How to Develop Wishing Love
The way to develop and enhance our cherishing love has already been explained. Now we need to develop wishing love by contemplating how these living beings whom we cherish so dearly lack true happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, but no one in samsara experiences true happiness. In comparison with the amount of suffering they endure, the happiness of living beings is rare and fleeting, and even this is only a contaminated happiness that is in reality the nature of suffering. Buddha called the pleasurable feelings that result from worldly enjoyments `changing suffering' because they are simply the experience of a temporary reduction of manifest suffering. In other words, we experience pleasure due to the relief of our previous pain. For example, the pleasure we derive from eating is really just a temporary reduction of our hunger, the pleasure we derive from drinking is merely a temporary reduction of our thirst, and the pleasure we derive from ordinary relationships is for the most part merely a temporary reduction of our underlying loneliness.

How can we understand this? If we increase the cause of our worldly happiness, our happiness will gradually change into suffering. When we eat our favourite food it tastes wonderful, but if we were to continue plateful after plateful our enjoyment would soon change into discomfort, disgust, and eventually pain. The reverse, however, does not happen with painful experiences. For instance, hitting our finger with a hammer again and again can never become pleasurable, because it is a true cause of suffering. Just as a true cause of suffering can never give rise to happiness, so a true cause of happiness can never give rise to pain. Since the pleasurable feelings resulting from worldly enjoyments do turn into pain, it follows that they cannot be real happiness. Prolonged indulgence in eating, sport, sex, or any other ordinary enjoyment invariably leads to suffering. No matter how hard we try to find happiness in worldly pleasures we shall never succeed. As mentioned before, indulging in samsaric pleasures is like drinking salt water; rather than satiating our thirst, the more we drink the more thirsty we become. In samsara we never reach a point when we can say: `Now I am completely satisfied, I need nothing more.'

Not only is worldly pleasure not true happiness, but it also does not last. People devote their lives to acquiring possessions and social standing, and building up a home, a family, and a circle of friends; but when they die they lose everything. All they have worked for suddenly disappears, and they enter their next life alone and empty-handed. They long to form deep and lasting friendships with others, but in samsara this is impossible. The dearest lovers will eventually be torn apart, and when they meet again in a future life they will not recognize each other. We may feel that those who have good relationships and have fulfilled their ambitions in life are truly happy, but in reality their happiness is as fragile as a water bubble. Impermanence spares nothing and no one; in samsara all our dreams are broken in the end. As Buddha says in the Vinaya Sutras:

The end of collection is dispersion.
The end of rising is falling.
The end of meeting is parting.
The end of birth is death.

The nature of samsara is suffering, so for as long as living beings are reborn in samsara they can never experience true happiness.Buddha compared living in samsara to sitting on top of a pin - no matter how much we try to adjust our position it is always painful, and no matter how hard we try to adjust and improve our samsaric situation it will always irritate us and give rise to pain. True happiness can be found only by attaining liberation from samsara. Through contemplating this we shall develop a heartfeltdesire for all living beings to experience pure happiness by attaining liberation.

We should begin our meditation by focusing on our family and friends, reflecting that for as long as they remain in samsara they will never know true happiness, and that even the limited happiness they presently experience will soon be taken away from them. Then we extend this feeling of wishing love to include all living beings, thinking `How wonderful it would be if all living beings experienced the pure happiness of liberation!' We mix our mind with this feeling of wishing love for as long as possible. Out of meditation, whenever we see or remember any living being, human or animal, we mentally pray: `May they be happy all the time. May they attain the happiness of enlightenment.' By constantly thinking in this way, we can maintain wishing love day and night, even during sleep.

Meditation on love is very powerful. Even if our concentration is not very strong we accumulate a vast amount of merit. By meditating on love we create the cause to be reborn as a human or a god, to have a beautiful body in the future, and to be loved and respected by many people. Love is the great protector, protecting us from anger and jealousy, and from harm inflicted by spirits. When Buddha Shakyamuni was meditating under the Bodhi Tree he was attacked by all the terrifying demons of this world, but his love transformed their weapons into a rain of flowers. Ultimately our love will become the universal love of a Buddha, which actually has the power to bestow happiness on all living beings.

Most relationships between people are based on a mixture of love and attachment. This is not pure love for it is based on a desire for our own happiness - we value the other person because they make us feel good. Pure love is unmixed with attachment and stems entirely from a concern for others' happiness. It never gives rise to problems but only to peace and happiness for both ourself and others. We need to remove attachment from our minds, but this does not mean that we have to abandon our relationships. Rather we should learn to distinguish attachment from love, and gradually try to remove all traces of attachment from our relationships and to improve our love until it becomes pure.

For further excerpts or information about books by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso please click on www.tharpa.com.

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