Want to be a valentine? Learn how training in love and compassion for others can make you more joyful and attractive. Just bring a kind heart and an open mind. We can even help you find those.
Join us on Sunday, Feb. 11, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at the Pagosa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship with Dan Dempster. Dempster is a certified meditation instructor, authorized Dharma teacher and long-time student of Khenpo Migmar Tseten, Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University.
We all hope to find love. But what is it? Our worldly version of love is freighted with ego and expectation. It is, “I love you ... so, don’t you love me?” If our expectations are not met, our love can quickly turn to disappointment and anger. Is that love really love? Or, is it just another exercise in ego?
Every being on this planet wishes to find happiness and to avoid suffering. On that basis we can relate to everyone. Isn’t that what we all really want, deep down? To be understood?
Everybody is going through something. Learning to see past our own preoccupations to recognize the pain and suffering of others has the capacity to free us from our own pain.
Impermanence is a fact of life. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Denying and resisting change causes pain. Getting angry about it causes even more pain. Interdependence is another fact of life. Nothing exists without depending on everything else for its existence. Learning to see these two truths is the first step in creating true love.
How? Freed from the preference and prejudice of wishing things were other than they are, our minds eventually become light and clear. A deep joy arises, radiating boundless love and compassion to all beings, wishing they could share this joy. Since it does not depend on anything or anyone else for its existence, it is free from the worry and pain of separation. We belong.
Our delight has the capacity to spark delight in others. This takes time and commitment to develop, but doing so for the sake of all beings is true love. And it’s attractive.
Meditation is offered on the second and fourth Sundays of the month at 9 a.m. Find us in Unit B-15 of the Greenbriar Plaza, 301 N. Pagosa Blvd., on the north side facing the mountains. For more information about the fellowship, our services, and the other activities, please visit www.pagosauu.org or email info@pagosauu.org.
