Love and Compassion

“So the main theme of the open way is that we must begin 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.

...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 re-creation of heaven. Love or compassion, the open path, is associated with “what is.“ In order to develop love —- universal love, cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it —- 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.“

-Chögyam Trungpa pg. 112/113, “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism”