Read Part ONE and TWO of Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries here.

THE HEART - MIND’S LIBERATION

Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

This path of uncovering the heart-mind’s deepest generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, appreciation, and equanimity is the ultimate goal of the spiritual revolutionary

These practices offer us access to a safe home within ourselves. If cultivated, understood, and lived, they offer us a way to navigate our lives appropriately. They allow us to access the wise responses that bring about more happiness and less suffering. I was first introduced to these teachings very early on in my meditation practice—first through my father’s book A Gradual Awakening and soon after on my first meditation retreat with Jack Kornfield. In the beginning I thought that meditation was just mindfulness, and that all this compassion and love shit was something extra. I felt that the real spiritual path was only about present-time awareness and paying attention to the impermanent, impersonal, and unsatisfactory nature of all things. I was suspicious that perhaps all the flowery love stuff was something the hippies had added in.

As my practice developed over the years, I began to see through my own direct experience how these qualities of love and compassion were in fact a natural by-product of mindfulness. They began to spontaneously arise within me as I trained my mind to be present to the arising and passing of sensations. As I watched the passing show of anger and discontent, I was shocked to see that there were also moments of deep caring and spontaneous mercy. The heart-mind’s hidden aspects began to be uncovered. And the more I paid attention, the more I began to see that underneath the fear-based mentality of judging and clinging, there was a purity of caring and kindness. I have come to believe that these states of generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, appreciation, and equanimity are natural by-products of the meditative path. I’ve also come to see the real importance of cultivating these qualities, of putting energy into a systematic and intentional cultivation of these five heart-mind states. Why wait till they arise spontaneously if some intentional uncovering will allow access to freedom more quickly? That intentional uncovering through meditation is facilitated by the process of cultivation and abandonment and by  an appreciation of our interconnectedness with others.

Cultivation and Abandonment

By pursuing the heart-mind’s deepest generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, appreciation, and equanimity through meditative practices, we learn to develop skillful mental states and abandon or let go of unskillful mental states. At first we may experience only how angry we are, for example, but gradually we may begin to realize that the anger is fueled by fear. Our loving-kindness practice will teach us to be friendly to our fears, and our compassion practice will allow us to respond with care to the suffering of fear and anger. Thus the unskillful mental states of fear and anger will be met with kindness and compassion. This process of cultivation and abandonment happens gradually, over time. We don’t just begin to practice and immediately let go of all unskillful or unwholesome attitudes. The process takes gradual, systematic training.

The Buddha said in one teaching, “Abandon what is unskillful. One can abandon what is unskillful. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. If abandoning that which is unskillful would cause harm, I would not ask you to do so, but as it brings benefit and happiness, therefore I say abandon it.” He went on to say, “Cultivate the good. One can cultivate the good. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do so. If this cultivation brought about harm, I would not ask you to do it. But as this cultivation of good brings benefit and happiness, I say cultivate it.”

Though the process takes time and training, as noted above, abandoning unskillful mind states does not occur by force. Just as force is not the instigator, neither is fear. No, letting go happens when we begin to see, through present- time awareness, how painful the unskillful, unwholesome mind states of anger, fear, greed, judgment, jealousy, selfishness, and lust really are—when we see that the actions that come from these mind states are causing pain and/or suffering to ourselves and others. The cultivation of wholesome mind states is likewise gradual. When we begin to care about others and ourselves in a deeper way, then the friendliness and love and generosity that are innate within each of us begin to arise.

As we stop cultivating the unwholesome and unskillful mind states, as they gradually fade away, we begin cultivating the wholesome.

Slowly, over years of practice, a transformation begins to happen. Cultivating the good doesn’t mean taking on virtue from outside ourselves; it means uncovering our own innate potential for love and connection—a potential that has been deeply buried and obscured through a lifetime of misinformation and not being taught the truth, through our own confused attempts to find happiness through sense pleasures, through hatred, through revenge, or through whatever our own particular top ten confusions have been. Cultivating the good means recovering or uncovering the wisdom and compassion that are present as potential in all of us. This means that we begin to align our intentions, actions, and mind states with a vision of the awakened heart—with what the Mahayana Buddhists refer to as our “Buddha nature,” the innate potential for awakening. There is a natural awakened aspect of the heart that is within all of us, though obscured. The good news is that it can be unobscured. How? By walking the path. By putting into practice the values and theories that the Buddha taught and exemplified. By making the effort to abandon the unskillful and cultivate the good— and not just on the  meditation mat but in all aspects of our lives. We begin with the intentional aspect of meditation, the formal sitting practice, but then we expand our intentionality to all aspects of our life, including the workplace and (perhaps the hardest and most important practice) our relationships.

Interdependent

The spiritual path of rebellion must include the appreciation of our interconnectedness with others. We begin this understanding of our interdependence through the practices of generosity, of not harming each other, of right speech and right action, and of purifying our minds through concentration and mindfulness. As we do all this we come to the experience of wisdom through recognizing the truth for ourselves.

We become deeply aware of how much suffering is caused by the illusion of separation and begin to value the true happiness that is found in knowing how deeply connected we are with other beings. When we know how deeply connected we are to other beings, we begin to care about their suffering. This is the experience of compassion.

When we know how deeply connected to others we are, we naturally take pleasure in the happiness and success of others. This is sympathetic or appreciative joy. Furthermore, we come to understand the law of causality— that is, we see that all beings are experiencing what they’re experiencing based on their own actions and not by what we wish for them—and therefore we relax in a deep understanding and acceptance of the way things are. This is the experience of equanimity. Finally, we take on an attitude of friendliness, kindness, and love toward ourselves, our friends, and even our enemies. This is loving-kindness. The culmination of the realization of these practices was referred to by the Buddha as the “sure heart’s release.” The heart is sure to be released from attachment, grasping, and confusion. As I have already stated, these practices are both a means to this understanding and a natural expression of it. These experiences happen naturally and spontaneously, out of our mindfulness practice and the cultivation of present-time awareness; however, these separate practices can also be cultivated. For many of us, depending on our own personal neurosis, there is probably one of these areas that we are lacking more than the other.

This is the prescription given by the Buddha: to balance our hearts and train our minds to find true freedom and happiness.

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