About the Heart meditation

[Guest guest]

ABOUT THE HEART MEDITATION

 

This meditation has been the greatest friend to many teachers and

practitioners in many traditions, not only in Tibetan Buddhism. Here,

Bhagavan Sri Rajneesh (now known simply as Osho) comments on Tonglen in his

excellent Book of Wisdom:

 

" If you can experience it - this is of tremendous importance - then start

absorbing it. Don't throw it away. It is such a valuable energy; don't

throw it away. Absorb it, drink it, accept it, welcome it, feel grateful

to it. And say to yourself, 'This time I'm not going to avoid it, this

time I'm not going to reject it, this time I'm not going to throw it

away. This time I will drink it and receive it as a guest. This time I

will digest it.' It may take a few days for your to be able to digest it,

but the day it happens you have stumbled upon a door which will take you

really far. A new journey has started in your life, you are moving into a

new kind of being.....

 

" But start with your own self. Make a small experiement with your own

pains, sufferings and miseries. The moment you accept the pain with no

reject anywhere, its energy and its quality changes. It is no longer

pain. And once you have found the key, then you can share it with the

whole existence. Then you can take all the suffering of all the world, or

all the worlds.

 

" Ride on the incoming breath and your small heart is bigger than the whole

universe, if you know what miracles it can do. And then pour out your

blessings. It is the same energy passing through your heart that becomes

bliss, that becomes blessing. Then let blessings go riding on the outgoing

breath to all the nooks and corners of existence.

 

" Atisha (aTibetan teacher of Heart Meditation in the second century)

says: This is compassion. Compassion is to become a transforming force in

existence - transforming the ugly into the beautiful, kissing the frog and

transforming it into a prince, transforming darkness into light. To become

such a medium of transformation is compassion. "

 

When we teach this Heart meditation in gatherings, there is an intensity

and wakefulness that fills the air. The beauty of the Heart meditation is

that it is essentially natural. Rather than visualizing anything, we are

utilizing the quality that the Heart already has, to absorb and accept

unconditionally and to shine forth and radiate. If you try this on your

own for a while, you will notice that it becomes second nature. The

meditation simply brings your attention to what is already so.

 

Listen to what ordinary people like you and me have been experiencing,

after practicing the Heart meditation for the first time.

 

" I notice that all the colors have become brighter, and there is a quality

of silence in the air. The silence seems so much more real than the words

and the movement. "

 

" Everything feels like it has a sameness to it: the chair and the people

and the carpet and the sound of the birds outside. As I absorb all these

things as well as my own reactions to them into myself through the Heart,

they all become a part of me, and with the out-breath they also become

infused with me. "

 

" Feelings of liking and disliking other people become less defined here. I

have always had subtle likes and dislikes of different people. Now

everyone seems the same! I don't mean that there's no differences, but

everyone seems intimate to me in the same way. "

 

" Waves of feeling coming in and going out. It is all me. As I absorb

myself back home into myself, in the same way I find that everything and

everyone absorbs back home into myself, and is reborn out of myself. "

 

" There is a peace and vastness deep inside myself. As I rest in that, I

find that it has the capacity to embrace everything, and in that way to

change everything completely. There is only love, these waves are love,

this dissolving is love dissolving into itself, this blessing is love

bursting out of itself. I find that I have been looking for love, but

actually I am love itself. "

 

 

from Relaxing Into Clear Seeing

Arjuna Nick Ardagh

~~~~~~~~~~~