Haelan LifeStream Center

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Holistic Lifestyle Counseling

Cultivating Compassion

This Journal writing explores the special heart quality of compassion.

Writings over the past year have covered the emerging science of heart electromagnetics, as well as the emerging science about how to enhance and maintain brain health. These 2 organs, and the writings about them, are naturally related in mental, emotional, and spiritual ways which extend beyond the well known contemporary anatomical and physiological relationships.

The health of a single heart, and its brain, extends completely into all of the world, and beyond.

There are 2 primary heart related principles which I practice and try to help others understand as I am able to do so based on my own level of practice and understanding. One is the practice of forgiveness. The practice of forgiving means we are ready, willing, and able to let go of having a better past, and everything about our past which weighs heavy in our hearts. Simply put, forgiveness is letting go of having a better past.

All of our past is held in memory in the flesh of the body in a subconscious manner. As memories arise in our consciousness as a result of daily encounters and events, these memories might evoke unpleasant feelings in the body and unpleasant thoughts in the mind. We might further complicate the moment by acting out from this unpleasant place of consciousness. However, the impacts of an unpleasant memory can be softened and transformed by the practice of learning to let go of having a better past. We will always transmit that which we have not transformed.

The other heart quality worth emphasizing is that of non-judgment. Judgment always has its origins in how we have cultured shadow fear, anger, and pride in our inner being. The shadow forms of these emotional states can be transformed into their utilitarian counterparts, and actually be used to protect and heal our lives.

Non-judgment requires the development of dispassion towards, and detachment from, anything which evokes such a reaction from us that we lose our presence in peace. When we are experiencing shadow emotion states we have to be able to recognize our entanglement and then ask ourselves some pragmatic questions so that we can learn to shift into the utilitarian way of using the emotion in a positive manner.

Briefly, the basic pertinent questions are:

  • Shadow fear…am I in real threat or danger? What action is needed right now?
  • Shadow anger…what is the boundary that must be restored?
  • Shadow pride…what are my innate gifts that I am truly proud of that need to come forward at this moment?

When we experience the shadow of these 3 emotion states, we are usually experiencing them all at once, as an entangled ball of psychic energy. Three possible ways of managing this kind of psychic chaos emerge:

  1. We hurl the energy out there at someone, or at something, and create more shame, guilt, and grief. This unwanted complication must ultimately be dealt with and forgiven.
  2. Because we have learned that #1 is so unpleasant we learn to bury the emotional ball of chaos back into the inner world that it came from, and suppress it. This is like trying to hold a basketball underwater with one hand. This effort requires significant psychic and nervous system energy. Depression often results as neurotransmitters, neurohormones, and other essential neurochemistry depletes. Furthermore, the basketball will pop up and resurface again as we weaken.
  3. We can start becoming mindful, detached, and dispassionate long enough to start practicing how to transform the shadow emotional state.

In this post WWII culture of fast fixes, I perceive that #1 and #2 are on the rise and are the most common defaults as people struggle inside of a social system that is too outer directed, too electronically entangled, too reliant on poor quality pharmaceutical interventions as well as other drug related ways of numbing the pain, and too out of touch with nature from which we originated. #3 is the preferred option. Positive life growth is guaranteed.

In developing a compassionate and patient relationship with our shadow fear, anger, and pride, we begin to flex and extend our heart muscle which may have become stiff with arrogance, opinions, self-righteousness, and prejudice.

The practice of developing conscious dispassion and detachment is different from simply being in denial about a situation. Developing non-judgment requires the ongoing practice of a mindfulness approach, as was explained in the Journal Minding your Meditation. It is from a momentary place of mindful dispassion and detachment that we can make needed emotional shifts and reattune our thinking to more peace.

In order for anyone to be able to give something away, one must first own that which they intend to give away. In order for us to be able to extend forgiveness and non-judgment to another person or situation, we have to first own it for our own self. We cannot give away that which we do not own.

This concept of ownership of heart qualities and the practice to attain and strengthen them is usually challenging. However, there are those from whom we can learn more insight and understanding. Presented below is a valuable writing by esteemed and beloved Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, entitled “Unlimited Friendliness…Three Steps to genuine compassion.” In this writing the author explores 3 sure steps that one can practice which allow for ownership of self acceptance and the generation of authentic compassion.

Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist nun, teacher, and author of many fine books about living a good spiritual life. She is a founding member and resident teacher at Gampo Abbey, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which is the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America established for Westerners.

Pema Chödrön also retreats and resides in Crestone, and sometimes I am fortunate to encounter her in our post office, and other places, and we share a few words. One time she delivered a patient to my office, which was the first time I met her.

Although she speaks and writes from the platform of Tibetan Buddhism, she always brings the essence of all of the great wisdom teachings into a clear focus such that anyone of any culture can grasp the truths she knows and shares. She gives away that which she has owned.

Unlimited Friendliness…Three steps to genuine compassion by Pema Chödrön

“I’ve often heard the Dalai Lama say that having compassion for oneself is the basis for developing compassion for others. Chögyam Trungpa also taught this when he spoke about how to genuinely help others—how to work for the benefit of others without the interference of our own agendas. He presented this as a three-step process. Step one is maitri, a Sanskrit word meaning loving kindness toward all beings. Here, however, as Chögyam Trungpa used the term, it means unlimited friendliness toward ourselves, with the clear implication that this leads naturally to unlimited friendliness toward others. Maitri also has the meaning of trusting oneself—trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, without turning against ourselves because of what we see.

Step two in the journey toward genuinely helping others is communication from the heart. To the degree that we trust ourselves, we have no need to close down on others. They can evoke strong emotions in us, but still we don’t withdraw. Based on this ability to stay open, we arrive at step three, the difficult-to-come-by fruition: the ability to put others before ourselves and help them without expecting anything in return.

When we build a house, we start by creating a stable foundation. Just so, when we wish to benefit others, we start by developing warmth or friendship for ourselves. It’s common, however, for people to have a distorted view of this friendliness and warmth. We’ll say, for instance, that we need to take care of ourselves, but how many of us really know how to do this? When clinging to security and comfort, and warding off pain, become the focus of our lives, we don’t end up feeling cared for and we certainly don’t feel motivated to extend ourselves to others. We end up feeling more threatened or irritable, more unable to relax.

I’ve known many people who have spent years exercising daily, getting massages, doing yoga, faithfully following one food or vitamin regimen after another, pursuing spiritual teachers and different styles of meditation, all in the name of taking care of themselves. Then something bad happens to them, and all those years don’t seem to have added up to the inner strength and kindness for themselves that they need in order to relate with what’s happening. And they don’t add up to being able to help other people or the environment. When taking care of ourselves is all about me, it never gets at the unshakable tenderness and confidence that we’ll need when everything falls apart. When we start to develop maitri for ourselves— unconditional acceptance of ourselves—then we’re really taking care of ourselves in a way that pays off. We feel more at home with our own bodies and minds and more at home in the world. As our kindness for ourselves grows, so does our kindness for other people.

The peace that we are looking for is not peace that crumbles as soon as there is difficulty or chaos. Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises. Peace isn’t an experience free of challenges, free of rough and smooth—it’s an experience that’s expansive enough to include all that arises without feeling threatened.

I sometimes wonder how I would respond in an emergency. I hear stories about people’s bravery emerging in crises, but I’ve also heard some painful stories from people who weren’t able to reach out to others in need because they were so afraid for themselves. We never really know which way it will go. So I ponder what would happen, for instance, if I were in a situation where there was no food but I had a bit of bread. Would I share it with the others who were starving? Would I keep it for myself? If I contemplate this question when I’m feeling the discomfort of even mild hunger, it makes the process more honest. The reality gets through to me that if I give away all my food, then the hunger I’m feeling won’t be going away. Maybe another person will feel better, but for sure physically I will feel worse.

Sometimes the Dalai Lama suggests not eating one day a week, or skipping a meal, to briefly put ourselves in the shoes of those who are starving all over the world. In practicing this kind of solidarity myself, I have found that it can bring up panic and self-protectiveness. So the question is, what do we do with our distress? Does it open our heart or close it? When we’re hungry, does our discomfort increase our empathy for hungry people and animals, or does it increase our fear of hunger and intensify our selfishness?

With contemplations like this, we can be completely truthful about where we are but also aware of where we’d like to be next year or in five years, or where we’d like to be by the time we die. Maybe today I panic and can’t give away even a crumb of my bread, but I don’t have to sink into despair. We have the opportunity to lead our lives in such a way that year by year we’ll be less afraid, less threatened, and more able to spontaneously help others without asking ourselves, “What’s in this for me?”

A fifty-year-old woman told me her story. She had been in an airplane crash at the age of twenty-five. She was in such a panic rushing to get out of the plane before it exploded that she didn’t stop to help anyone else, including, most painfully, a little boy who was tangled in his seat belt and couldn’t move. She had been a practicing Buddhist for about five years when the accident happened; it was shattering to her to see how she had reacted. She was deeply ashamed of herself, and after the crash she sank into three hard years of depression. But ultimately, instead of her remorse and regret causing her to self-destruct, these very feelings opened her heart to other people. Not only did she become committed to her spiritual path in order to grow in her ability to help others, but she also became engaged in working with people in crisis. Her seeming failure is making her a far more courageous and compassionate woman.

Right before the Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, he was tempted in every conceivable way. He was assaulted by objects of lust, objects of craving, objects of aggression, of fear, of all the variety of things that usually hook us and cause us to lose our balance. Part of his extraordinary accomplishment was that he stayed present, on the dot, without being seduced by anything that appeared. In traditional versions of the story, it’s said that no matter what appeared, whether it was demons or soldiers with weapons or alluring women, he had no reaction to it at all.

I’ve always thought, however, that perhaps the Buddha did experience emotions during that long night, but recognized them as simply dynamic energy moving through. The feelings and sensations came up and passed away, came up and passed away. They didn’t set off a chain reaction. This process is often depicted in paintings as weapons transforming into flowers—warriors shooting thousands of flaming arrows at the Buddha as he sits under the Bodhi tree but the arrows becoming blossoms. That which can cause our destruction becomes a blessing in disguise when we let the energies arise and pass through us over and over again, without acting out.

A question that has intrigued me for years is this: How can we start exactly where we are, with all our entanglements, and still develop unconditional acceptance of ourselves instead of guilt and depression? One of the most helpful methods I’ve found is the practice of compassionate abiding. This is a way of bringing warmth to unwanted feelings. It is a direct method for embracing our experience rather than rejecting it. So the next time you realize that you’re hooked—that you’re stuck, finding yourself tightening, spiraling into blaming, acting out, obsessing—you could experiment with this approach.

Contacting the experience of being hooked, you breathe in, allowing the feeling completely and opening to it. The in-breath can be deep and relaxed—anything that helps you to let the feeling be there, anything that helps you not push it away. Then, still abiding with the urge and edginess of feelings such as craving or aggression, as you breathe out you relax and give the feeling space. The outbreath is not a way of sending the discomfort away but a way of ventilating it, of loosening the tension around it, of becoming aware of the space in which the discomfort is occurring.

This practice helps us to develop maitri because we willingly touch parts of ourselves that we’re not proud of. We touch feelings that we think we shouldn’t be having—feelings of failure, of shame, of murderous rage; all those politically incorrect feelings like racial prejudice, disdain for people we consider ugly or inferior, sexual addiction, and phobias. We contact whatever we’re experiencing and go beyond liking or disliking by breathing in and opening. Then we breathe out and relax. We continue that for a few moments or for as long as we wish, synchronizing it with the breath. This process has a leaning-in quality. Breathing in and leaning in are very much the same. We touch the experience, feeling it in the body if that helps, and we breathe it in.

In the process of doing this, we are transmuting hard, reactive, rejecting energy into basic warmth and openness. It sounds dramatic, but really it’s very simple and direct. All we are doing is breathing in and experiencing what’s happening, then breathing out as we continue to experience what’s happening. It’s a way of working with our negativity that appreciates that the negative energy per se is not the problem. Confusion only begins when we can’t abide with the intensity of the energy and therefore spin off. Staying present with our own energy allows it to keep flowing and move on. Abiding with our own energy is the ultimate nonaggression, the ultimate maitri.

Compassionate abiding is a stand-alone practice, but it can also serve as a preliminary for doing the practice of tonglen, the practice of taking in and sending out. Tonglen is an ancient practice designed to short-circuit “all about me.” Just as with compassionate abiding, the logic of the practice is that we start by breathing in and opening to feelings that threaten the survival of our self-importance. We breathe in feelings that generally we want to get rid of. On the out-breath of tonglen, we send out all that we find pleasurable and comfortable, meaningful and desirable. We send out all the feelings we usually grasp after and cling to for dear life.

Tonglen can begin very much like compassionate abiding. We breathe in anything we find painful and we send out relief, synchronizing this with the breath. Yet the emphasis with tonglen is always on relieving the suffering of others. As we breathe in discomfort, we might think, ‘May I feel this completely so that I and all other beings may be free of pain.’ As we breathe out relief, we might think, ‘May I send out this contentment completely so that all beings may feel relaxed and at home with themselves and with the world.’ In other words, tonglen goes beyond compassionate abiding because it is a practice that includes the suffering of other beings and the longing that this suffering could be removed.

Tonglen develops further as your courage to experience your own unwanted feelings grows. For instance, when you realize you’re hooked, you breathe in with the understanding, even if it’s only conceptual at first, that this experience is shared by every being and that you aspire to alleviate their suffering. As you breathe out, you send relief to everyone. Still, your direct experience—the experience you’re tasting right now—is the basis for having any idea at all about what other beings go through. In this way tonglen is a heart practice, a gut-level practice, not a head practice or intellectual exercise.

It’s common for parents of young children to spontaneously put their children first. When little ones are ill, mothers and fathers often have no problem at all wishing they could take away the child’s suffering; they would gladly breathe it in and take it away if they could, and they would gladly breathe out relief.

It’s suggested to start tonglen with situations like that, where it’s fairly easy. The practice becomes more challenging when you start to do it for people you don’t know, and almost impossible when you try to do it for people you don’t like. You breathe in the suffering of a panhandler on the street and aren’t sure you want to. And how willing are you to do more advanced tonglen, where you breathe in the pain of someone you despise and send them relief? From our current vantage point, this can seem too much to ask, too overwhelming or too absurd.

The reason why tonglen practice can be so difficult is that we can’t bear to feel the feelings that the street person or our nemesis bring up in us. This, of course, brings us back to compassionate abiding and making friends with ourselves. It has been precisely this process of doing tonglen, trying to stretch further and open my mind to a wider and wider range of people, that has helped me to see that without maitri I will always close down on other people when certain feelings are provoked.

The next time you have a chance, go outside and try to do tonglen for the first person you meet, breathing in their discomfort and sending out well-being and caring. If you’re in a city, just stand still for a while and pay attention to anyone who catches your eye and do tonglen for them. You can begin by contacting any aversion or attraction or even a neutral, uninterested feeling that they bring up in you, and breathe in, contacting that feeling much as you do with compassionate abiding, but with the thought, “May both of us be able to feel feelings like this without it causing us to shut down to others.” As you breathe out, send happiness and contentment to them.

If you encounter an animal or person who is clearly in distress, pause and breathe in with the wish that they be free of their distress and send out relief to them. With the most advanced tonglen, you breathe in with the wish that you could actually take on their distress so they could be free of it, and you breathe out with the wish that you could give them all your comfort and ease. In other words, you would literally be willing to stand in their shoes and have them stand in yours if it would help.

By trying this, we learn exactly where we are open and where we are closed. We learn quickly where we would do well to just practice abiding compassionately with our own confused feelings, before we try to work with other people, because right now our efforts would probably make a bigger mess. I know many people who want to be teachers, or feed the homeless, or start clinics, or try in some way to truly help others. Despite their generous intentions, they don’t always realize that if they plan to work closely with people they may be in for a lot of difficulty—a lot of feeling hooked. The people they hope to help will not always see them as saviors. In fact, they will probably criticize them and give them a hard time. Teachers and helpers of all kinds will be of limited use if they are doing their work to build up their own egos. Setting out to help others is a very quick way to pop the bubble of ego.

So we start by making friends with our experience and developing warmth for our good old selves. Slowly, very slowly, gently, very gently, we let the stakes get higher as we touch in on more troubling feelings. This leads to trusting that we have the strength and good-heartedness to live in this precious world, despite its land mines, with dignity and kindness. With this kind of confidence, connecting with others comes more easily, because what is there to fear when we have stayed with ourselves through thick and thin? Other people can provoke anything in us, and we don’t need to defend ourselves by striking out or shutting down. Selfless help—helping others without an agenda— is the result of having helped ourselves. We feel loving toward ourselves and therefore we feel loving toward others. Over time, all those we used to feel separate from become more and more melted into our heart.”

Crestone and Beyond

This beautiful writing by Pema Chödrön emphasizes the recommendation that we should first develop inside of our lives the qualities that we wish to share with others.

She defines and explains 3 qualities to culture in our practice of helping others:

  1. Culturing a loving kindness toward oneself
  2. Communicating from the heart
  3. Putting others before ourselves

One thing to consider as you strive to practice these qualities is to resist being continually distracted by an inner mental struggle about the many complicated problems of our troubled world. This includes falling sway to the many consumerist temptations which are fostered and pushed upon us by the corporate entities of our dubious modernity. Indeed, these worldly distractions deserve their own maitri and tonglen, for they are illusions of this plane which pull us further away from the practice of culturing peace in our inner being.

I believe that the best individual approach to our world’s problems is summarized in Gandhi’s quote that we should become the change that we wish to see in the world. This statement is yet another reminder that we have to own that which we wish to share with our world. It makes no sense to try to solve chaos when we ourselves are chaotic. This last sentence is like an example of Einstein’s quote…we can’t solve a problem from the same level of consciousness which created the problem.

The essence of this Journal writing has to do with how we come to appreciate and culture self love in our lives.

Despite our perceived traumatic memories, our conditioning, our rebellion (or lack thereof), our self doubts, our insecurities and fear, our self loathing, all of our self judgments, our heartaches, and the heartaches we perpetrated into other people’s lives…all of this past inventory that constitutes the past that we can learn to be more accepting of…despite all of the layers of our identity crisis, we can learn to forgive, become compassionate to our own self, become less judgmental about our self, and begin to understand that self love is a natural and desirable condition to culture in our lives.

There are higher qualities in all of us that are our true and lasting nature. These divine aspects of our true self…creative, kind, loving, beautiful, expanding, abundant, and receptive…can be brought forward and developed in our being by daily practices which engender compassion for ourselves and all beings. This self is lovable. It is the self we come to love as we get to know it by culturing friendliness with it. It naturally resides inside of our lives as our true self.

Long before Pema Chödrön explained how to culture friendliness, Jesus of Nazareth made a recommendation (Matthew 22:37-40) to “love your neighbor as yourself.” These 5 words summarize the essence of this Journal writing with simple brevity.

Jesus is also quoted in the book of Matthew (6:19-21) as recommending…“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Life on Earth is a classroom extension of heaven. The classroom here cannot be separate from the finer and grander multidimensional schools from which it originates.

We have come here to be in these forms to learn heart based life lessons. We have to go through the healing that is needed to know that we are worthy of love, and that we are loved.

Signing off from Crestone and Beyond.

Wishing you the best that life and love have to offer.

Thank you for reading.

Associated Readings

  1. Books written by Pema Chödrön…these books carry important messages for how to live in these times.
  2. Making Friends with Oneself…a shorter writing by Pema Chödrön about an important meditation recommendation.
  3. A Quest for Meaning…2 childhood friends come together and explore the world in order to find meaning in their lives when they both realized that they were drowning in modernity’s consumer consciousness. This beautiful 1.5 hour film is compelling, meaningful, and is a very important recent contribution. It will show you that the movement to save our planet has gained roots and is growing as more people are developing and sharing compassion about our common global plight.
  4. Becoming Compassion…a 2011 writing on this website which celebrates the Essene teachings about how we manifest and become compassion through Unity consciousness.
  5. There are 4 writings on this website about the electromagnetic functioning of the heart…how the heart functions in our lives outside of its role of pumping blood. There are many people who live happy and healthy lives in our world who would never need to read such writings because they are the living examples of a glowing heart…1) The Pulse of Life, 2) The Spiral of Life, 3) The Prayer of Life, and 4) The Beginning of Life.
  6. The Present Moment…an editorial on this website about the brain, the heart, the conventional medical industry, the plight of our planet, and other considerations.
  7. Adverse Childhood Events…a writing on this website about the effect of childhood trauma on our health and longevity. Various trauma healing techniques are presented.
  8. No Exceptions…a brief writing which is in alignment with Pema Chödrön’s message about lovingkindness. Even though these words in this particular Journal reflect Buddhist philosophy, it is easy for any spiritual aspirant to appreciate that these messages could have been spoken by Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and a host of other human beings who have lived among us as great spiritual beings.
  9. Transforming Conflict…a brief statement about how our disagreements with the world can open the doors of new growth.
  10. Buddhism’s Higher Power…a beautiful writing about prayer.
  11. Elevated Music…an interview with the famed Tibetan musician Nawang Khechog, who has led a very interesting and exciting life, and has great lessons to share with us about the heart.
  12. Real Love…a Buddhist practitioner shares some insights about Love.
  13. 7 Simple Secrets to Maintain Vibrant Health…Udgar Parsons, the owner of Growing Spaces, a company in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, which sells and constructs geodesic domes for year-round gardening , has cultured 7 lifestyle steps to keep his life moving forward in a healthy manner.
  14. The TB12 Method explained…this method of athletic training, championed by NFL quarterback Tom Brady, emphasizes mindfulness integration of body and mind elements to achieve better physical performance results. Becoming more aware of our body and its various memoried feeling states is an important aspect of life growth.
  15. Touching Enlightenment…well known Crestone meditation teacher Reggie Ray comments nicely on the importance of being well grounded in the body so that the fruits of meditation can be experienced. We need the body to heal in.
  16. Calm Abiding…the 5 stages of calm abiding are presented.
  17. How Negative Emotions Can Affect Your Health…the science and biology of negative emotions is presented here. Our autobiography becomes our biology…a fact which I was not taught in medical school, but was taught in life school.
  18. Meditation’s Secret Ingredient…a well written article by Mark Epstein which explains the benefits of right concentration when used as a means in meditation, as well as in the activities of mundane life.
  19. Finding Patience…this Buddhist perspective on patience is the best short writing on the subject that I have ever read. The author explains 3 tenets: forbearance, endurance of hardship, and acceptance of the truth as important practices to cultivate patience. These practices, in turn, will help us cultivate compassion.
  20. Be Still & Know, A Zen reading of a biblical saying…a Buddhist interpretation of the 6th Beatitude.
  21. It’s Time for Self Care…a good message from the people at HeartMath.
  22. Family Dharma: Leaning into Suffering…another article from the Tricycle publication which has a good look at compassion from the Buddhist perspective. “Greet pain and suffering with an open heart.”
  23. Lighten Your Load…a Tricycle writing about forgiveness, which is a valuable heart quality of self love.
  24. A Quiver of the Heart…the author explains, “Compassion allows us to use our own pain and the pain of others as a vehicle for connection . . . Because compassion is a state of mind that is itself open, abundant, and inclusive, it allows us to meet pain more directly . . . we know that we are not alone in our suffering and that no one need feel alone when in pain.”
  25. Cultivating Compassion, How to Love Yourself and Others…I discovered this writing by Thich Nhat Hanh on his 92nd birthday (10-11-18). In his simple and common sense style of writing he beautifully explains how to cultivate compassion in the 5 skandhas of the human: form (body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
  26. Compassionate Latitude: The need of the times…a writing from HeartMath, posted here on 10-30-19.
  27. How to Navigate Conflict Compassionately…”When we feel conflict with others, understanding their suffering is the first step in being able to communicate, forgive, and begin again.”
  28. Worship or Transformation…Richard Rohr describes a technique of using the heart to get out of brain based polarized thinking and rumination about people and events…”Many have described prayer as bringing our thinking down into our heart. Next time a resentment, negativity, or irritation comes into your mind, for example, and you want to play it out or attach to it, consciously move that thought or person into your heart space.”
  29. Nurturing the Intelligent Heart…”Those who actively practice bodhicitta are bodhisattvas. I sometimes use the phrase “burning with love in a world we can’t fix” to remind myself of what being a bodhisattva actually means.” This beautiful writing is by long time Buddhist practitioner and Crestone resident Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel.
  30. Head and Heart Together…the Buddha’s primary heart teachings are covered in this article. Mind based wisdom can be cultured to assist the development of heart based compassion. The Four Immeasurables are covered and developed in this writing.
  31. Right Speech Reconsidered…”With mindfulness, we see that the heart is the ground from which our speech grows. We learn to restrain our speech in moments of anger, hostility, or confusion, and over time, to train the heart to more frequently incline towards wholesome states such as love, kindness and empathy.”
  32. The Eight Beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, as explained by Cynthia Borgeault on Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation website… The Beatitudes are about developing a pure and connected Heart through a radical transformation of consciousness. Please open the links below for Cynthia’s expanded explanation of these timeless concepts.