His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, wrote a beautifully helpful book, in 2005.
It is titled: “How to Expand LOVE
Widening the Circle of Loving Relationships“.
Step by step, through multiple stages of development and awareness,
he helps us to develop skills where one can learn
to transform negative feelings by cultivating love and compassion.
Rather than speak directly, my wonderful teacher, Eve,
would point to life experiences, experiences we shared.
She had so many stories to share about others too,
Onlly recently did I come to realize she was really talking about me.
Eve passed away four years ago, on October 20th, 2011.
Her efforts have gently tapped me for 28 years now.
The Dalai Lama’s words offer a new clarification,
a different kind of clarification for me.
He makes such important points that I needed to read
because this waking consciousness, this part of consciousness
that is writing right now, was not quite understanding Eve’s pointing.
Again, I awaken to the fact that I must make significant changes
or face more harsh challenges in the future.
And after enduring as much as I have these last nine years, as a result
of being unbelievably bloody-minded (fearful), I would not wish
such kinds of challenges on anyone else either.
(There is a context prior to this quotation, in the book, but I hope
you find it useful enough on its own.)
This comes from page 142 in the book:
“By cultivating compassion first for friends, then neutral persons,
and finally enemies, you can eventually grasp what it is to feel
strong compassion for sentient beings in general.
However, if initially you meditate on sentient beings in general
without earnestly attending to individuals, you might get the impression
of having compassion for all beings, but when an unfavorable
circumstance such as being thwarted in something you want arises,
you will demonstrate quite the opposite.”
(Eve taught me that there really are no enemies.
I believe that is what the Dalai Lama is getting at also.
But that can be the subject of another blog entry another day.)
Thank you to the Dalai Lama, for thinking, writing, speaking,
thanks to those who helped him to escape, from Tibet, in 1959,
and thanks to dearest Eve, for pointing.
From one who had the misperception that she loved the all,
who is beginning to learn to love, one by one, all over again,
starting with herself.
