Giving Gifts with Infinite Love

In the following excerpt, the author is caught in a ferocious snowstorm and takes shelter in a Buddhist monastery. He is attended to, befriended , and given Dharma teachings by an elderly resident monk named Kachenla.

He seemed to be confident that he transmitted to me something that was of infinite value, whether I knew it or not; and to say the truth, I experienced a similar satisfaction, because I was convinced that a gift given with such infinite love and devotion was valuable through this very fact, and, indeed, I felt that something was streaming over from the old man to me that filled me with happiness, though I could find no reasonable explanation for it. It was the first time that – without knowing it – I experienced the power of mantra, of sacred speech, in which the transcendental sound of the spirit that dwells in the human heart is perceived. And because it is the sound of the heart, it cannot be heard by the ear or understood by the brain. But this I did not know yet, though I began to experience it.

Lama Anagarika Govinda
From The Way of the White Clouds; A Buddhist Pilgrim in Tibet