“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”
~ Pema Chödrön
I always feel my grandmother’s presence so strongly at Eastertime. The collection of stone eggs that she brought back from her trip to the Orient, and so lovingly doled out to me over the years: They still hold her energy and her love. A small orangish-yellow one is my favorite. And while I wasn’t physically holding it, I could feel it’s energy between my hands during my meditation.
I found myself sitting there this morning thinking about relationships. And it was a very long sitting waiting for the sun to give me this yellow heart at the top of the clouds. I was thinking about my relationship with both my grandmother and my brother, and that I could talk with them about anything. I felt their pure love for me, their emotional support for me, well up in my heart, and I found myself crying. I’m crying now again as I type this. I miss them both so very much.
I lost my brother when I was 25 … Half a lifetime ago. And I began to lose my grandmother to alzheimers almost immediately following his death. I’ve had to harden my heart to get through those years without anyone to be there for me. I was thinking about my first yoga class when I was on The Body Holiday in St. Lucia, in December 2002. It makes me chuckle that my first teacher would be of the Anusara tradition. Of the heart. The beginning to the re-awakening of my wounded heart.
I was thinking what it was about both my grandmother and my brother that allowed me to be myself, to be open. It made me think of the Buddha’s four Brama-viharas:
- Love or Loving-kindness (metta)
- Compassion (karuna)
- Sympathetic Joy (mudita)
- Equanimity (upekkha)
The Brahma-viharas are said to be the heavenly abodes: excellent, lofty or sublime states of mind; or alternatively, by: Brahma-like, god-like or divine abodes.
According to AccessToInsight.org: “These four attitudes are said to be excellent or sublime because they are the right or ideal way of conduct towards living beings (sattesu samma patipatti). They provide, in fact, the answer to all situations arising from social contact. They are the great removers of tension, the great peace-makers in social conflict, and the great healers of wounds suffered in the struggle of existence. They level social barriers, build harmonious communities, awaken slumbering magnanimity long forgotten, revive joy and hope long abandoned, and promote human brotherhood against the forces of egotism.”
“They are called abodes (vihara) because they should become the mind’s constant dwelling-places where we feel “at home”; they should not remain merely places of rare and short visits, soon forgotten. In other words, our minds should become thoroughly saturated by them. They should become our inseparable companions, and we should be mindful of them in all our common activities.”
As the Metta Sutta, the Song of Loving-kindness, says:
When standing, walking, sitting, lying down,
Whenever he feels free of tiredness
Let him establish well this mindfulness —
This, it is said, is the Divine Abode.
In her book “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times“, Pema Chödrön says: “The only reason we don’t open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don’t feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else’s eyes. ”
In the presence of one whom dwells in the heavenly abodes, we can just “be”. We feel at peace, “at home”. From my yoga mat, I’ve learned that I can be that to myself, heart wide open, pushing past the fear. Anusara. How rare a relationship. How precious and how beautiful.
❤❤
