such that we are willing if it were necessary to give up the beloved
to recognize that we will never be able to really understand or know him or her
or already so absolute sense be able to depend on him or her anymore than we can depend on her own body or on the weather
the beloved is absolutely a mystery
and as such is unmissable
so to give up him or her is not a matter of sacrifice
if we had our eyes opened from the start we would have seen
yet the real vision of love was showing us this all along that things are
fleeting
but they're create a fresh every moment and then they're gone
so the miracle of love between two people or within a family is something precious and very brief
any human relationship just last a moment
and were together for some time and then inevitably me part
and to really love someone is to never forget this every single day
to see the preciousness of the beloved and of the time we have together to renounce any clingy need for our dependency on the other and to make the effort to open up our hands so that instead of holding on were nurturing and supportive
sometimes people think well in the face of this fleeting nature of feelings and how could you ever make a commitment to something
how can you ever commit yourself in a relationship if that's all true
and it seems logical that you know you either deny impermanence
and assert you know an undying vow or you accept impermanence and you know you move on everything's change
but it's exactly impermanence that inspires commitment
exactly because things always change and we cannot stop that from happening we give rise to a vow to remain faithful to love
because love is the only thing
that is in harmony with change because love is change
it's the movement and color of the world
it's a feeling of constancy openness and appreciation for the wonder of the world
a feeling that we can be true to no matter what circumstances may bring
so this might sound impossibly idealistic but i actually think is the most practical thing
and there really isn't any other way that's what i think
to respect the beloved to give and asked for nothing in return
in the face that what we need will be provided without are insisting on it too much to do that may seem like the work of a saint but really i think it's the only way
and in order to do that we have to condition our ego the soften its edges
so it's more pliable and more fearless
fearless enough to be open to whatever comes
and to meet be permissive
and the best sense of that word for another
and i think that describes to meet basic spiritual practice
so i think for most of us because most people don't have the
talent or ability to make a commitment to celibacy too for most of us
the journey
i have a loving relationship although it's very difficult
is our best chance to develop bodhicitta
in my own of buddhism this seemingly impossible and unlimited aspiration for the enlightenment of all is the heart of the practice the beginning in the end of the practice and it seems only logical and if you want to develop a limitless love for all beings you should start small and work your way up
well it doesn't it make sense
gotta start somewhere
can have somebody to practice on you know you're gonna love all sentient beings try levy one in or two or three
to really find a way despite all the things that life brings to actually love your lover or your husband your wife your child
and taking that on
not as something one takes for granted but as one of life's most worthwhile and challenging projects
is a noble thing and it is possible
we know it's possible because we have all felt one time or another in our lives the power
the force of love
even if we might have forgotten it
well that's the undermine taco
and you're very patient to sit there all his ties with a little bit longer than i thought it was so i think now what we should all do is get up and stretch and to move around for a moment and we can sit down again
talk

where's the wine and cheese