How to respond to the energy of craving (taṇhā); how to navigate states of calm; advice for approaching cancer without fighting/setting up a war; how to work with thinking, between suppressing in meditation and reacting while living in the world; encountering doubt after 20 years of practice; how to work with unhappiness/sadness.
Guidance to sense experience at the cellular level, not as a person. Establish the firm welcome of ground and safe benevolent space around. Sensing, with every inhalation is a birth, with every exhalation a complete emptying back into ground. Tuning into the subtle bodily and mental feelings, may this be well.
How we live on the surface – our lifestyle, speech, actions – generates signs and messages received in the depth. Make an effort to establish right view in your daily life. Mindfulness is then established from that message, not in self-view but in the right territory of lovingkindness, compassion, renunciation.
From the depth of the heart is a place of refuge. A place you can go with failures, pains, mistakes – and be accepted. A place to put it all down, finish it. Let go of the tangles and snagging that happen at the surface.
Speech today tends to be surface babble, it doesn’t go to the depths. One who knows the depths speaks things that are valuable, useful, conducive to harmony. Therefore one looks at speech as a potential treasure, something that can demonstrate love, show that other people matter to me.
Other people’s suffering; what is meant by ‘non-self’; remaining with love when one feels constricted and out of control; cause of excessive burping; please talk about the perception-feeling saṇkhāra processes; the purpose of sensing space around; body scanning to train the mind.
We may wonder where love sits in the whole of the Buddha’s teachings. It’s not always directly pointed at in the suttas, but heart cultivations enable citta to know dukkha and wake up to the way things are. Citta is strengthened in its capacity to be present with skillfulness and love, support for which are provided by body and breath.
Returning to sitting, supporting citta to settle and open, we give it skillful things it can be in touch with – breathing, the heart medicines. Understanding the power of perception and feeling, we place attention carefully, bringing qualities of welcome, availability, friendliness – guarding against what is harmful and afflicting. Just knowing, body feels like this, citta feels like this.
Guidance for transitioning to standing, staying present, letting uprightness establish itself. Keeping the quality of opening, meeting what is here with love and friendliness, letting breath wash any strain away.
In this cultivation we’re deepening our understanding of the heart that is at home. The soothing and relaxing quality of breathing supports citta to meet whatever arises. With qualities of love, friendliness and compassion, attune to cause and effect, putting down what brings agitation and contraction, and aligning to what brings well-being.
