Manifesting Great Love

In our teaching tradition, we have a wonderful tool for working with our tendency to move away which is don’t know. It’s through the practice of don’t know that we can discover a genuine way to be safe in the world. Don’t know brings us closer to whatever the world presents, moment to moment. Often, we respond to life’s demands by saying to ourselves, “I don’t know what this is and I don’t like it,” or we say, “I know what this is, I’ve been here before, and I don’t like it.” And we move away.

So separation appears, and with separation comes a tremendous loss of safety and intimacy. We pull back from the great love that we so much need. We chant about Great Love in our chants every day: it’s the "dae ja" in "dae ja, dae bi". Traditionally in Buddhism, we say that Great Love is the vow to help all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. That’s what we commit to when we begin our practice and every day, when we chant, we renew the vow to manifest Great Love.