from Ken McLeod

Let my heart turn to practice.

Let practice become a path  

Let this path dissolve confusion.

Let confusion become wisdom.

Over the next four weeks, I'm going to look at each of the four lines of this verse. Known as The Four Dharmas of Gampopa (or The Four Teachings of Gampopa), this little verse captures the essence of the mature mahayana vision of practice in the Tibetan tradition. (You will find numerous translations and commentaries on the web. When you compare translations, you often get a better sense of the original.)

Gampopa, a brilliant young doctor in the 11th century, was unable to heal his wife when she fell ill. When she died, he was so devastated by the loss that he retreated into a monastic order. In time, he became a well regarded scholar. Eventually, he just had to give up his monastic position because academic learning did not ease the pain in his heart. He become a mountain hermit, practicing under Milarepa's guidance and blossoming into one of the great teachers of the Tibetan tradition.

Let my heart turn to practice.

Spiritual practice is an emotional response to the vicissitudes of life. Western thinking has relied on the view that we make or should make decisions rationally. This theme goes back at least to Greek thought and was a central principle in Age of Enlightenment thinking, the putative triumph of reason over emotion. Modern economic theory's reliance on this assumption is, arguably, one of the reasons it frequently fails. Greed, after all, is an emotion.

Even if you are of the opinion that you do make conscious rational decisions, look deeper and you will see that your decisions are based on those aspects of life that you hold most dear in your heart -- fairness, compassion, justice, loyalty, honor and so on.

Both classical and contemporary books contain detailed discussions on why meditation and spiritual practice are beneficial, helpful, and/or important. Perhaps a few people are persuaded by these discussions. For most, though, it's more emotional. Something isn't working in your life and you reach a point where you have to do something about it. Or you have had experiences, intimations of possibilities, that you simply can't ignore.   

In either case, you have little choice. Your heart yearns for some kind of practice, even if you don't yet know what that means.

Where the heart goes, the mind inevitably follows.

Yet with all the demands on our time and energy, we tend to rush our meditation practice, avoiding our emotional relationship to it. We want to "get enlightened" as quickly as possible.

When you do sit down to practice, don't start meditating right away. Take a few moments to repeat this one line a few times.

Let my heart turn to practice. 

What happens? The other day, one person said that it was like touching a bruise that she had been ignoring. She felt the pain of her life, a pain that she had been trying to push away. Part of her felt relief that she was actually acknowledging the pain. Another part of her felt intimidated by all that the acknowledgement implied. Another person said it was like allowing herself to come home, to listen and respond to what was really in her heart.

What happens in you?

Too often, we try to make something happen in our meditation. All that is needed is to step back and feel what is already there. The rest takes care of itself.  

Quotation

The practice of meditation is the study of what is going on. What is going  on is very important.

-- Thich Naht Hanh