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Several of my people have asked me whether Nyungnay practice, Ngondro practice and retreat of all sorts are considered as part of "Live to Love" activities. As I said several times in my gossips, compassion is a practice needs to be developed and cultivated, love is a practice that is needed to put compassion into action.
In order not to confuse everyone, I think I will explain the logo of Live to Love again, and I hope this will clarify everything.
Explanation of Live to Love Logo
The five hearts represent love from five directions, coming together in unity and harmony. The orange light in the centre represents the sun (of hope), with its glow of sunrays gradually growing to become red, the colour of strength and energy. This symbolises a heart full of love that illuminates from self to others, with the thriving selfless energy to extend love in the form of humanitarian activities to those beings in our world. The external circle which is orange in colour symbolises the perfection of the beneficial activities that are carried out with fearless confidence and definite success.
To be clearer in this explanation, relating this with the formal practice of Nyungnay, Ngondro, retreat and etc. as well as the "Live to Love" activities that I am encouraging everyone to be doing, it is like this: The orange light in the centre of the logo is your own heart or mind that is supposed to be full of love so that it can share this selfless energy with others. To do that, you need to have foundations or fundamentals that help you to carry out "Live to Love" activities without having any problems and confusion. This is like the story of doctor and patients. If a doctor is not well-trained, how can he or she be saving lives of the sick ones? So theoretically and basically, you need to be trained. I have not been talking much about this topic, maybe I have the impression that people do understand why I am promoting "Live to Love" activities like nobody's business. This does not mean that I am encouraging you to forget about meditation, about doing retreat, about reciting mantra, about Nyungnay, about Ngondro. No! This is not true. I am really sorry to tell you that in fact, "Live to Love" activities are additional things that I am encouraging you all to do for the sake of actualising what you are practising in your visualisation of Bodhicitta, loving kindness, compassion and wisdom.
This is like using a knife to cut something. To do that, you need to sharpen the knife, the sharpening process is the formal practices you are encouraged to do. The actual cutting is the "Live to Love" activities, this means that you are checking how sharp or how blunt is your knife. If it is not sharp enough, reflect and meditate on the reason why it is not so, and go back to sharpen your knife again.
If you don't have the foundations or the understanding of compassion and wisdom, if you don't develop this inner qualities within yourself, you would be banging your head against the wall when you do "Live to Love" activities. Why is it so? There will be a time when you feel very tired, very disappointed, very outraged with "Live to Love", because the essential part that forms the pillars supporting "Live to Love" activities is not there. What is it? It is the inner strength that needs to be developed and cultivated through formal practices. I am sure that you have never heard of a doctor (whether traditional or western) being qualified without having to study in a medical school or without having to be trained in many different ways. If ever you know or hear about this kind of doctors, I don't think you would even have the confidence to consult them, wouldn't you?
