To Love So Much: Meditate on this -

May all beings be free:

The Rinpoche (Thuksey) speaking:
Many people say they want to receive teachings and all they are saying is : I want a little more knowledge so that I can impress people. What is the use of that? Many people say they want to learn about Buddhism, but their way of learning is an escape from the truth and not an approach to it. So it is important that you understand that what is necessary is the true motivation, the true approach. If you do not have that, everything you learn will be of no use to you.

He paused , with his eyes still closed. To come to the Teachings in the right spirit you must know and feel many things. You must understand, not merely in your mind but in your heart and spirit the impermanence and transience of all phenomena. You must understand that all things are suffering - that love without awareness is suffering, that desire without awareness is suffering. You must understand the nature of suffering so deeply that you see all the world is in pain, that all Being is suffering. The Buddha said the whole world is on fire. Even those words will burn you if you do not hear them with the right purity. You must understand the nature of suffering, to transcend it to leave the world of fire and enter Nirvana, to overcome the torment of desire and live in calm and love.

He put his hands to his forehead, In the Hinayana they say the end of discipline is to escape suffering. This is not what we say in Tibet,in the Mayahana. We cannot bear to escape ourselves while we see the rest of creation is in pain; we could not endure to be free while the rest of the world is in prison. And so you must not only want to attain Nirvana for yourself , you must also want with all your heart that the whole of Being should attain Nirvana, should enter into bliss. And if you truly love all things, you will renounce your own salvation for the joy of continually working for the liberation of others. This is the ideal of the Bodhisatva. The heart of the Bodhisatva is so great that it cannot be content until the whole of creation, even the small insects and the blades of grass, have entered into Nirvana.

To be a Bodhisatva is to be free of all delusions of selfhood, to have finally realized that all things arise contingently and have no separate absolute existence, to be free of the falsity of the notion of personality, The Bodhisatva does not act for his own benefit; he acts in full awareness of emptiness, the emptiness of all things, in full awareness of the emptiness of all his actions, in full awareness, even, of the emptiness of his compassion. And yet his whole being is compassion. Everything he does is dedicated to others, every action, every thought, every ectasy, every meditation - given effortlessly, dedicated without for the "Self"
that gives.

This is the true motivation, this is the true feeling - to love all things so much that you wish to bring them into Nirvana, to love all created things so much that you want to become perfect, so that you can be of help to them. You should meditate on this. It is the beginning.

A Journey In Ladakh (p. 152-153) Andrew Harvey