I am alive! and I love my old age.  When I was younger I felt so much confusion and hesitation, many doubts and fears, and I felt vulnerable.  There was so much I didn’t understand. I was a foreigner in this country and didn’t speak English. I was a single mother with four small children to care for.  And that, I can tell you honestly, was the greatest training I ever had gone through.  That’s when I began to think seriously of my intentions (though I didn’t call them intentions at that time).  Before then I was only thinking of what I wanted to do with my life. Now I wanted to take good care of my children and give them a supportive environment so they could become good human beings—give them a lot of love and a good education.  And I started from that. It was a difficult time to say the least. I started to feel a responsibility based on the love I felt for these children who were my life then. Then it seemed life began to cooperate with me. My children weren’t a burden for me, they became my reason to live and my inspiration. We found wonderful friends who were willing to help us muddle together and grow up together.

When my brother was 15-18 months old and I was about seven, we were all playing in a pool at our grandparents’ farm.  I was playing and splashing when all of a sudden, I saw this little head bobbing in the water and realized it was my brother drowning.  I stretched myself to the max, holding onto a rail to hold myself and grabbed him by the hair to pull him out of the water and hand him to my mother who was white as a sheet with a look of dread on her face. I had the thought, “I am not alive for me alone.”

Years later, I remembered that feeling on the night I had my first child, a son.  I had spent eight hours in labor pains that were unimaginable for me at the time. The next morning, as I lay resting, the thought came into my mind, clear and concise, “You were not born for yourself alone.”  I didn’t understand it at the time but that thought has come back to me at various stages of my life.

Recently during a meditation this same thought came up and I just sat with it for a long time, just sitting without drawing any definite significance from it but it became very familiar to me. My life became harmonious. I started to pay attention to ordinary life, everyday kind of things like working, cooking, meditating, or reading and I started appreciating being alive.  And feeling grateful.

I felt touched by situations and people. They brought a clarity to me.  It felt like an expansion or that the person is me or part of me. I was talking with my brother who lives in Brazil. He’s 88 years old.  We’ve been in touch via the internet.  He was telling me what was going on in his life and all of a sudden, he stopped talking because he was overwhelmed with pain.  All I could do was to send him love and merit, knowing he was living for his wife—to love and take care of her. She lost her memory and has suffered with disabilities for many years. I felt expansive, as if we were sharing “LIFE.”  There was a lot of love there, which is a great way to alleviate suffering anywhere.

There have been so many circumstances in my life which point to the fact that, “we are not isolated Beings.”  We are all part of LIFE, we are interconnected.

When I had small children, I was always amazed when I noticed their spontaneous ways of expressing their caring, showing affection or a feeling of protection.  If they saw me crying, they put their little hands on my face and asked me, “Mama, why are you crying?” and they hugged me.  When one of their siblings was having a difficult time, they definitely felt it was their responsibility to make it better.

Why is it then that we have this capacity, but instead become isolated, not caring for others, competitive, jealous, envious, and we don’t care about others’ suffering?  Of course this is not a general rule—there are caring people all over the world and I am grateful for all they do, bless them.

I feel that the fundamental dysfunction of mind is this split between ‘I’ and ‘other.’  We falsely grasp the ‘I’ with an attachment and the ‘other’ with the basis of aversion, envy, competition. This duality presents or becomes a veil over our feelings of love and compassion, equality, and joy, hidden from our awareness.

The result of this duality is that we want to pursue happiness for ourselves instead of wishing for the happiness for all beings. We aspire for the end of our own suffering instead of rejoicing in the happiness of others.

The Power of Grace of all the Bodhisattvas and the Buddha-nature, after long practice and effort, lead us to perceive that our own mind is endowed with love, compassion, equanimity and joy.  We start wishing for a better world, well-being for all, concern for animals, the planet and in a way, a change for how things are, including ourselves. We feel a sense of responsibility for the generations to come, think of ways to benefit the planet for future generations. We want to protect the earth, as its elements are what sustains our LIFE.

My intention is to learn skillful means so I can teach others to live by love, compassion, joy and equanimity for the sake of all beings.  May all enter the Dharma to purify the mind and become established in the Truth of Oneness.

Homage to the Buddha.  Homage to the Dharma.  Homage to the Sangha.