Opening the door of your heart

A few days ago I had to see my doctor for vertigo. Vertigo is a condition that results from an ear imbalance. When it comes, you feel as if the world is doing a topsy turvey. So everything is spinning and you feel nauseated. I usually get it on my right side. So when I turn my head to the right I feel the spinning and the nausea. But when I keep my head turned to the left, I feel normal again.

 

When I met the doctor, she induced it, which was very uncomfortable. But she said that our discomfort and any associated feelings of confusion, fear comes from the fact that the brain is trying the figure out what is going on it. It has lost its footing and desperately looking a way to establish normalcy. She said the best thing to do is keep the head turned to the side which creates spinning and keep the eyes open. This is pretty hard because not only you feel the spinning, you also feel as if you are about to throw up. But she said that keeping the head to the direction of the spinning while feeling nauseated is the best way to allow the brain to figure out that this isn't a danger situation. This way you would allow the brain the stabilize itself on it's own.

 

I came home all drugged up. While I was dozing I realised something very important. Ajhan Brahm always talks about 'opening the door of your heart'. He says this to almost all things we experience good or bad. Irrespective his advice is to keep the door of your heart open to whatever that you are experiencing. I realised that this was similar to my doctor's advice on keeping the eyes opened and head turned to the spinning and nausea. Just like the brain needs to see and experience the discomfort to stabilize itself, the heart needs to experience all that is happening to find it's balance.

 

Isn't that incredible? While I have had this notion for sometime, it never hit me home like when I realised the similarity of 'opening the heart' to 'opening the brain'.

 

So what happens when the heart opens up? We usually have our hearts totally opened to the things we like, enjoy or are easily to handle emotionally and physically. These are things we like. Other times we have our hearts closed to things we don't like, unpleasant, difficult to handle emotionally and physically. These are things we don't like. Then there are times when we have our hearts partially opened...well we like it sometimes and other times we don't like. So it closes and then opens only to close again when things turn difficult. Whichever the way it is our hearts are like a revolving door which opens and closes. But as a result it is completely driven by what it experiences. So the heart really doesn't have a chance to settle down to find a peace long enough. Because it's constantly opening and closing. The experiences in our lives are always fleeing. When we begin to think all is working well, something goes wrong. On the other hand when we start thinking nothing could be worse, the light start to shine through. So whichever the way, it's fleeting so that the heart does not have times to settle.

 

But when we have the strength to keep the door of our heart open to what we like as well as what we don't like, it has times to settle. It does not start spinning for everything that it experiences. This is a state of clam, peace and joy.

 

But to keep the heart opened takes effort and great strength. Just like it takes effort and fearlessness to turn the head towards spinning. It's even more challenging when it comes to matters of the heart for you would start feeling a sense of being out of control...or worse being in control of others emotions. But as we slowly take that fear in by looking at it, by slowly start taking the discomfort in, there comes a moment when we start feeling less fear, less stress and if you see that you would stay longer. Then eventually, you come to peace with what's outside. Leaving only peace inside of you.

 

This is a great place to arrive and stay and at first to recognise that we can find peace irrespective of outside conditions. Then the more likely we would do that and the more peace we will find because the heart it not spinning out of control. It is slowly stabilizing itself.

 

This is the path of the Buddha and this is I believe what Ajahn keeps on saying.

 

I also realise that the more we open the door of our hearts, the less separation we will start to feel. We usually tend to associate ourselves with what we like/want but disassociate with what we don't like. This allows us to establish a sense of identity. "I don't like this" or "I like that", "I am not this" or "I am this". But when our hearts start open up, we become all that is external to us. It becomes all embracing. Then we cannot separate ourselves anymore. Or the tendency becomes less and less. Along with that we begin to feel more at ease with things. I believe eventually this leads to the complete dissolution of sense of self, leaving at its heart only peace.

 

 

Mind Support

About a week ago I injured my knee. I was put on an immobilizer to support my knee until it can work on its own. Now I can walk and bend the knee and don't need the support of the immobilizer as I used to a few days ago. This helped me realise that it works somewhat similarly in our minds.

 

We need mind support. I see the mind similar to the immobilizer that I used to stabilize and provide support to my knee. When we have emotions that carry us away and over power us, we need a good mind support. Without that we could break or sustain serious harm to ourselves and others.

 

What is a mind support? A mind support is having a mind that can cushion us from the strong or small emotions that we face in life. They create discomfort for us or take us on a joy ride. Either way it puts us off balance. The only way we can go through this without falling off of the line is to have a strong mind support.

 

For example, when we get angry, the mind support is love and kindness. When we are in despair and suffering the mind support will be compassion. Like that there are many mind supports that we can develop.  A strong mind will use these positive emotions to counter act against negativity and make us stable. Otherwise we could fall into depression, guilt, sadness.

 

But what happens when we are on our joy ride. Then we are thrilled that life is going the way we want and nothing can go wrong. This is foolishness. Because at the end of the thrill is a period when are adrenaline wears off and with that comes a sense of depletion. It's like when we go on holiday. Everything build up to day the day we arrive at the location. Then it's a nice dream, if we are very lucky. But then we have to come home and face daily chored which is a hit on our energy levels.

 

In the same way, when life is all smooth and colourful, a strong mind will allow you to look into the impermanence of it all. A soft knowing that would let you know that all can end. But the softness in the mind won't make you depressed. In fact it only energises you to have a good time but when the drop arrives, it holds you steady because you have known it all along.

 

So, like my knee needing an immobilizer to hold it in place and give it support, we need a strong  mind to hold it in place during the vicissitudes of life and keep it above the changing tides. If not we will be carried away by the currents and would be lost. This is what happens to most of us on a daily basis. We are either happy that things are going well or unhappy that things are not going well. Most of us would probably think that if things are going well we don't need any support. But it's when things are going well that we require the maximum amount of support because, at the end of it comes the sadness of things not going well. So in order to support oneself a mind support is essential. When things are not going according to our wishes, we need the mind support in order to keep it afloat so to speak. Otherwise we could sink into negative mind stated even more. From frying pan to the fire as they say. A strong support during tough times, can hold it in place until the good times arrive. When the good times arrive, a strong mind will hold it in place, so that it won't fall when the bad times arrive.

 

It's like a see-saw. At first it swings back and forth violently, but with time it balances off and becomes steady. This is what a strong mind support would do. It would help one stabilize oneself during good and bad times until it reaches a point of great calm. A state of contentment borne out of being in balance and not riding with the moves. Energy is preserved. A state of well being is reached. There is no tiredness in the body nor in the mind. A state of restfulness and peacefulness.

 

Just like the knee heals itself with the immobilizer, we begin to feel a sense of ease and comfort from within.

Why letting go is hard

Couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to be a steward at Birken Monastery. It's going to be in May for a month. This year I was hoping to attend a retreat anyway. When I saw the posting on the web site, I thought it would be way a better than a retreat because I get to be of service not only to myself but to those in the monastery. I have been in monasteries before and attended retreats. So I am used to being away from my home and my husband. But no sooner I signed up, I started having feelings of apprehension, almost bordering on fear.

 

I used this for my investigation. What am I being fearful of considering that I have done this sort of thing before. I felt I was feeling fear of leaving things behind - home, husband, cat and all the familiar things. The fear in another way was having to be somewhere new - a new place, new people, and a new way of operating. Something unfamiliar.

 

Then a thought came to me. Don`t I have to leave what I like and love anyway someday. At lease this time round I can come back but there is that day when I have to go for good, which is my death.

 

Dying in some way is not dissimilar. You have to leave behind what is familiar - your family, loved ones, belongings, basically the whole world as we know it to exist and above all your body. What a scary thing. I mean consider it. I am feeling a sense of apprehension just leaving behind a home, a husband and my cat for only a month and I have the choice of coming back to it. But I am taking myself with me...even when I have the most precious travelling with me, I still feel apprehension. What could possibly be my fear levels when I am dying or realise that I am going to die.

 

I also realise that I feel my apprehension because of what might change during my time away. Will things be the same....will my husband be distant when I come back....will things go back to where they were before I left. I feel that dying could give rise to similar fears. I mean you know for sure, things are going to change and in your absence everything is going to change for those you knew. Imagine the fear and the sense of sadness one might experience.

 

I had my uncle die of cancer earlier last year. I remember my mother saying that he was sad that he might die and that he way crying. In many ways I figure, that he might have experienced the same sadness and even fear of what I described before. Might be more that what I am experiencing right now.

 

Isn`t it funny...that we all know that we are going to die but it never makes us feel frightened! It doesn`t make us fearful that we have so much to leave behind. And that so much is going to change in our death for us as well for others. Yet we live not considering this at all. Or is it that we are fearful what might happen, should we consider this. I guess that`s a reasonable fear to have. But should that fear prevent us from getting to know what is an inevitability.

 

In life, we have trained ourselves to move away from what we don`t like, enjoy, make us happy and instead to seek what we like, brings us joy, makes us happy. As a result of it, we sometimes don`t want to face what is right in front of us, believing that if we ignore, turn away that perhaps the very thing that we want to avoid will disappear, go away and go into oblivion. But unlike all things we face in our life, we also treat death in the same way. Well some don`t even want acknowledge the existence of it. So once again we live life, hoping that in our avoidance that some how that too will go away or the fear of it will disappear. We even tell ourselves that there is no choice but to face and that  we will do so when the time comes.

 

But that again is a big fat lie. I am saying this after years of observation of myself and others.

 

I have seen mothers, who have lived without recognizing that their children will grow up and change, go way cry out of sadness and fear. But those mothers just like all realise that there children will grow and change. And they all feel they are going to be different but when the times comes they find that it`s harder than they first thought. Same with husbands and wives. While they acknowledge the loneliness they would feel in the absence of another, they do no realise how much that causes hurt, fear.

 

What I am saying it, stating something it much easier than having to face the actualities. We are all born with same emotions though we display them so differently. So a persons sense of loss is not that dissimilar to anthers though we might handle them differently. A persons fear is not dissimilar to that of another though again we will handle it differently. But yet we go through life thinking that we are so uniquely different from one another, mostly due to our individual looks. But that in itself fails to give us the opportunity to learn from one another. That one persons pain, can also be our pain, anthers sense of fear can also be our fears, a sense of loss can also be our sense of loss, hurt is also our hurt.

 

So we continue down our life towards death in the same way. We fail to learn from those who have died before us. We only see these things as events in our lives. The grandparents loss, not realising that they were parents to our and not recognising that loss, sadness. In that we fail to realise the sadness that we might encounter one day when our parents die. In the same way we don`t see or can`t recognise how a person feels at the moment of death. I haven`t personally encountered a dying moment of any person. But I would like to experience this in many people. Because some day I will face that myself.

 

Having the smallest glimpse into it, I hope, would shed some clarity. But in the event I don`t get the chance, at least I have learnt from the stories of others - like my uncles. In identifying myself with each of them, and their pain, I have come closer to death as a living being. I recognize the pain, fear, sadness that could possibly arise from it. But having recognised them, I feel more at ease with death than I have been ever before. I used to be mortified of death when I was little. It was a scary thing because people go away. When I grew up, I could at least talk about it and think about it. With the passing away of my 4 grandparents, 3 uncles, I became closer to it. But I never saw it within myself.

 

It was only a few years ago that I started doing that. Then last year one of my uncles died. I was not there to see him die. But I saw him three months before he did and heard stories afterwards.

 

There  seem to be a great letting go at the moment of death. It is that fear and sadness of letting go, not being to know what is going to happen, or have control over things that happening (be it sickness) or those things that you are going to leave behind. It arises because we have not lived a life of letting go. All of our lives we live to increase, gather and build. We have degrees, jobs, children, houses, money and we never let go of any one of these things out of our own choice. At a moment we have to we do it, because we think there is no choice.

 

A life lived that way can only have ending. The same dilemmas we have faced in life. So we die, because that is our only choice. But I realise that it does not have to be. We don`t have to die because we have no choice. It would be sad to do that. We should die because we choose to. Then when it happens, no matter when, we have chosen to die. as a result we could adjust our lives to some amount of letting go. Just like we would prepare months in advance for a wedding, a baby being born, for an exam, we can prepare ourselves to die. When we do that well, we have the choice to have a death. With the choice we can chose an easy one or a difficult one.

 

So, coming back to my start, I realise this time away as my death. Leaving something behind that I cannot have and having to experience something I don`t know. Coming to a peaceful state with that makes things easier. Just as I hope that it would be in my death as well.