April 26th ~ You cannot be sensitive if you are not passionate. Do not be afraid of that word passion. Most religious books, most gurus, swamis, leaders, and all the rest of them say, “Don’t have passion.” But if you have no passion, how can you be sensitive to the ugly, to the beautiful, to the whispering leaves, to the sunset, to a smile, to a cry? How can you be sensitive without a sense of passion in which there is abandonment? Sirs, please listen to me, and do not ask how to acquire passion. I know you are all passionate enough in getting a good job, or hating some poor chap, or being jealous of someone; but I am talking of something entirely different–a passion that loves. Love is a state in which there is no “me”; love is a state in which there is no condemnation , no saying that sex is right or wrong, that this is good and something else is bad. Love is none of these contradictory things. Contradiction does not exist in love. And how can one be if one is not passionate? Without passion, how can one be sensitive? To be sensitive is to feel your neighbor sitting next to you; it is to see the ugliness of the town with its squalor, its filth, its poverty, and to see the beauty of the river, the sea, the sky. If you are not passionate, how can you be sensitive to all that? How can you feel a smile, a tear? Love, I assure you, is passion.
April 5th, 2020 ~ Comparing the energy it takes to read the NY Times or the Sports Page and that of cleaning my room or the garage. It is a reality check. It takes meditation to be in that place of love or no-self. I am reading about Tantra Tibetan Buddhism. Tantra is a path toward Enlightenment that is much quicker. What I am learning so far is that motivating. What is not new is that we can’t expect to look outside of ourselves for happiness. Tantra says that our answers are within us–both male and female energy make up our whole being. There is still no “me” there. When we look inward, not expecting others to complete us or be the answer to our prayers, is not only liberating for all involved; as K says, we being to love everyone, not just our significant other or family members and those close to us. This is important now. We are being reminded daily that loss is around us and that when we are in touch with love, we feel the loss of those we don’t even know. We don’t gloss over it, resist it or fall into despair. We see it. We face it.