Posts Tagged ‘Tara Brach’
2014: The Year of…
Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
Happy 2014! As each New Year begins, I take time to sit quietly and set intentions for the coming year. I listen to silence. I listen to nature. I listen to my heart. One clear intention is to follow the map of my heart.
As I started to meditate, I gazed at my bookcase. Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, jumped out at me. I had read this book a few years after my mom passed away. (I highly recommend any Joan Didion book!) As I stared at that book, I felt like there was a message for me for 2014. I randomly opened to a page and read, “As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs…The way I write is who I am, or have become…” I returned the book and felt the rhythms of the words as it matched the rhythm of my breath.
I wrote the words: 2014 is the Year of Magical Being
This year will be about following the sacred path of the warrior and living from a place of being. It will BE a year of allowing serendipity to replace certainty. It will BE a year where I live from my heart. It will BE a year where feelings will be the map that guides me. 2014 will be a year of Magical BEING.
As a part of that beingness, I am also honing in a word for 2014: Metta.
The Pali word for lovingkindness, metta, means unconditional friendliness, warmth, love or care, and the Pali word for compassion, karuna, means to “feel with,” to bear suffering with an active sympathy. In his wisdom the Buddha realized that by purposefully awakening lovingkindness and compassion, we invite the alienated hurts and fears into consciousness, and free ourselves into a wholeness of being. (Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart)
My year of Magical Being will be tuning into loving-kindness towards myself and others. This loving-kindness will allow me to consciously stay awake in the world and turn shame, fear, and doubt into wholeness.
It’s a big journey and I know I don’t walk alone. I have many holy witnesses with me.
You are invited to take time and listen for your intention, your word, and your heart.
What does 2014 feel like for you?
Showing Compassion
Monday, July 22nd, 2013
The Pali word for lovingkindness, metta, means unconditional friendliness, warmth, love or care, and the Pali word for compassion, karuna, means to “feel with,” to bear suffering with an active sympathy. In his wisdom the Buddha realized that by purposefully awakening lovingkindness and compassion, we invite the alienated hurts and fears into consciousness, and free ourselves into a wholeness of being.
Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart
My books all have the same theme lately —compassion. The word “compassion” seems to be in neon lights. First I read a quote by Pema Chödrön, “Just as nurturing our ability to love is a way of awakening bodhichitta, so also is nurturing our ability to feel compassion. Compassion, however, is more emotionally challenging than loving-kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain. It definitely requires the training of a warrior.”
Then I came across the book, Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong, by Norman Fisher. There were many sections on empathy and compassion. Fisher writes, “Remember that compassion literally means to feel passion with. Passion means pain. Compassion is the willingness to feel pain with another, to feel another’s pain as one’s own.” He goes on to write, “And it turns out that it’s impossible to take in the pain of another unless we are able to take in our own pain.”
This gave me the clarity I have been seeking after taking some time off to heal and rest. I noticed how difficult it was for people to show compassion. They wanted to reach out and be kind, but somehow the offerings were more about advice-giving, cheerful words, or awkward silence. I realized that what I really wanted was for people to listen, to feel, and to acknowledge.
By sitting in the pain, we allow it to rise up, be acknowledged, and then bless it. Having a witness – a friend – to do that with makes it all the more holy. Looking at our own pain gives us the ability to sit with others in theirs.
What are your experiences or thoughts on compassion?
True Refuge of the Heart
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
“We can find our true refuge within our our hearts and minds —right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-moment lives. We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent space of awareness behind our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. We find refuge whenever we connect with the innate clarity and intelligence of our true nature.”
—Tara Brach, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart
What say you?
Where and how do you find your true refuge of the heart?