Meditate For An Open Heart

posted on 07-06-10 at 7:00 am in Buddhism

“To meet everything and everyone through stillness instead of mental noise is the greatest gift you can offer to the universe.”   ~ Eckhart Tolle

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”  ~ Mother Teresa

Meditation might be your prescription for a happier mind and kinder heart, a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows. Scientists worked with 16 Tibetan monks and 16 meditation novices, giving the beginners lessons on compassion meditation two weeks prior to a series of brain scan experiments. Those brain scan – taken while participants responded to different emotional cues – revealed that the monks had more activity in certain brain regions involved in processing empathy.

The findings, according to study authors, suggest that meditation may train the brain to increase feelings of compassion and happiness. To start your won meditation practice, try this exercise created by Untrain Your Parrot author Elizabeth Hamilton:

  • Sitting with a straight spine, breathe deeply, placing your fingertips over the center of your chest if you like.
  • As you inhale, picture a person to whom you want to extend compassion. As you exhale, silently say, “May compassion awaken.” Inhale and exhale for several breaths, focusing on the center of your chest.
  • Recalling the person, silently say, “May whatever clouds compassion be healed.” Repeat this cycle with the phrase, “May this moment be experienced, exactly as it is,” and finally, “May compassion be extended to all.”

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The Nature of Consciousness

posted on 06-08-10 at 7:28 am in Buddhism

The central tool for investigating consciousness is our own observation. With mindfulness, we can direct our attention to notice what is going on inside us, and study how our mind operates. 

What we ordinarily call the mind usually refers to the “thinking mind”, the ceaseless fountain of ideas, images, creativity, evaluation, and problem solving that spontaneously streams through our mind. But when we look closely, we discover that the mind is not just its thoughts. It also includes a wide range of mind states or qualities around and below the thought process: feelings, moods, intuition, instincts.

But there is another aspect of consciousness that arises with each moment of experience and is flavored by that experience. This is the momentary, here-and-now single state of consciousness. There are joyful states of consciousness, fearful states, expanded and contracted ones, regretful states and loving ones.  Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh describes it this way: “The mind is like a television set with hundreds fo channels. Which channel will you turn on?“

With mindfulness, we can learn to acknowledge which channel is playing.

PRACTICE: The River of Sound
Sit comfortably and at ease. Close your eyes. Let your body be at rest and your breathing be natural. Begin to listen to the play of sounds around you. Notice those that are loud or soft, far and near. After you listened for a few minutes, let yourself sense, feel, or imagine that your mind is not limited to your head. Feel that your mind extends outward beyond the most distant sounds.

Relax in this openness and just listen. Let the sounds come and go, whether loud or soft, far or near, let them be clouds in the vast sky of your own awareness. As you rest in this open awareness for at time, notice how thoughts and feelings also arise and vanish like sounds in the open space of mind. Pleasant and unpleasant thoughts, pictures, words, joys, and sorrows – let them all come and go like clouds n the clear sky of mind.

Relax. Rest in this openness. Let sensations float and change. Allow thoughts and images, feelings and sounds to come and go. As you do, pay attention to the consciousness itself. Notice how the open space of awareness is clear, transparent, and timeless. This is your own true nature. Rest in it. Trust it. It is home.

This excerpt from The Wise Heart was graciously reprinted with permission by the author Jack Kornfield.

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Compassion Is Our Nature

posted on 04-06-10 at 7:00 am in Buddhism

“Compassion is our deepest nature.  It arises from our interconnection with all things.”

Alan Wallace, a leading Western teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, puts it like this: “Imagine walking along a sidewalk with your arms full of groceries, and someone roughly bumps into you so that you fall and your groceries are strewn over the ground. As you rise up from the puddle of broken eggs and tomato juice, you are ready to shout out, ‘You idiot! What’s wrong with you? Are you blind?’ But just before you can catch your breath to speak, you see that the person who bumped into you is actually blind. He, too, is sprawled in the spilled groceries, and your anger vanishes in an instant, to be replaced by sympathetic concern: ‘Are you hurt? Can I help you up?’ Our situation is like that. When we clearly realize that the source of disharmony and misery in the world is ignorance, we can open the door of wisdom and compassion.”

Compassion is the quivering of the heart in the face of pain.  It is the capacity to see our struggles with kindly eyes.  The courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open to the world.  With compassion we come to trust our capacity to open to life without armoring.

Jack Kornfield says: “Yes, the world is full of pain, uncertainty, and injustice.  But in this vulnerable human life, every loss is an opportunity either to shut out the world or to stand up with dignity and let the heart respond.”

This excerpt from The Wise Heart was graciously reprinted with permission by the author Jack Kornfield.

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Inner Nobility

posted on 02-02-10 at 7:00 am in Buddhism

Buddhist psychology begins by deliberately cultivating respect, starting with ourselves. When we bring respect and honor to those around us, we open a channel to their own goodness. Often in these cynical times, we might think of original goodness as merely an uplifting phrase. But through its lens we discover a different way of seeing and being – one whose aim is to transform our world.

PRACTICE: SEEING THE INNER NOBILITY AND BEAUTY OF ALL BEINGS
Pick a day when you awaken in a fine mood, when your heart is open to the world. Set the clear intention that you will look for the inner nobility of three people. Carry that intention in your heart as you interact with them.  As you become more naturally able to see the secret goodness, expand your practice from daily to weekly to monthy.

This excerpt from The Wise Heart was graciously reprinted with permission by the author Jack Kornfield.

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Equanimity

posted on 12-07-09 at 7:00 am in Buddhism

The great tapestry of our lives can be seen in the rhythm of the changing seasons. If we pause and step back, extraordinary patterns of flow and movement emerge. Even now, as we settle into winter, new life is forming from the fallen decay. Consider what has led you to this moment. Sitting and reading this blog is no coincidence. Each experience has played a part in creating the whole. 

In Loving Kindness, Sharon Salzberg writes: “Sometimes, of course, it is hard to embrace the painful, difficult times as being part of that whole, to feel as connected to those harsh events as we do when things are pleasant, easy, and fortunate. But really our lives are composed of continual change without ceasing.”

Practicing equanimity can help us let go of our aversion to what is unpleasant. It asks that we see things as they are. Mindfulness-based therapy and meditation are excellent ways to practice being fully present with the changing experiences of life. In doing so, the unavoidable is compassionately accepted.  This includes feelings and thoughts.

Equanimity’s strength derives from a combination of understanding and trust. To see the changing nature, to see the impermanence, to see that constant flow of pleasant painful events outside our control – that is freedom.

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