Tag Archives: open heart

Why the Open Heart?

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Buddhists believe the “genuine heart” (bodhichitta) resides in all beings–no matter the selfishness or unkindness. It is the possibility in each of us to awaken, to change.

mindset-0115-3The genuine heart is neither neutral nor doormat. It is fiercely hard to be compassionate. After all, it’s so easy not to be. Why meet every situation with equanimity? For that matter, why risk a broken heart?

Elizabeth Gilbert says a broken heart is a good sign; “it means we have tried for something.” We are wounded but to wound in return only increases our pain.

Nor in the healing of the heart do we harden. We repair not to repeat but to renew, fortified in our compassion. We have a better understanding of pain for we opened ourselves to it. We tried something.

Equanimity is the spirit of risk, of accepting that the bloom is on the rose for such a short time butthe-blossom-0814 what a time it is. Never to risk the bloom is never to know compassion, that sacred space where we are taught what we need to know.

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.

 

Still Growing–Somehow

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I had a lovely day of thanks giving yesterday with a small but sincere gathering of open hearts.  Threads of conversation–any tendril available to anyone at any time–an undulating web of compassion.

If it sounds lively, it was; that in it itself was a banquet.

And we were mindful of it. Our gratitude perhaps best expressed by a thoughtful young woman who reminded us “we’re going to be okay.”  I am decades older than she but if this woman who works with and for the planet believes, then I’m with her.

If you’re still intact, if you’re still viable

it means you’ve been growing somehow.

That all of the impressions of life

have landed and stuck somewhere.

Bill Murray

No one at this gathering is untouched by the results of the 2016 election but there was a frame of equanimity around this Thanksgiving Day, an impression not soon forgotten. Who knows yet its depth. My Innisfree 081016

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity in daily doses. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.

 

 

Sunday Reverie

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This Sunday morning, I woke up full of the joy of being alive, my heart awash in gratitude, empty of labels.

The true self is empty of all other selves.

Empty of duality. Empty of attachment. Empty of suffering.

Just stay true. Don’t seek to know truth, instead be it…

Bradley Ross Coutts

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For me, the concept of emptiness is ever elusive, dream-like. Too often I am wrapped up in labels, covered in selves other than my own.

Peeling back the labels opens my heart. Even my ego lacks in effect, empty as it were.

There is an infinite loop likeness to emptiness—its nature paradoxical–a rich blend of irony and contradiction revealing “what has always been the case.”

Recognizing the empty nature of both the dreaming as well as

the dreamer is considered by the sages to be liberation,

though paradoxically, there is nobody being freed or bound.

There is simply awakening to that which has always been

the case, even as we daydreamed.

The Paradox of Inherent Perfection

Such was my Sunday morning–the dreamer and the dreamed–a momentary awareness of the self, both empty and full.

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity in daily doses. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.