just home from a Losar smoke offering and some hours of savory sharing with the Sangha. a quiet and introspective surfing brings am email to me in which someone thanks me for things that are likely just me displaying my profound ignorance… but which, for some reason, arrive as deeply meaningful to them.
i am, of course, torn with regard to it. pride and pride of non-pride have been issues here for quite some time and i am unwilling to as much as smile to think ‘my’ words have any meaning at all beyond the manner in which i use them as nettles, baseball bats, shovels, or bricks to get through to myself.
the article on compassion, of course, is not ‘mine’. it was a teaching given by one much more realized and profound that i may ever hope to be… i just noticed that wording. and set forth very directly here — those are NOT my words. i could only hope to ever be so concise and clear as the venerable lama who spoke them.
**** wrote:
> just read your compassion sermon (not the word i
> might have chosen – sermon, that is).. the
> kindness of which you speak is the hook (vajra
> shaped) which has brought me towards vajrayana..
> i research.. i visit websites.. i find lots of
> words.. lots.. it is really difficult to find
> the word kindness amidst all the special
> terminology.. the quasi dogma.. the
> characterizations of ones lineage.. the
> historical personages..
>
> i hear HHDL using it a lot, (bless his heart),
> and Mother Teresa, and warrior teachers i have
> been blessed with.. and modest and simple people
> (like you).. i trust it so much more that all
> the other intellectual stuff.. so just a note to
> say thank you.. yet again.. L..
i have found a great deal of benefit in the concept of inner refuge and using myself to teach myself. but i suspect such a thing requires an almost cruel degree of bluntness with myself that most i encounter are not willing to submit to… and in truth, perhaps i do myself a disservice in it, for i am not often kind to myself. but then, i know how stubborn and foolish i am… (chuckle)i am often conflicted on the more esoteric teachings of the Dharma… but tend to view them as yet another layer of ‘hiding in plain sight’ — with references to strange beings and practices and rituals and specific requirements being more to occupy those who require a thing to be complex before they can find it important.
that may well be a foolishness, or even an error… but it rings true in this moment, and as such, i let it be as it is. the way i have it figured, if it is error, something will rise to correct it. and if not, as i delve deeper, it will reveal to me.
there is a curious liberation in just being. i am very thankful for and of it… even as i do not often manage it skillfully.
thank you for writing. (hug)
all in all, the best i ever hope for is to log enough here that i eventually manage to shift myself into more beneficial, skillful means and methods so i may help and benefit others. while the notion that any of this mess does so now is a sweet breeze, i do not fool myself, i am a very long way indeed from the skillful means by which the peerless ones mitigate and end suffering throughout the realms.
but it does set a soothing balm upon me… perhaps someday, i will manage it.