After tonight’s don season practice we were sitting around the table, sipping tea, and I opened Ani Pema’s book No time to lose, which is a commentary on Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva and it opened on a page where there was a quote from Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche:
Trying to find lasting happiness from relationships or posessions is like drinking saltwater to quench your thirst.
This one really hit me, as especially today, I’ve been caught in longing to be with someone, and feeling jealous and sad about some of the changes that are happening. Today, for some reason, I just really saw it so clearly. Shocking even.
And then, like if that wasn’t enough, Shantideva hammers the point home:
If I long and crave for other beings,
A veil is cast upon the perfect truth.
Wholesome disillusion melts away,
And finally there comes the sting of pain.

My thoughts are all for them…
And by degrees my life is frittered by.
My family and friends all fade and pass, for whom
The Doctrine is destroyed that leads to indestructibility.

Powerful words, if you have the ears to hear them.