Far too many people settle for a shoddy imitation of love and lead lives filled with misery and needless suffering. At first they are drawn to one another by a strong sexual attraction. When this initial attraction fades what they are left with is often an unpleasant or possibly ugly relationship that can even become violent. Jealousy is not a symptom of love; it is a demonstration of immaturity and improper attachment.
Love is selfless and giving, love never has an ulterior motive and is free from attachment. There are never any strings attached to love, it is completely unconditional. The goal of one who loves is to bring widespread and long lasting happiness to the person or persons being cherished. Therefore, love does not lead to pain and suffering, it is always life affirming.
To be a Bodhisattva you must love all beings. In this simple statement we find expressed much of the wisdom of all the great spiritual teachers. You could as easily exchange the word Bodhisattva for Christian, Muslim, or Jew and few would argue.
It was my teacher, Nichiren, called ‘Shonin’ or ‘Daishonin’, who provided the greatest example of a Bodhisattva demonstrating how to practice love. He taught realized Truth to anyone interested all of his adult life and he did it in the face of constant hatred and abuse. A true Bodhisattva will persevere even after “common sense” tells most people that it’s time to pack it in and quit.
The love and compassion of my Teacher has spread the Dharma all across the world and the movement he created is growing larger every year. As followers of this great Bodhisattva, identified as “Superior Practices” in “The Lotus Sutra” we must identify our individual mission and then strive tirelessly to fulfill it during the short time that we are present in this world system.
I can honestly say that this is, by far, the most difficult thing I have ever tried to do. When I became part of Buddhist Information my intentions were to help as many people as possible. I saw that people could not find the Buddhist practices they were looking for and I wanted to help them. The people who work for Buddhist Information are never paid for their time. In fact, the people who work here pay the bills that keep us running from year to year.
The reaction has been…mixed. The people that we’re here to actually serve have been warmly appreciative and this has been enough to motivate us to continue. However, while intending only good things, offering only unconditional love to any person we encountered we have been reviled, slandered, abused, ostracized, spit on, cursed and occasionally threatened with death.
As disturbing as this has sometimes been, it is nothing compared to what our Teacher had to face. This has served to point out to me the greatness of Nichiren. To persevere in the face of constant hatred and animosity, yet still have the compassion to bring benefit to all the beings in this world system clearly demonstrates and defines love.
As the illness eating away at the body I inhabit continues its work, I can clearly see that my time here is limited. The closer we perceive physical death to be, the clearer our vision becomes. People often lose sight of what is truly important and they forget to love. The “great secret” to being loved is laughably easy to discern from here. If you want to be loved you must open your heart to the universe and love everyone, especially when they do not love you.
By Stephen L. Klick (From Chapter 5 of “A House On Fire”)
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သင္႔ရဲ႕ထင္ျမင္ခ်က္ေလး ကုိ အမ်ားသိရေအာင္ ေျပာျပခဲ႔ပါလား