The Practice: Leading a Heart Centered Life
“My understanding of kindness is the expression of compassion that I have for myself that helps me move in the world in a way that is gentle, soft, and aware.”
Daily Practice and Reflection:
Mindfulness is said to have two wings. Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, mindfulness needs two components to be complete: awareness and heart. In the west, we tend to put a lot of emphasis on the wing of awareness, but awareness alone will only get us so far. Mindfulness also asked us for the appropriate response, and the appropriate response is always a response of the heart, a response of benevolent qualities.
The practices of heart (Metta aka loving kindness, gratitude, forgiveness, renunciation, and compassion) are all ways of softening our hearts, opening ourselves to our direct experience, and holding the truth of life in a more kind and compassionate way. It’s a training of love infused with wisdom. With these practices, we use short phrases as the object of attention; a slightly different technique of steadying the mind than focused awareness practices where we use mostly body, breath, or sounds. The classic phrases are: may I be safe, may I be healthy, may I be happy, and may I live with ease.
These phrases aren’t a wish for some future moment, a hope or dream but a connection to the love that is present here and now, accessing our own goodness and care in this moment. And what I love about heart practices is the creativity around the phrases, connecting to what is needed in any given moment: may I be patient, may I be forgiving, may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be peaceful and content, may I be compassionate with my pain and heartache, and may I be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, etc. The phrases we choose to use are simply pointing us to the feeling tones of each word, bringing a softer and more tender way of relating and responding to life.
Often, we can mistakenly think we are either born with these qualities or not. But research and science show these traits are something we can develop and deepen through presence and intention. We do Metta meditation for ourselves and for our own well-being, realizing it doesn’t have to be kind out there for us to be kind within.
We come to know our own suffering through the wing of awareness (wisdom), but we alleviate and transform it through the heart, the appropriate response, finding our edge and then softening. Through time, we come to know the value of living a heart centered life, the potential to lead a blameless life. May it be so.
“Your path is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. and embrace them.”
Meditation Practice:
“Understanding someone’s suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand, you can’t love.”
“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.”
“Through judging we separate, though understanding we grow.”
“We do not have to improve ourselves; we just have to let go of what blocks our heart.”
“Both must go hand in hand—heart and mind together. One has to understand, and one has to use one’s emotions positively, emotions that are fulfilling and bring a feeling of peacefulness and harmony to one’s own heart.”