bits and quips
from an email...

Trungpa Rinpoche defines compassion as "unconditional love" and the "key to the open way, or mahayana path." In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, he writes:

"The main theme of the open way is ...to abandon the basic struggle of ego. To be completely open, to have that kind of absolute trust in yourself is the real meaning of compassion and love. There have been so many speeches about love....But how do we really bring love into being.... How do we do it? How are we going to radiate our love to the whole of humanity, to the whole world? .... Many people get very romantic about love, in fact get high on it at the very word. But then there will be a gap, a period when we are not high on love. Something else takes place which is embarrassing, a private matter. We tend to seal it off; it is "private parts," shameful, not part of our divinity. Let's not think about that. Let's simply ignite another love explosion and on and on we go, trying to ignore those parts of our being we reject, trying to be virtuous, loving, kind.

Perhaps this will put off a lot of people, but I am afraid love is not really the experience of beauty and romantic joy alone. Love is associated with ugliness and pain and aggression, as well as with the beauty of the world; it is not the recreation of heaven. Love, or compassion, the open path, is associated with "what is." In order to develop love...one must accept the whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it."

He goes on to describe this openness as "absolute trust and self-confidence" and its traditional metaphor, "the moon shining on one hundred bowls of water."