Love

I have been exploring the life and teachings of the great Tibetan master, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. During a documentary on his life there is a short video clip of a teaching he gave on compassion and in it he said that compassion is none other than the awakened mind, Buddha Mind. Quick as a flash my mind made the connection between what Rinpoche had just said and the Face-To-No-Face experiment where one experiences the awesome fact of being capacity for the person you are talking to. Being capacity for that person, and the world, is that very same compassion Rinpoche was talking about, which comes from this knowing of one's Transparent Being, this universal no-thingness that we all are. I was filled with deep gratitude for the presence of such profound teaching from Douglas Harding and Rinpoche. Aloka, Buddhist monk.

Lately, I have been catching glimpses of the Intimacy that comes with the 'unspooking' of other people (that you have written about elsewhere) - looking at others, talking with others, and realising that those sights and sounds are not evidence of a spook over there in the other person. All the evidence is on display right here. There is the other person over there, and this Clarity and Silence right here. I'm the spook! Not only me, but the other person, too; no other spooks are on display. We're both the same spook! A sight seeing itself, a conversation having itself!

Another thing that goes along with this is that I am coming to see and appreciate the beautiful paradox of this Intimacy. Looking at another person as more or less an "it," not as a separate "I" confronting me, can be understood as the extreme terminus of selfishness and immorality. But on the contrary, isn't it the other extreme of selflessness and love and non-confrontation? C.C. USA.

When you look at the face of another, stranger or friend, that appearance you call 'their face' does not exist for them at all. They are as empty as you are, whether they notice it or not. You normally think that other people own faces and are projecting or imposing them upon the world, including you. But it is the other way round. YOU have to be there for that appearance to spring into being. Look away for a moment and it is gone; look back and it is recreated. They literally don't have it for themselves; you create it for them. Even if there are other people around, the appearance of that face is only given where you are. This is the 1st-person experience, and the realisation of this is so indubitable, and so extraordinary, that I wonder we don't go around in a constant state of amazement. On this basis there are no ugly, threatening or alien faces, they are all just right as they are, lit up as if painted by a great artist there and then. And, wonder of wonders, they do not come from what I have been calling 'other people', they come from me. I am indeed 'sole heir of all the world'. (And what indeed are 'other people'?). I think in this realisation is the seed of love... A.R. UK

Thank you so much for those extra Reflections; they do confirm what is not that easy to experience : at our core, in spite of our different appearances and looks, each of us is made of the same conscious Nothingness.This also contributes to loving the other one as does the fact that we are made in such a way as to disappear in his favour. Kindest Regards. Marc

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