In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

whatever had happened had left me knowing that death is not the end of life. There would be no finalities ever; only change and transformation.

night after night we actually undergo a mini-death. We get into bed each night with a solid sense of self. As our consciousness diminishes, the bonds that hold the conventional mind in place become unglued.

As many times as my father had repeated that each one of us is buddha, I could not quite comprehend that each of us actually included me. What would my father tell me now? I could be everywhere, but not with him—except for the ways that I would always be with him.

Judging someone for looking unclean or smelling bad, or being loud, or anything, is a pretty neurotic way to seek happiness—but it provides a toehold to climb up from and allows you to temporarily enjoy the illusion that you are better than someone else. It’s never just: They are bad. It is also: Therefore, I am good.

What came into focus very clearly was that while the experience of luminosity presents itself, most of us will miss it. That’s why we train. Not for the experience, which is a gift of nature; but to recognize

the more familiar we are with awareness as an innate quality of mind, the less effect the weather has on us.

We inherently have free will, yet this only arises from an examined mind. Our future is influenced, but not determined or destined, by past conditioning. Until we learn how to examine our minds and direct our behavior, our karmic tendencies will compel habits to reseed themselves.

Like and dislike are shaped by the interpretive mind that remembers, adds, modifies, and spins:

we can understand this interval as the emptiness that allows us to see form.