With our faith in our community of two or more, we can go anywhere.When the three roots of faith, practice, and community support have fed us deeply, then we will be solid both alone and in our relationships. We will not just survive; we will flourish. Often in our daily lives, we are just focused on survival. But fidelity is not a question of survival. It is one of vitality.
We can look around and see that a person who lives with happiness and compassion has the capacity to make others happy.
With great understanding, we see the way out of our bondage. We discover the lightness and compassion necessary to love someone else
First, we just acknowledge that it is there inside us. If we don’t listen to our own suffering, we won’t understand it, and we won’t have compassion for ourselves. Compassion is the element that helps heal us. Only when we have compassion for ourselves, can we truly listen to another person.
If your love is true love, it will benefit not only humans, but also animals, plants, and minerals. When you love one person, it’s an opportunity for you to love everyone, all beings. Then you are going in a good direction, and that is true love. But if you love someone and you get caught up in suffering and attachment, then you get cut off from others. That’s not true love.
If you and your partner both have a deep aspiration, then not only will you support each other’s happiness, you will bring more happiness to the world in ways that you, by yourself, cannot.
True love gives us a lot of space. Because you are connected spiritually and emotionally as well as physically, you do not need to always be in the same place or doing the same thing. You do not worry if your beloved is over here today and you are over there.
Beauty and goodness are there in each of us. A true spiritual partner is one who encourages you to look deep inside yourself for the beauty and love you’ve been seeking. A true teacher is someone who helps you discover the teacher in yourself.
Your partner needs your attention and your watering of his or her positive seeds. Without that attention, your relationship will wither.
Even with a lot of goodwill, we can still make the other person very unhappy. Mindfulness is the paintbrush in the art of happiness. When we are mindful, we are more artful and happiness blooms
Darling, I know there is a seed of anger in you. I know that every time I water that seed, you suffer and you make me suffer too. So I make a vow to refrain from watering the seed of anger in you. I also promise not to water the seed of anger in me. Can you make the same commitment? In our daily lives, let’s not read, view, or consume anything that waters the seeds of anger and violence in us. You know that the seed of anger in me is quite big enough. Every time you do or say something that waters it, I suffer and I make you suffer. So let’s not water these seeds in each other.
It does not take more than one thoughtless phrase to hurt someone.
When you’re in your twenties and you haven’t fully realized what you look for in a partner, the single market has about everything you can imagine and more. And you’re like a blank canvas—everyone’s like a blank canvas—as you discover how to paint a relationship together. Later in life, when you’ve experienced love and heartbreak and you find yourself single again and returning to the spouseless market, you kind of figure out that what’s left for you…is not a blank canvas for you to write your story on anymore. Every bachelor comes with a previous story, with drama and emotional baggage from their past relationships. And you—you—have to deal with it all, measure the puzzle pieces and see if somehow they might fit within the gaps and cracks left by your own experiences.
One of the most boring things about being in a relationship is that your partner usually makes their boredom your problem.
I was going to be sick soon. I had certainly done some damage to the body while trying to numb the heart.
Being tired is a luxury that a working woman can't afford, which is why I did my best to keep it together, to maintain an impossible juggling act: work, shopping, phone calls - endless, endless phone calls.
Andrei wasn't just ideal - he was unique. I didn't need the rest of the world when I had him; you could disappear into him and forget who you were.
I believe in the unity of souls because I've seen it. I remember how my grandfather and grandmother lived together. But as for the rest, I know perfectly well how it will go, and how it will end.
When I got home, I looked around and thought that it was about time for a good cry. A really serious one.
Sometimes I think that people are like stars or planets in the sky. Near each other, but unable to reach out and touch one another, even though they're sharing the same orbit. Spinning through the darkness so close together, they only see the outlines of unfamiliar figures. And they strain with all their might to reach each other, but gravity forces them into circle after circle of pointless motion in empty space.
