The Awakened Heart

Approximately 1300 years ago, the Buddhist Indian monk/poet, Shantideva, wrote The Way of the Bodhisattva, elucidating an important part of the Buddhist path. The Awakened Heart is not commentary on the poem, but uses it as background.

In Aaron’s words: For many years you have heard me talk about making space for the heavy emotions. A primary emphasis of my teaching has been that it is not bad to feel emotions, that when certain conditions are present, certain emotions will arise. … I teach people to make more space around the emotion. … If you don’t want those emotions to arise you must begin to look deeply at the conditions out of which they arise, primarily the conditions of fear, of the illusion of separation-separation from other beings and separation from the divine. … Through a series of practices and exercises, one could more deeply open to that highest aspect of the self which does not choose to invite in the conditions which give rise to such painful emotion. This is not a “getting rid of” anything, rather we note that side by side there is the tense and frightened human and there is the innately loving, open-hearted human. You have a choice: you can enact your fear or you can choose to note your fear, to observe that the loving Awakened Heart is always present, to nurture it and to enact that loving heart. You always have a choice.