“The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.”
–Sri Nisaragadatta Maharaj
If we take stock of things with the mind alone, the odds can seem stacked against us. The devastation of the environment, poverty, human trafficking–it can all seem overwhelming. Where to start?
Recently, I took walk on a bitter cold winter day. I stopped at a landing and looked out over a frozen lake. The scene was beautiful in a stark, primordial way–silver sky, silver lake. I imagined life during the Ice Age. But the dominant thought was: “Left to my own resources, I would die out here in a very short time.”
And yet. Maybe I am not the heartiest in my tribe, and maybe I don’t know how to start a fire without matches. But according to the Buddha, we are also endowed with qualities of heart that he called “divine” and “immeasurable.” Usually, they are broken down into four: lovingkindness or friendliness; compassion, appreciative joy, which is the ability to delight in other beings happiness and good fortune; and equanimity, which is the calm born of wisdom (including the wisdom that everything passes).
Would any or all of these qualities help me survive in a raw, cold landscape? There is some pretty good science that tells us that positive emotions can steady and broaden the mind, helping us see more and find creative solutions–where to take shelter, etc. But the heart also crosses the abyss by reminding us, not in words but in feelings, that we belong to life This is not to say that life is always easy. But there is also kindness, compassion, joy, and possibility. Even on the coldest day.
The Buddhist word for the energy and effort necessary for awakening, viriya, comes from a Sanskrit word that meant hero or strong and virile man. But in my experience, practicing in the thick of life, the energy that is required is more subtle–and definitely not a specific gender. What is needed is more of an effort of the heart–a willingness to open to see and be with rather than an act of will. The hero’s journey becomes an inner quest that begins with gentle questioning: Can I be with this right now? Can I let go of my attachment to a belief or a story about the past and about who I am? Notice how it feels to let yourself be with what is, just for a moment, resting in an awareness that is calm and compassionate and ope.
We all have our memories of moments when life opens up and it seems clear that our highest human purpose is bearing witness to with love and attention. But how can we get there on an ordinary day, mired with work and dukkha (the bumpy, sticky turning of many wheels). Achieving this open awareness is a subtle kind of hero’s journey, but rather than delve into that last night it came to me to share something I once tried with a friend at a retreat.
If you feel like it, you can try it too. When you think of it, see and sense everything that is happening to you. Now think of it as if it is a memory or a dream that you are recalling. “Sati” or mindfulness means remembering. “Right” in “right mindfulness, etc.” means recollected and/or collected, pulled together and one of the meanigs of “right mindfulness” is “right memory” or even fully remembered memory. I invite you to try remembering your life as it is unfolding. This experiment has an extraordinary way of shifting our focus, opening the lens.
If you do the exercise, you may have the feeling of being accompanied. I think of it as being accompanied by the better angel of our own attention.
“When you close the door of your dwelling and are left alone, know that there is with you an Angel, allotted by God to every man, whom the Hellenes call the spirit of the home. He never sleeps and being always with you, sees everything. He cannot be deceived, and darkness hides nothing from him. And be aware of that, besides him, God is present everywhere. For there is no place or substance where God is not present. He is greater than all and holds all in his hand.”
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Antony the Great, from “Early Fathers from the Philokalia,” Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Faber & Faber 1954
Tracy Cochran 