Love Dharma. Geri Larkin
Love Dharma
Love Dharma
Relationship Wisdom from Enlightened
Buddhist Women
Geri Larkin
Boston•Tokyo•Singapore
First published in 2003 by Journey Editions, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759 U.S.A.
Copyright © 2003 Geri Larkin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Journey Editions.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larkin, Geraldine A.
Love dharma: relationship wisdom from enlightened Buddhist women / Geri Larkin. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0202-6 (ebook)
1. Man-woman relationships. 2. Man-woman relationships—Religious aspects—Buddhism. 3. Marriage—Religious aspects—Buddhism. 4. Women—Conduct of life. 5. Buddhist women—Conduct of life—History—Case studies. I. Title.
HQ801 .L2984 2002
306.7—dc 21
2002073011
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A DISCLAIMER
I want to say this early in the book. If you are in an abusive relationship—your partner hits, shoves, verbally abuses you; your partner drinks too much, takes recreational drugs, gambles, or reads/watches pornography regularly—leave it. Get out. By staying in an abusive relationship you are feeding the most negative karma possible, both for you and your abusive partner, because you are locking yourself into a situation of anger and fear (both huge impediments to enlightenment—on the chance that you need some added incentive) and locking your abuser into a horrific future once the karmic payback kicks in. Get help. There are too many domestic violence and sexual assault centers in place—at least in the United States— for you to pretend you can’t.
This book is dedicated to all women.
You know who you are.
CONTENTS
Two: Relationships as Partnerships
Five: Outsmarting the Pull of an Affair
Seven: Surviving the Loss of a Lover
Eight: The Gift of Bone-Deep Loneliness
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank-yous to: Andrea Pedolsky, who encouraged me to write this book. Jennifer Lantagne, who had the courage to edit it. The Still Point sangha, and especially to Koho Vince Anila, who, when I said I vowed to become fully enlightened in a female form, said, “Me, too.”
I bow to the ground in gratitude.
INTRODUCTION
The gross bodies of men and women are equally suited, But if a woman has strong aspiration, she has higher potential.
From beginningless time you have accrued merit from virtue and awareness,
And now, faultless, endowed with a Buddha’s Qualities, Superior woman, you are a human Bodhisattva.
This is you I am speaking of, happy girl, is it not?
Now that you have achieved your own enlightenment, Work for others, for the sake of other beings.
— Vicki MacKenzie, Cave in the Snow
TO SAY THAT THE ANCIENT women who lived during the time of the Buddha 2,500 years ago had difficult lives may be the understatement of several millennia. Tucked into plains shadowed by the mountains of Nepal, each woman lived with the three seasons of desert heat, downpours, and bone-chilling cold year after year. They depended utterly on the harvests of local farms for food and on the goodwill of spouses and extended families for shelter. They lost their babies, their children, their lovers, their beauty, their youth, and sometimes their hope.
What’s amazing about their stories, long hidden from Western eyes, is how familiar they are. Their struggles, their heartbreaks, are ours. Abandonment, affairs, loneliness, and jealousy—these women lived through all of them. Capa, a beautiful young woman, daughter of a trapper, lost her heart to a young monk. Deeply in love with him, she survived his abandonment of her with a spunkiness that would make any woman proud. Plus, she realized that not only could she live without him, but she could use his leaving as a springboard