Basics of Buddhism - 4 - The Four Boundless Qualities

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"Compassion and love, sympathetic joy and equanimity are not mere luxuries. 

As the source both of inner and external peace, 
they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species."
                                                                -His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

The Buddha taught his son, Rahula, to cultivate these four attitudes and actions to find deep peace.  They are called The Four Immeasurables, Boundless Qualities, The Four Sublime States, which are LOVE, COMPASSION, SYMPATHETIC JOY and EQUANIMITY,

The short prayer practice goes like this:

May all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness,

May all beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering

May all beings have sympathetic joy which is free from suffering

May all beings come to rest in the great equanimity which is beyond attachment or aversion to friend, enemy or stranger.

We start to say this prayer about everyone being happy and peaceful, and sometimes we don’t feel very happy or peaceful ourselves.  Just sit with that reaction.  Feel it completely, then go back to the practice of visualizing feeling loving and kind.  This practice is not to whitewash over longstanding emotions.  RATHER, it is to uproot those old habitual emotions, see them for what they are, and replace them with kinder and more productive ways of viewing the world. 

(From Sharon Salzberg) Brahma-Viharas is a Pali word (original language of the Buddha) meaning “heavenly abode” or “best home.” The Buddha taught that practicing these four qualities leads to the “liberation of the heart which is love.”

• Loving-kindness is both friendship and also gentle, like a gentle rain that falls indiscriminately upon everything. Loving-kindness practice is a steady, unconditional sense of connection that touches all beings without exception, including ourselves. The Buddha first taught it as an antidote to fear.
• Compassion is our caring human response to suffering.  A compassionate heart is non-judgmental and recognizes all suffering—our own and that of others—as deserving of tenderness.  Compassion is combined with wisdom to create right action.
• Sympathetic Joy is the realization that others’ happiness is inseparable from our own. We rejoice in the joy of others and are not threatened by another’s success.
• Equanimity is the spacious stillness of mind that provides the ground for the boundless nature of the other three qualities. This radiant calm enables us to ride the waves of our experience without getting lost in our reactions.

Being Love – 6 – The Myth of Unconditional Love

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This morning we finalize our discussion about cultivating the quality of love in our life.  And it seems like perfect timing since I would like to dedicate this Dharma talk to my dear mom who passed away last week.  It’s been an profound process interacting with all my mom friends from an entire lifetime—from her sisters who she grew up with, to her friends from the suburb where I grew up, to her friends from the small town in East Texas where she and my dad retired, and lastly her friends she made just this last year in the memory care facility where she lived.  I had a lot of time this last week to reflect on this concept of how to infuse more love into our lives.  My mom was an expert at that.

Many of you met her last year when she lived with me for a few months. She loved this place so much!  There was several things I found irritating about my mom.  One habit she had was that she loved to meet new people and talk with them, often about what her three daughters were doing—which I found excruciating.  Complete strangers would compliment me on my achievements that my mother had shared with them.  She was always too slow to leave a party or church or a dance or any get together where she could interact with people.  As a child, I remember this trait of hers with great frustration--I wanted to go home, and she was never ready.  Another trait that bugged me was that she wanted to take my picture all the time, and I remember one skating party when I was eleven, I refused to pose for her—it seemed way too embarrassing—I just wanted to skate,  So, she took pictures of some other kid who she made friends with.  I still have the pictures of this strange girl who was more than happy to pose and make my mom happy.

My mom and dad had a great love affair and treated each other with such great respect, with roles clearly defined, they made marriage look easy.  That is the excuse I’m giving for why I was really bad at marriage. I didn’t realize that behind the scenes, they worked hard to get through the bad times together, and with three daughters, trust me, there were a lot of bad times.

In Buddhism, we often distinguish between the personal love between two people, and the loving-kindness that we can cultivate, but I am finding that these two kinds of love are more intertwined than we might think.  We talk about personal love as a love with expectations.  We talk about loving-kindness as love without expecting anything in return.  But as I reflect on the love that my mother shared with my father, with me and my sisters, with her family and friends, it seems that there is a mixture of these two loves that at the heart of how to create more love in one's life.

It seems that perhaps there is a myth of unconditional love.  This concept that if we were REALLY good people, we could love without any expectations at all, isn’t that what loving-kindness is supposed to be about?  But now, upon reflection, that kind of love seems too detached for me.  It seems that it might be easier to love someone unconditionally because we might use it as an excuse to keep them at arm's length, to not have those tough conversations when someone is being harmful to themselves or to others.

When I look at the love I was given by my parents, and the love that I try to cultivate in these practices, Perhaps expectation is not quite the right word.  it seems that there is a bit more "engagement".  If I truly want to extend love to someone, I cannot stand by if they are destroying their lives through addiction and destructive behavior.  Unconditional love is NOT about doing nothing.  It is sometimes about doing something while still recognizing and respecting the free will of others. 

One of my sisters is a lifelong smoker, and my mother was a nurse and health fanatic.  My mother loved my sister unconditionally, but never hesitated to share with her that she feared that she would bury her daughter before she herself would die because of this addiction. When my mom felt strongly about something, she could be relentless. She loved my sister in spite of her smoking and because of that love, did whatever she thought might help her stop.  My sister did not find this constant advice and encouragement (some might say badgering...) endearing at all.

I think we can all agree that smoking isn’t a healthy habit, but where does one person’s opinion about what is right become conditional?  Some criticisms we share with each other may not be so black and white.   Sometimes, we try to use our love as a bargaining chip for changing them.  "I will only love you if you are the way I want you to be."  Creating some wriggle room in the definition and expression of unconditional love might lead to some messiness.  Yet, isn't life messy?  Isn't love, any kind of love, often messy?  Finding the balance between conditional and unconditional love is not easy.  And yet, I would offer that somewhere in the middle of it all is the very sweet spot of life. 

Jim Parker sent me a great TED Talk by Brene Brown about how important it is be vulnerable in order to create more love in our lives.  We must risk being rejected in order to put ourselves out there, with a love that may not be returned.   For many of us, vulnerability is far too scary, so we choose to numb out with addiction or run away with distractions, anything to not have to feel the awful feeling of hurt, fear, rejection. Brene Brown calls vulnerability the magic potion for having love in our life.  When we allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, there is an unspoken arising of worthiness—it’s okay to be imperfect and still love, be loved and belong. Brene gives us the three C’s for increasing the love in our life:

·         Courage = to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, the courage to be imperfect, and the courage to work on those parts of you that may be hurting yourself or hurting others.

·         Compassion = to begin with ourselves to then be able to have compassion for others, because none of us needs to be perfect to deserve love.

·         Connection= to explore making connections with others who are imperfect as well; it is connection with others that leads us to the greatest joy, gratitude and happiness in life.

What I found in my parents was a willingness to love others without expectations of love in return, AND they were both willing to express concern and offer suggestions when they felt someone were being hurtful to themselves or to others.  For me, that is what unconditional love is all about. 

As one by one, friends and family of my mom came to offer me their condolences, their stories were consistent.  My mom always had time for them, she always made them feel special and cared for, she never missed an opportunity to volunteer to help others, to give something away with love (many of you have her crosses that she crocheted with love.  Her last project was trying to learn to crochet a heart when she learned that maybe a cross wasn’t the best gift to give a Buddhist…)

I had a co-worker who had a sign in his office that has always stuck with me.  He had a wife and three children, and in the hectic stress-filled life of corporate work, I know it was often difficult to have work-life balance.  But he kept a sign in his office, that said “children spell love T.I.M.E.”  That is what I learned from my mom about cultivating unconditional love.  It is not about one heroic act or a grand gesture—it was about always having time to just be with me, to be with others, to be interested in their lives, to listen carefully to their hopes and dreams.  

I recommend that we shatter this old myth of unconditional love—it does not mean that we don’t care about what others are doing, but rather we care so much that we are willing to love them as they are and help them any way we can. We do NOT have to be a doormat, but be a loving supporter, a spiritual cheerleader, a caring coach, an accepting partner, and knowing when to give someone a second or third or fourth chance.

My mom and dad were not perfect, but they were experts at unconditional love.   They were comfortable with being vulnerable and examining what they themselves could do better, and they accepted themselves and others in all their imperfections.  I am grateful for this amazing gift.   

Being Love – 3 – The obstacles between our experience and being love

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Today we continue a series of talks based on the book by Thich Nhat Hanh entitled, Teachings on Love.  This morning we will focus on identifying the obstacles that sometimes arise that diminish our ability to be love.  My Buddhist teacher has a beautiful quote about this topic.  He says,

“What does it matter if everyone loves me or what does it matter if nobody loves me.  I am Love, and I can cultivate Love expressing.”

We all want to receive love and give love, but why is it sometimes so difficult to do so?  And if enlightenment is so awesome, why don't we all do whatever it takes to stay in that enlightened state in each moment of each day?  

I have often wished that just reading a few books would enlighten me.  There are stories of people becoming enlightened by being hit on the head with a shoe (after much study and practice).  There are stories of people being enlightened who could not read nor write, but simply listened to the teachings with an open heart.  Today, I’m going to say some words, but words are not the experience.  My only aspiration is that together we create some fertile ground for simply being aware, beyond our old ways of "seeing" ourselves and the world, so that we can each perhaps experience an awakening.

This morning, I want to talk a bit about the Heart Sutra, which is one of the shortest Buddhist teachings, but said to be so powerful that in its short 14 lines, it is the Heart, the Essence, of Transcendent Wisdom.  The original writer is not known, but guessed to be a Chinese monk living about in the 3rd century CE.  The Heart Sutra is an elegant description of what stands between us and enlightenment.  First, we confuse knowledge with wisdom.  We all know that reading a book about riding a bike might be nice, but it is no substitute for getting on a bike and attempting to stay upright as you peddle.  One of the key components in the Heart Sutra is pointing out this distinction.  We need to practice meditating and being aware in order to transform the experience we are having of ourselves and the world around us.   

A second important point in the Heart Sutra is confronting our sense of duality, and how that gets in the way of enlightenment (in fact who or what is being enlightened?).  I feel so solid, separate and permanent.  I think I “know” who and what I am, and yet….Who or what am I?  In order, to break down our pre-conceived notions of this versus that, them versus us, the Heart Sutra challenges us to realize that we are not permanent, separate, solid beings.   It does so by going through what in Sanskrit is called the Five Skandhas (translated as aggregates or heaps or bundles), which attempt to break down this wholistic sense of self that we have built up and mentally hold on to.

For example, you may have had some breakfast or at least a cup of tea or coffee. At this very moment, you are digesting and absorbing that substance into your system.  You are becoming what you just ate and drank.  Or rather, what you just ate or drank is becoming you.  At what point, does it stop being a separate liquid or food, and become you?

In this way, we can reflect upon ourselves and the world around us to strip away these obstacles that cause us to not "see: ourselves and the world clearly.  The Five Skandhas are like a filter between our experience and being fully awakened.  

(From Wikipedia)  Sogyal Rinpoche wrote:

Once we have a physical body, we also have what are known as the five skandhas — the aggregates that compose our whole mental and physical existence. They are the constituents of our experience, the support for the grasping of ego, and also the basis for the suffering of samsara.

They are:

1. form (Skt. rūpa; Tib. གཟུགས་, Wyl. gzugs)

2. feeling (Skt. vedanā; Tib. ཚོར་བ་, Wyl. tshor ba)

3. perception (Skt. saṃjñā; Tib. འདུ་ཤེས་, Wyl. ‘du shes)

4. formations (Skt. saṃskāra; Tib. འདུ་བྱེད་, Wyl. ‘du byed)

5.  consciousness (Skt. vijñāna; Tib. རྣམ་ཤེས་, Wyl. rnam shes) 

When we look more closely at what it is that we call ‘I’, we can see that it includes several elements, not just the parts that make up our physical bodies, but also our various senses and our minds.  In Buddhism, we can examine the self and our experience more precisely, by using these five categories. Note that each category is not distinct but rather there is sort of a spectrum with some overlap.  We utilize the categories to help us understand experience from a different perspective.

1. Form/Matter:  Forms are the elements of earth, water, fire and wind, and then the resultant forms – that which is made from these elements.  There is a visual form, which means the various colors and shapes that appear to our eyes. Sounds may occur naturally or be man-made, or they may be a combination of the two, such as when a person beats a drum. A lot of sounds are just meaningless noise, but to some, we give meaning. Smells or odors can be natural or artificial.  Tastes are said to be of six kinds, roughly translated as sweet, sour, bitter, hot, astringent and pungent.  Textures, or tactile sensations, may be felt on the body’s surface or in its interior. Form means our physical bodies and the physical forms that we find all around us.
2. Feelings/Sensations: Although this is called the skandha of feelings, it does not mean emotional feelings, but something more like sensations.  We are always experiencing sensations.  In this moment, you might have a particular ache or pain, or perhaps a pleasant sensation somewhere in your body, or you may be aware of the sensation of your heart beating.  You might also experience drowsiness or restlessness in your body as a sensation.
3. Perceptions:  Perception means the recognition of identities or names, and on the sensory level it means the discernment of the five objects of sense.  Technically, perception is defined as ‘that which grasps or identifies characteristics’. Perception could be non-conceptual, in the case of the five physical senses, or conceptual, as in the perception of thoughts and ideas.  Perception is either just awareness of our reaction to a sensation (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) as well as the moment we identify forms and feelings with names.  Perception can be non-discerning when you encounter something for the first time and therefore do not recognize it, just as a child does many times a day, or when someone hears a language that they do not understand.
4. Mental States/Formations:  This category refers to thoughts and emotions. These mental states include all the thinking and feeling we have created based on pre-conceived notions, judgments, biases, even including appreciation, mindfulness and concentration.  There are mental states like faith, whether it is what we call “blind faith” or “faith with doubt”.  We then make judgments about the goodness or badness, the skillfulness or unskillfulness, of these mental states, and that leads to more mental states.  Mental states also include the stories that we make up about what is happening to us and around us.
5. Consciousness: Consciousness, the fifth skandha, is the one where there are differing descriptions in the various Buddhist teachings.   We are conscious or aware in this moment, but some teachings categorize that as a mental state.  Some say this category is the ego, that which recognizes itself as separate from others based on mental activity.  Others use this category for all the stored memories that we have that cause us to create this persona—I am who and what I am because of my past experiences and my memories of those times.

We can explore the Five Skandhas using a simple example of burnt popcorn.

1. There is the form of burnt popcorn.
2. There is the smell of burnt popcorn.
3. There is a perception of the smell as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
4. There is a mental state, perhaps a judgment about who burned the popcorn, or about ourselves if we burned the popcorn.  
5. There is a memory of any time we have previously experienced burnt popcorn that has been incorporated into who we are. 

Now, who or what are we beyond these five categories?  Can you imagine or experience a sense of awareness that is beyond doing and not-doing, beyond dualistic thinking?  We can practice resting in this natural state of just being--no place to go, nothing to fix or change.  Just Awarenesss aware of Awareness.  Beyond our limited sense of self; "being" as part of the whole.  

In Buddhist teachings, we are all Buddhas by nature, it is merely covered by temporary obscurations.  We can have the experience or rather the experience can be had right here right now.  What are you holding on to, what is keeping you from slipping into the experience, the glimpse, the taste?   There are several practices that have been created to help us experience this awareness, an awareness that is beyond mindfulness or sensations or stories or perception or perspective.

Real love is created from recognizing our Buddha nature, the natural state of our mind.  By recognizing awareness again and again, we train our mind to rest in the natural state.  The Buddhist teachings call this our inheritance, our great glorious generous inheritance, the glory of the natural state.

It is the nature of our mind to build concepts, create labels and judgments, to create stories and have preferences. We spend out entire life creating this comfortable box for ourselves. Then, sometimes, the world messes with our box, or the way we see ourselves or the way we want to see ourselves. Or crappy stuff happens, and shakes the foundation of our mind's view of the world.

We are here to deconstruct our self concepts, we can practice not being so sure about who we are to how the world is.  When we are willing to stop hanging on to these old concepts, concepts that we think are holding it all together, we can begin to see and experience ourselves and the world in a radically new way.

We practice not being so concerned about the object and the labels but rather to recognize its true nature. Look all around us. Imagine your mind is empty yet cognizant.  Explore experiencing awareness before dualistic thinking kicks in.  In the glimpse of awareness, love will naturally arise.  It is our most natural state.  The love arises, knowing that we are all part of the same ocean, parts of the same whole.

 “What does it matter if everyone loves me or what does it matter if nobody loves me.  I am Love, and I can cultivate Love expressing.”

Being Love - 1 - Turning hate into love

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Today we start a series of talks based on the book by Thich Nhat Hanh entitled, Teachings on Love.  We each have within us an innate, unlimited reservoir of love that can be cultivated and radiated out, that can transform our life and the lives of those around us, without expectation from others in return.  I’m struggling this morning to put into context another terrorist bombing attack—just a few hours ago—at the Mahabodhi Temple, the place where Buddha attained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, India.  Several people were injured and some damage done.  First reports were that nothing major was destroyed, except perhaps the further deterioration of our faith in human beings’ ability to live peacefully together.  There have been Buddhists in Burma that have been using violence against Muslims, and the initial thinking is that this is a retaliation for that violence.

Where does this violence start?  I would offer that it starts in each of our hearts. When we hate another human being or group of human beings simply for who they are or even what they have done.  What if there wasn’t one atrocity, no matter how awful, worth hating someone or somebodies for?  Does hating someone improve the situation?  Buddhism is often thought to be a philosophy of non-violence, which it most certainly is at its core, but I often tell the story of the Buddhist on the pirate ship—the Buddhist who has the capability to kill the pirate and save 200 people’s lives—and the Buddhist does so in an act of kindness to create the most good.  But does the Buddhist hate the pirate?  Do you hate those who have hurt you?  Does your hate relieve your suffering?  Does your hate create the most good?

It seems that these bombings are perhaps an excellent example forcing us to look inside ourselves, examining what we are doing to transform ourselves and the world.  In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh describes what happened to Buddha under the Bodhi tree as the realization that each of us has the capacity to love, to accept, to understand and to transform.  It is up to us to decide what we do with whatever is given to us.  We sometimes do not get a choice.  I think about the two monks that were hurt during the blasts. What will they do with this destruction and pain thrust upon them? What have you done with whatever destruction and pain has been thrust upon you? 

Can we find a way to transform whatever is received into love, acceptance, understanding?  AND, acceptance doesn’t mean being a doormat.  There is a wrathful aspect that is taught in Buddhism, like the martial arts.  Using defenses with laser-like precision can also be an act of love, understanding and transformation.  So, what is hate?  I was going to start this morning talking about how we can generate more love, but I realized that first we must also deal with the hate that is being created, within us and around us.  What is its source?  How to do we transform hate? Starting from a place of love is much easier than starting from exactly where we are—which might be a mixture of hate and love.  I am reflecting on what arises within me, when I hear of the violence in the world.

I guess this first lesson is that wherever we go with the exploration of love, we must each first begin with ourselves.  How am I responding to the world around me?  What am I thinking, saying, doing that is relieving suffering or creating good?  How can I transform ANY hate within me into love, and create a love that is so powerful that it dissolves the hate not only in myself, but perhaps in others as well.

Lama Surya Das posted a comment on Facebook this week about what he calls “radical non-violence”, and mentions Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Aung Sung Suu Kyi as examples of the power of peaceful transformation.  Now, there were many dissenting opinions about whether these four people had been “pure” enough in their practice of radical non-violence, even a question about whether radical non-violence was really the way to go.  Some say that Aung Sung Suu Kyi, a leading Buddhist in Burma, has not spoken loudly ENOUGH against the violence of Buddhists against Muslims in her country.

I work hard to keep the Temple Buddhist Center politics-free, so I leave that discussion for another time and another place, but what we can work on today is our own response to whatever suffering we created or is created around us.  How do you respond?  How do you transform that which is causing suffering, to you or to others?  What shall we think? What shall we say? What shall we do? 

This series of talks will be about the power of loving-kindness to transform  ourselves and the world around us.  As we can see from the events of this day, simply generating loving-kindness may not be as easy of a solution as we might want to think.  There are complex, challenging issues today, just as there were in the Buddha’s time as well, and if we are to be a beneficial presence in this world, we cannot simply ignore what is happening all around us, and we can definitely no ignore what is happening within us.  What shall we think?  What shall we say?  What shall we do?  How can our our thoughts, our words and our actions make a positive difference in the world?

How can we transform any hate in our hearts into this powerful energy of love and compassion?  This is the task I ask each of you to reflect upon and decide if you want to explore this issue with me, but not only just think about it, but also do something about it, with your words and your actions.  I challenge us all to be the change we want to see.  This will be our topic for the next few weeks.  Alone we can do a little good, together we can change the world. 

Bodhisattvas and Bodhicitta

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In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought we could talk about love.  Not the lusty love that makes us a little crazy and do silly things, and not the deep love between two people who value each other above everyone else, but rather the loving-kindness that is innately within each one of us, the limitless loving-kindness that we can radiate out to every other person on the planet.  In Mahayana Buddhism, this idea of sending loving-kindness to all beings is part of the practice of being a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is translated as enlightened (bodhi) existence (sattva) or a person wishing to relieve the suffering of others and wishing to help others become enlightened. 

 As part of the second step on the Eightfold Path, Wise Intention, we vow to not focus solely on our own awakening, but we vow to help all others become awakened as well.  One of the Bodhisattva vows is:

Sentient beings are numberless—I vow to liberate them.

Delusions are inexhaustible—I vow to transcend them.

Dharma Teachings are boundless—I vow to master them.

The Buddha’s enlightened way is unsurpassable—I vow to embody it.

(translation from Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das)

The idea of wishing to help the entire world awaken—that probably seems a bit daunting!  On the internet, there is a clock that keeps track of approximately how many people there are in the world in any given hour.   As of about 6 pm last night, there were 6,993,879,604.    That is a lot of people who might be suffering.  We’ve got our work cut out for us.  There is a wonderful quote by Mother Theresa with some good advice:

"Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you."

Bodhicitta is another word you often read or hear about in Buddhist writings.  It is translated as awakened heart.  It’s interesting that in the original Pali, the word, Citta, means heart-mind, in that it was thought that the heart and mind functioned together.  Centuries later, recent research now shows that there are actually neural networks in the heart as well.  So, we might more accurately think of Bodhicitta as awakened heart-mind.  One who has bodhicitta as the primary motivation for all of his or her activities is called a bodhisattva.

Beginning students commonly ask how they can honestly vow to save all beings. It sounds like missionary arrogance. Hui-neng [the Sixth Zen Patriarch] offers a response: "You are saving them in your own mind." It is bodhichitta that you are cultivating—your own aspiration for wisdom and compassion, and your determination to practice it in the world as best you can.     -   Robert Aitken Roshi, "The Bodhisattva Vows"

The Buddha encouraged us to never go out and evangelize.  Instead, he said if you embody the teachings, others will be naturally curious about what has caused this transformation in your life, only when they ask, then and only then, should you share with them this practice.  From the very beginning, even his five friends who were ascetics with him, they had to beg him to teach them about this wonderful practice that had changed him so dramatically.  

In Awakening the Buddha Within, Lama Surya Das describes bodhicitta as the purified and fully developed heart-mind.  Practicing bodhicitta means cultivating all one’s innate enlightened qualities and following the path of awakening.  Having an open heart-mind is teaching us how to be open and seeing the innate goodness in ourselves and all others.

Buddhism is a practice designed to relief suffering, so by its very nature, we want to relieve not only our own suffering but the suffering of others,  ALL sentient beings, not just the ones we like.  Whoa!  "You mean I have to desire to relieve the suffering of people that annoy me or hurt me or anger me?  Can’t there possible be some exceptions to this practice?"  In Buddhism, there are no exceptions.  We work towards relieving our own suffering and the suffering of all others, even the ones that annoy us or don’t seem to deserve it, or who have hurt us in some way.  It’s easy to be loving and kind to the people we like.  It is the sending loving-kindness to these difficult ones when we really earn our Buddhist stripes. 

How we think about ourselves and others is critical to how we talk and act.  Our thoughts are shaping and defining our actions and words.  Lama Surya Das encourages us to infuse Truth and Love into everything we do.  We strive to combine Wisdom and Compassion in our thoughts, our speech and our actions.

He says:

If it looks like wisdom, but is unkind rather than loving, then it is not wisdom.  If it feels like love, but it’s not wise, then it is not love.

There is a tender part of our heart that doesn’t want to feel vulnerable.  Maybe you’ve been hurt before and the pain was so awful, that you’ve sworn off being that open to anyone ever again.  Now, I’m encouraging you to try, even just little, even if it’s just a small crack, to open up your innately good and kind heart.  You may still be hurt again, but it might be easier to stay standing with an open heart with these practices of compassion and wisdom. 

We can begin in the simplest of ways.  Something as simple as silently wishing each and every person that you come in contact with, “may you be happy.”  Then, we can look for ways to reach out in earnest and help others who are having a difficult time.  Several of us go to feed the hungry at St. Paul’s the second Saturday of each month—it is always a heartfelt experience.  It’s a symbol of bodhicitta in action.   How can we go out in the community and be a loving presence and support to those who are suffering.

We close with the Bodhicitta dedication, wishing that whatever benefit is derived from us meditating, that the benefit be for the happiness of all beings. 

May the pure, brilliant sun of bodhicitta

Dawn in each and every heart and mind

Dispelling the darkness of suffering and confusion

Unstoppably—until all are illumined and awakened.

From Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das