Today

Today is my birthday. Here's a quote from Chogyam Trungpa who passed away on this day 20 years ago.

In order to become a follower of the dharma [the teachings of Buddhism], one has to become nonaggressive, beyond aggression. In order to do that, there has to be some kind of warmth in oneself, gentleness in oneself, which is known as maitri, and there has to be greater gentleness to others, which is known as karuna, or compassion. When we begin to make a connection to dharma, we are willing to open our gates, to tear down our walls. Then for the first time we begin to realize that the joke has been on us all the time. Accumulating ammunition and building fence after fence was our trip rather than something actually having taken place. We have wasted so much of our energy and economy on that trip. When we begin to realize the joke was on us and created by us, then we are actually following the dharma, following our minds according to the dharma.