Here is my wish for you in your marriage: May you take refuge in each other as a strong sangha of two.

I wish you deep, sustaining love for each other. But as rare as authentic love is, helping someone to be or become free is even rarer. If you make such mutual help the organizing principle of your life together, then authentic love and all other goodness will flow and purify between you as a natural result.

The greatest test of your helping each other to be or become free is likely to be losing each other. As surely as this wedding joins you, death or estrangement will part you. I hope that you will never take for granted what can never be taken for granted. If you know in your hearts every day that you will lose each other, then you can cut away attachment with the fierce courage of the fox that chews off its own leg to free itself from the trap.

If you know for certain this approaching loss, perhaps every day you can thank each other for the invaluable gift of that day together. Perhaps this knowing will help you to live gratefully and urgently together in the present moment. And perhaps dwelling deeply in the present will even allow you to see that separation is only illusion, that no loss is possible, and that you are bringing each other home.

∞

From the Spring 2011 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 27, No. 2)

© 2011 Eric Kolvig