There is a place in the heart where everything meets.
Go there is you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there?
Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart.
Give yourself to it with total abandon...
Once you know the way the nature of intention will call you to return, again and again and be saturated with knowing: "I belong here. I am at home here."
Lorin Roche- The Radiance Sutras:The Vijnana Bhairava Tantra
I was reminded of this verse from Tara Brach today as she guided me ( and many, many others) through a Tonglen meditation practice. It was lovely and much needed. She mentioned too, in her introduction to the meditation practice, about putting our prayers, our intentions, the words of the wise "on" our hearts. We put them on our hearts, instead of in...because most of us have not reached that level of grace where our hearts are fully open.
Only time and grace can put the essence of these prayers in your heart.
I love Tonglen. It is a meditative practice where we use our hearts and our breath to filter out the suffering of self and others so it flows diluted into the empty endless spaciousness. We breathe in a willingness to go to that place of complete vulnerability and to feel that suffering in us and others and then we breathe it all back out into that space that gladly receives it and transmutes it. As the filter.... using breath we pull in the suffering of self and the others, we feel it...like really feel it, and then using breath we expel it so it does not stay trapped in our hearts...only touching them, awakening them, opening them. It is the epitome of compassion and emotional empathy.
According to Matthieu Ricard as I learned yesterday in my course, compassion is natural to us and empathy is a powerful tool to help us cultivate it and to allow us to foster more altruism in our relationships with others. We have to be careful though. Some of us , like I am, are naturally empathic and tend to over feel the emotions of others...blurring the distinction between "my feelings" and "their feelings" leading to emotional distress. It is like, as the filter, say a "mesh filter", the emotions are breathed in but some get stuck in those little holes leading to a clogging and a backup of emotions...we can no longer breathe the emotion out and they stay stuck within us. We need to decondition our blocking and resisting tendencies. The breath of Tonglen can be like a cleansing force that opens up those holes. If we feel "too much" when we contemplate the suffering of others...we just extend our attention to our out-breaths that will become naturally longer than the in-breaths. If we are not feeling enough...we focus more on our n breaths which exemplify our willingness to feel. Hmm! It is very, very powerful.
Anyway...I had a good practice and a very good cry. I started contemplating , as is done in this practice, my own sense of suffering which was more a feeling of "overwhelm" and "exhaustion" from dealing with what seem like never ending challenges for me and my loved ones...then I focused on three of my children who are so obviously suffering( though you are only supposed to focus on one) and that is when the flood gates really opened...and then I extended my contemplation out around them to all the people in their age group that seem to be suffering and I bawled some more. I really had to focus on that out breath so I could discharge what I was taking in.
When I discharged that suffering into the space that could handle it...I added a loving kindness component and wished all those individuals out there...and I focused deliberately on some who have hurt loved ones reticently and said, "Their name...May you be happy, May you be well.M may you be free of suffering and its roots" and then I did the same for me, "May you be happy. May you be well. May you be free of suffering and its roots."
When I was finished there was this big internal sigh that filled me.
Sigh!
Try it for yourself.
All is well!
Tara Brach ( October, 2020) Tonglen :Guided Meditation By Tara Brach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apQS0St3PKY
Matthieu Ricard Module 6: Positive Psychology Practitioner . School of Positive Transformation
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