someone from the online sangha posted a question yesterday and i did not see it until today. timing is a beautiful thing. this was one of those moments where you read something and the answer doesn’t come from you at all… it just… flies into you from who knows where and you are typing so fast that you are almost afraid you’ll lose it before you can get it out… this, in relation to the statement that keeping the mind at the level of the heart is a key in practice. my reply to the person asking ‘what do you think this means?’
as usual, i can only speak from my experience and it may well be nothing but nonsense to anyone else.
“mind is at the level of the heart” resonated here when i read it. here, it arrived as a statement not only of losing the hold on the dualistic and illusory nature of “physical being”, but reminding myself that the state of my heart has never really changed, it has always been as it is, and it is only my mind that creates these odd thoughts and sufferings.
the heart is wise in a way the mind never is, because it ignores the intellectual process, realizing it as the distraction and sower of poisons within the ground of being.
compassion lives in the heart, always. the very notion of trying to develop compassion in the mind is… well… a futility.
the mind is no more able to hold the thought of compassion than it is to release the thoughts that create suffering. the natural state of mind is neither holding nor is it not-holding.
this is why training the mind is not to teach it “what to do” or “what not to do” but how to be. (the distinction is an imponderable… i feel foolish to try and put it in words.)
remember how you felt toward your mother? as a very young child? it may have been only one moment you recall… and perhaps it wasn’t with your mother, perhaps it was with your father, your grandparent, a relation, could be anyone really… but in that moment, when it was close and calm and all things were in their right place… and it felt natural. pure. the love of that moment is a pure thing, untainted by the mind. that moment, what it held, is the essence of the mind being at the level of the heart.
i have such respect for these teachers who can say such simple words and in doing, lead without leading to the deeper realization. it often seems a contradiction, but only because i sometimes get so wound up in what i’m thinking that i forget it isn’t about thinking, it is about being. as it is.
when the mind is at the level of the heart, this occurs very naturally and the feeling of that naturalness is known on the instant of its experience. we laugh, we know delight, we cry, or we simply float in it……. because for that flickering moment, it just…. is…. and we know it. then, it passes… and we forget… but knowing is auspicious.
as odd as it may sound, i’m actually having to go back and read what i’ve written. but i’m smiling for it, because it’s pretty rare to have it spill out like that and i’m smiling for the feeling that you, me, or anyone has the chance to realize this kind of moment. may we all realize it.