Love for yourself
By Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche • 6 min read
Once I was giving a teaching on love. The theme of the talk was that everyone has love within them. No matter what the circumstance, who you are, or where you are in the world, you have love 24 hours a day — even when you are feeling anger or hatred. During this talk, it looked to me like all the students were very happy. I was, too.
After the talk, when I left the auditorium, I saw a man waiting for me outside. Immediately he approached me and asked if we could speak privately. Once we had moved away from the others, he confided, “The story you taught about everybody having love is a beautiful idea. It’s really appealing, and I liked it. But I need to let you know — it’s not true for me. Maybe all those other people in the audience always have love, but not me. I hate myself every second of the day.”
I listened to everything he had to say. Then I asked him why he had come to my talk. He replied, “Well, I was hoping to learn something from you.” I asked him why he had been hoping this. “Because,” he said, “I desperately want to get away from this feeling of self-hatred. I came to you wishing I could finally be free of it.”
I asked him where he lived, which, as it turned out, was quite a distance away. He’d had to buy a plane ticket to get to my talk and take a little time off work, too. “So, it took money, time, and energy to make this journey,” I said, “all to get to this teaching of mine. It wasn’t that easy. And yet you made all this effort. Why? Because you want to be free from this feeling of self-hatred. You want to be happy. So actually, you do care for yourself. This is love.” Then, he understood.
Although sometimes you, too, may feel that you hate yourself and think, “Oh, I’m useless . . . I’m not good enough . . . There are many people who don’t like me,” that is normal. But you should understand that on a deeper level, all these apparently negative feelings are, in fact, coming from love. They are an expression of your fundamental desire to be happy and free from suffering — your innate goodness.
“If you’re determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so. The opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
– Mingyur Rinpoche –
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Learn meditation under the skillful guidance of world-renowned teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche at your own pace.
In his approach to teaching meditation, Mingyur Rinpoche integrates traditional Buddhist practice and philosophy with the current scientific understanding of the mind and mental health – making the practice of meditation relevant and accessible to students around the world. Mingyur Rinpoche is the author of the best-selling book The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, as well as Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom, In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying, and many others.
Meditation charges the mind like a battery. If you want to embark on an artistic endeavor, or a scientific, environmental, or academic line of inquiry, a culinary creation, or a musical composition – wherever your creative impulses take you! — meditation enhances that creativity. It gives you the necessary energy to engage creatively.
Emotions can be so intense. Sometimes it can feel like they’re in the driver’s seat, careening wildly from one extreme to the other, and all you can do is hang on for dear life and pray you don’t crash. Nevertheless, they can be an excellent support for meditation.
Although the good qualities are right there within us and all around us, if we fail to recognize them, there’s not much they can do for us. But if we recognize them, it opens up a world of possibilities.
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