Love is something precious and brief

 

In essay "Falling in Love."

When we fall in love... 

We are overcome with a warm and enthusaatic feeling that cannot be denied and that will distract us day and night.  We exist in a special zone of delight as a result of this encounter with the unexpected force of love.  All songs, soap operas, and most stories feed on whatever memory or longing we have for this feeling.

Unlike anything else we think or experience, bodhichitta is not a creation of the ego: we don't decide to fall in love with our mate or our child; it is something that happens to us willy-nilly, a force of nature whose source is wholly unknown. The sutras call it "unproduced," which is to say, unconditioned, unlimited. 

When we see a baby, when we look at the face of our beloved, we know that the way we've been conditioned to perceive the world isn't right: the world is not a fearful and problematic challenge; it is, instead, a beautiful gift, and we are its center always.

All things are impermanent, created fresh each moment, and then gone. This being so, the miracle of love between two people, or within a family, is something precious and brief. In fact, any human relationship is brief.  We are together for a while and then inevitably we part. To love someone truly is to recognize this every day, to see the preciousness of the beloved and of the time we have together, to renounce any clinging need for or dependency on the other, and to make the effort to open our hands, so that instead of holding on we are nurturing and supporting.