Just love

This is going to be short and sweet, hopefully like Christmas.

This morning I had a simple, heart-warming experience. Visiting my brother’s family, I was walking their dog, my namesake L, aged 7 months. She had spent the last hour tugging at the leash to meet everyone she could in the streets of St. Albans, jumping up on them with muddy paws if they so much as looked at her. She loves everyone. Not everyone was loving her back.

Until we got to Verulam House, Nursing and Residential Home. My sister-in-law and I dropped in to see her mother, Christine, where we found her in a big circle of old folks under the care of James, a youngish man who clearly takes a genuine interest in each one of them and was getting them all to chat.

And L jumped straight onto the lap of an unsuspecting old man, who almost spilled his sippy cup of lukewarm coffee. Luckily, he beamed. Other wavery voices then called out, “Let her come here!” So I took her around to each person in the room, and she lit them up. We had a party! So simple — just love — yet so effective. Everyone was in a good mood. It cost nothing.

James was very pleased to see everyone enjoying themselves, and I was thinking how much he deserves to be, as does every other under-paid, over-worked Bodhisattva care worker looking after the old, the lonely, the sick, and the homeless this Christmas and every other day of the year. And these unsung heroes and heroines will get what they deserve as a result of their kindness. They’ll get happiness.

Get rid of self-cherishing, and everything works. Don’t get rid of it and nothing works. Self-grasping and self-cherishing are believing in and cherishing a real and important self that does not exist, as explained here, so they are doomed to fail every time.

Last week, Venerable Geshe Kelsang gave everyone a free book, called How to Transform Your Life, spreading warmth and light across the globe. Much of this book shows how self-cherishing has never worked, for what do we have to show for it? Just problems and grumpiness every single day, and ending up no closer to that lasting freedom and joy we all long for. But cherishing others always solves our problems and leads to all our temporary and ultimate happiness. When we finally figure this out, and then actually bother to remember it, we will be inspired to get rid of our self cherishing — all of it — and cherish others instead. Every day will then be a party.

And if, maybe, we think, “Hey, self-cherishing is not that bad! Look at my lovely life! I do have something to show for my selfishness!!” we can dig deeper to see that none of the good things in our life has come from self-cherishing. More despite our self-cherishing. We experience good friendships, loyalty, things going our way, happiness, resources, etc, because of our cherishing others now and in the past, not because of our self-cherishing.

And that’s it for today, folks! Wishing you and your loved ones and their loved ones and their loved ones and so on ad infinitum a very happy holiday.