Break Your Heart

Last Wednesday I drove my friend Joel to Tucson. I decided to stay and hang out for awhile because he isn't coming back to DM at all - for this term anyway. So we're sitting in a cute coffee shop talking about various things and at one point in one of the conversations he says to me something like "I think the point is to break your heart." It made sense in the context of what we were talking about but my first reaction was that I would have preferred to punch him in the face - why would I want my heart broken? Isn't my goal, everyone's goal, to be happy? I, of course, did NOT punch him in the face because I would never, ever, punch anyone in the face, especially him... But the next day it got me to thinking about what I'm learning at Diamond Mountain. I mean - I'm learning a whole lot of wonderful stuff but I mean in general - what I'm learning in summary I guess...

What I'm learning from this time at Diamond Mountain is that I don't have to be stuck. I can go where I need to go and do what I need to do to make myself and other people happy. I'm allowed to do what makes me happy. I'm allowed to work on taking the log out of my eye so I can help get the splinters out of the eyes of the people around me. I have the power to do what will make me happy and to choose to do the thing that will help the most people. Me being stuck in a job that makes me too tired to function or doing an activity that I don't want to do is all in my head. Meaning - everything is so beautiful and blissful. Geshe Michael said in one of our classes that, if you think about it, the world is pretty perfect already. Things still suck. Of course they do - but the things that suck can be changed, they can be worked on. We may not be able to change them over night but if those are the important things we can sure as hell work on changing them. The things I don't see as perfect CAN be changed - I just have to keep learning how to change them and I think it all starts with your point of view.

My first yoga teacher in Fredonia said in one of the first classes "Everything you need you have within you." Ok, so, I dropped the class after like 2 classes because I was too busy to relax for an hour doing yoga... but I think that statement was really all I needed to take away from the class anyway. It's so true. At any given time I really have absolutely everything I need - everything I HAVE to have.

Things really do suck sometimes... a lot of the time, theres no denying that. But you also can't deny that there is so much beauty in everything around us. It's just too difficult to see when we have 1,000 things going on and when we're worrying about ourselves constantly. But even the pain is gorgeous. It makes us who we are. It shapes us. It completes us. It makes us stronger. And at the very least it breaks us down and lets us be real. The Dalai Lama's mantra (om mani padme hum) means that out of great suffering comes great beauty. The point IS to break your heart - and after that you have to work to keep it broken open and let the pieces settle in a whole new, terrifyingly beautiful way. Every single moment of life is an exciting adventure - you just have to remember to see it that way and the challange of trying to remember is part of the adventure. It all starts with your point of view.

So, in conclusion I would like to say that the Dalai Lama is probably the cutest man in the whole wide world. Seriously, Google a picture of him - it is impossible to not smile.

:-) <3