Live to Love

Another year is gone. Do I really learn the Dharma?

Am I more compassionate, kinder, more open hearted?

While in daily classes of one of our texts “Entering the Middle Way” by the great master Chandrakirti, our teacher Lopon Tokpa Tulku, constantly reminded us every beginning of class about our motivation, an aspiration of directing our mind to not just learn concepts but contemplate about them, live them and share them in the world, often recollecting Kyabje Chokyi Nyima’s enlightened aspirations that we train in the direction of being not just learned but Dharma practitioners as well.

Definitely we all are searching for something. I guess deeply we all are looking for happiness, no matter what we do, in every breath, in each heart beating. Are we looking for happiness in the right places? After a year of deconstructing reality through the profound Middle Way view do we still believe that the fragile causes and conditions of samsara will bring us true happiness, will satisfy us permanently? Am I looking in the right direction?

This were questions that were in my daily thoughts while studying the Middle Way view of Nagarjuna through Chandrakirti’s understanding, which sometimes appear to be interestingly dry and merely conceptual, even though our skillful teacher tried his best (and really made me positively surprised) in transmitting the Chandrakirti’s real intent, the deep meaning behind the Indian pandit’s words.

At the end of such a philosophical and complex scripture, one finally reached a conclusion: “There is no conclusion that can be reached.” Conclusions are nothing but limited misperceptions of reality. But then what is the meaning of our lives, what is conclusion that will make us “keep going”. I guess is just to “Live”, to really live, to live completely aware of life’s playful dance. By living one might experience that everything can be possible, and that there is something that makes everything possible. One might guess that behind the scenes of our mental projections and within our thoughts and actions, there is a completely open ‘potential’ that is naturally fulfilling our searches and wishes and is embracing our feelings (easy and uneasy ones), that is welcoming who we are, without judgments and expectations.

Thinking about what is behind the scene of my own thoughts, it might be just an alive movement impregnated with love, the love of our mother nature. I wish I can gradually get to know better my own profound mother, getting more close to her, open my heart to her and see my own life as an expression of her love. Maybe, then, I might understand that to live life is to get in touch with her love; that by simply living one is allowing and discovering her love; that love is inseparable of life itself.

In my wondering thoughts I ask myself if wasn't this heart behind Chandrakirti’s words when he said:

“Conventional reality [(life] therefore becomes the means; and by this means the ultimate [love] is reached.”

I guess no more running away from relative reality no matter how it presents in my experience but trying my best to see its true face, the ultimate love that is not found anywhere else apart from life itself.

Thank you Lopon Tokpa Tulku Rinpoche! You have opened many doors to our hearts!

~Tenphel from Brazil