HEART & MIND

For much of my life I gladly scoffed at people like the one I have become today. Nowadays I remain unfazed by the barbs directed at me from people like the one I used to be. I was a skeptic, disconnected from two parts of my being I have come to value more than any other today: heart and mind. I thought of the heart merely as a pump that kept the body alive by sending blood to its various parts. Did I feel love? I suppose to, in my way. I loved my family, didn't I? Loved the people close to me in my life? I did, but it was only ridiculously late in life that I realized I had defined love mostly as an obligation; something I was supposed to do. The love I truly felt--and I'm sure I did--was hidden from my by the other emotions I failed to identify or understand: fear, anger...

As for the mind, I had it all confused with the brain--that little piece of meat enclosed in its box up top. I thought a lot. I thought my thoughts were my mind. What a small-minded notion, I know now, after years of visiting it almost daily in my meditation practice. The mind, along with the heart, are capable of far more than I ever thought possible; indeed what any of my fellow skeptics believe possible. Some were provoked the other day the public post on my social media page, where I proposed the radical act of sending good thoughts to the bellicose president of Russia and wishing him, of all things, happiness. I was taken to task for, one, the ridiculous notion that I could actually send thoughts--"mental telepathy", perhaps? Two, that this dreadful man deserved happiness, or that he was perfectly happy with his evil ways. Three, that it would make an difference anyway. 

All true, I suppose, unless you happen to espouse my definition of happiness and share my belief that the powers of heart and mind are endless, and mostly unknown and as yet untapped by us human beings even in the 21st century. Oh yeah, I used to think when I heard the Beatles singing on and on about how love is all there is; or when I came across the happy teachings of Ram Dass and other gurus. Is it strange that I now believe this stuff myself? That I find love everywhere I care to look with an open heart, and recognize its healing, all-unifying properties? If this is a kind of wisdom, I came late to it, and am still discovering it as I live and breathe--the latter an important part, I have discovered, in this whole process. 

My daily forays into the unbounded space of mind are humbling reminders of how great it is, how unknowable, and how small my little self. If I find happiness there it's not the "mindless" happiness of blissing out, as some suppose; it's rather the freedom I can create from all the suffering I otherwise experience in my life and the world around m: freedom from want, from need, from ambition, from dependency, from animosity toward others and oppression from them. The work of meditation--and I see it as work--is to find those sources of suffering and release myself from them insofar as possible.

One last word. I think my skeptical friends underestimate the power of intention rooted in the mind.I know that I will not make world peace, nor change Putin's mind, simply by sending out those thoughts. But intention is a powerful thing and, joined with the intentions of millions of my fellow human beings similarly intent on peace it is a force to be reckoned with and, despite everything, will eventually win out.