Pema Chodrin tells a story of herself as a six year old walking past an old woman sitting in the sun. Kicking stones or whatever was there, Pema tells us that she was feeling lonely, unloved and mad. The woman said, “Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.” That seems to be the essence of loving kindness and compassion. The practice is there to help us stay open, to have an attitude of good will, of love and forgiveness.
We all feel hard hearted at times. I know when my heart is hard. I can feel it. For me it is an attitude of ‘don’t give a damn.” I attend to this attitude in my body, locate it in my torso just behind my spine, imagine what colour it is or what shape, a wall of gunmetal grey, or find any other way I can bring my imagination to adequately represent what I’m feeling. Then I just try to stay with this feeling/shape/colour or words. I say, “So this is what ‘don’t give a damn’ feels like.” Offering my presence and paying attention to this feeling is an act of compassion towards myself and a way to help my hard heart to soften. I just keep watching. Soon it’s impact lessens and eventually passes. Sometimes, though, I don’t want to alleviate my hard heart. I just want to keep feeling that way. So I try to look at that, still without judgement and with kindness.
This time of the hard heart is also a perfect time to offer formal Metta practice for myself. I use the classic phrases: “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease and in peace.” Each phrase packs in so much meaning. Sometimes I/we add a few words to flesh it out a bit, like, “May I be safe from inner and outer harm.” Or, we can find our own meaningful phrases if the classic ones are not speaking to us, but when I reflected on the classic phrases, they encompassed all that I thought important for myself and others.
How wonderful to have a practice that can open our hearts, keep us soft in attitude, be a balm against judgement of ourselves or others, against hurt and ‘the arrows and slings of outrageous fortune,’ and a balm against despair in the face our world’s problems.
With metta,
Carol Kavanagh