Tasting Bliss

Found this wonderful teaching on a blog by William Harryman, and I thought that I'd share it. It's from the book Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships -- by John Welwood.

I feel that these words speak to the heart and meaning of the Buddhist Tonglen meditation practice, which encourages us to be with our suffering, rather than run from it.

"...there is no way to avoid loss and separation from what we love. We cannot avoid coming back again and again to the experience of being alone. No one can finally get inside our skin and share our experience -- the nuances that we alone feel, the changes that we alone are going through, the death that we alone must die. Nonetheless, loss, separation, and this fundamental aloneness are important teachers, for they force us to take up residence in the only real home we have -- the naked presence of the heart, which no external loss can destroy.

"Standing in this, our true ground, is the ultimate healing balm for the ache of separation and the wound of love. "You must fall in love with the one inside your heart," says the teacher Poonja. "Then you will see that it has always been there, but that you have wanted something else. To taste bliss, forget all other tastes and taste the wine served within." The warmth and openness at our core is the most intimate beloved who is always present, and into whose arms we can let go at last."