Absolutely Relative

When Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment, he was called Buddha, the ‘awakened one.’  He awoke from the slumber in which we separate our relative experience from the absolute nature of things. Buddha saw our relative perception is inseparable from absolute awareness. This is referred to as the union of the two truths, absolute and relative. In Vajrayana, we speak of the union of wisdom and compassion—the natural inseparability of spaciousness and loving action.

So, how do we apply this realization? What does it look like? Every time we fall in love and lose our sense of separateness in service to another. Every time we notice a falling leaf and dance with it until it falls to the ground—and watch it decay to feed other trees. Every time our mind settles amidst a storm of emotions. Every time we open our eyes and notice light interpenetrating all things equally. These are just a few examples.

The union of our spacious wisdom and the relative expression of compassion is innate. There is no place we can go to get it because we never left. It is simply a matter of realizing where we are, now. The circumstance in which we find ourselves now is absolutely the best time to wake up to love.