What keeps your practice going?

for me:

love.

pure. simple. free. unconditional. love.

I LOVE the human heart and everything that resides in it, from its suffering to its joy. I love the richness of experience regardless of pain or pleasure. It's so thick, this openness of the moment, in this being you can reach deep in instants if you've dug the debris from your well so that you can. I don't know that anyone can tell you for you, you know when you feel that bliss of joy in simplicity that comes with being a leaf, at any time ready to fall from its branch.
Life is that tenuous and that strong. I always like its people, the connecting, the touching of hearts, talking and entering each other's paradigm, an intimacy of mind with the very special opportunity to hurt less by trusting more and then communicating.

I don't know about Buddhisms too much. I'm very ignorant and study hard what I find online. But I have a fine grasp of a continuous goodness that permeates my being, and I help those who need, give shelter to those who need, help in any way I can so long as I draw breath in my chest. I feel anyone can do these things. I have taken formal refuge with a Nyingmapa teacher, but he is far and I am mostly without teachers I know of near me. So for the most part, I am wrestling with the solitude of strength these days.

I know it is in my nature, I don't know how exactly but I'm finding out. Like my dog doesn't know the scientific principles and facts about how he reproduces except how to do it because he’s a dog.  When he goes in heat is when nature calls.  In a way, being alive is like always being in heat, desiring longing for something, if not breath itself.

Like my dogs, I haven’t know exactly how I’ve come to be as I am now, but I know how to do it. How to do it is dharma. I know dharma because I know human kindness and warmth. Dharma is a method, a series of observances to correct the bad habits that give us pain and keep us locked in cycles we could easily outgrow.

Dharma teaches us to cure our own ills without reaching outside of ourselves for comfort. Grasping is diminished when self-importance reduces, has been my own natural experience.

D. Ogyen