Dharma Talk: Cultivating The Heart Qualities

This is a talk given at the Kuan Yin Centre, Lismore NSW Australia on November 23, 2022. It briefly outlines some heart qualities including the four boundless divine abodes (warm benevolence, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity) and other related qualities (innate goodness, forgiveness, and gratitude). Then describes some ways we can cultivate them as meditations.
It is followed by meditation.

Transcript

So welcome,

Everyone.

Welcome to tonight's talk.

Tonight's talk is about the heart qualities.

So what I'll do is I'll first of all clarify what I mean by the heart.

And then I'll think I'll just go straight to the heart of the matter and talk about the heart qualities and how we can cultivate them.

So when I talk about the heart,

I'm talking about this place,

This spiritual center around our chest.

It's a kind of,

It's recognized in neuroscience and it's recognized in a number of cultural perspectives that this place is a place of processing emotions.

And it is also a place where we have connections within ourselves and others.

So yeah,

In a number of cultures,

It's recognized as this special place.

I was just looking up some pictures of Jesus Christ,

For example,

And there's paintings of him with his heart,

Opening his heart,

You know,

The bleeding heart.

And in yoga systems,

They have this chakras.

The chakras are,

A chakra means a wheel,

And the chakras are energy circles,

Energy cycles,

Energy whirlpools,

I suppose.

And I mean,

There's chakras on our hands,

The palms of our hands,

The palms of our,

The soles of our feet.

And there's various other places,

But there's particularly chakras around our central part of the torso.

And it's like,

The central part of the torso is like a magnet.

It's got different poles at either end.

It's like a different polarity,

Polarity charges at different ends.

And it's like the energy goes up.

And I kind of like,

Like an infinity sign,

But only with eight spaces,

Sorry,

Seven spaces,

The crown,

The forehead,

The neck,

The heart,

Solar plexus,

The hara or the tantian,

Or the chakra just below our belly button,

And then at the base of our spine.

And it's like these,

This energy goes up like this,

And it comes back like this.

And in that,

In that movement,

There's a wheel of energy.

So if people,

When people can see it,

It looks like a wheel,

Like a chakra.

So the heart center is,

There's six,

There's seven chakras.

The heart center is central,

And it seems to balance the connections with the earth and groundedness and survival and head,

The crown.

And I first experimented with this heart when I moved to Melbourne and many,

Many years ago,

1974 and 1975.

And I was getting involved in a spiritual Christian church.

And we used to do hands on healing every Saturday.

So I learned about the chakras within that Christian setting before,

This is even before I was doing yoga and so on.

And I learned to play with these energy centers by putting my hands on them.

And that you could put your hands on the base chakra and the crown chakra,

And there would be a connection between the two.

And I would move my hands up,

Up and down these three spaces,

I would move my hands up,

Up and down these chakras.

And then later on,

I studied massage and became a massage therapist,

A shatsu in particular,

But I used to work with energy centers as well.

So I'd always,

I'd do my shatsu and shatsu is awakening these energy systems anyway.

But sometimes I just used to rest my hands on the chakras.

And I'd always finish the massage with my hands on the heart,

Not in front of the heart,

On the back of the heart with my patients,

I suppose we could call them.

And also,

It's interesting because I've done massage for many years,

And these days,

I'm a psychologist.

And there are ways that we,

Some of the ways I've learned mindful self compassion,

For example,

They have a gesture of compassion,

Which places the hand at the heart,

Which is interesting.

And another thing that happens that I've noticed,

When I worked in on Christmas Island with asylum seekers,

The Afghanis,

When they meet you,

They put their hand on the heart.

When they meet you,

They put their hand on the heart.

They put the hand on putting in my microphone at the moment,

So they're probably just hearing a big blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But to put that put their hand on their heart,

As a gesture of gratitude and greetings.

Like,

Oh,

How do you do?

It's nice to meet you all.

Thank you very much for doing something.

So this heart cross cultures means something.

And when I first got interested in or introduced to Buddhism,

It was through Mahayana Buddhism,

And Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism.

And we began with Vajrayana practices.

And the Vajrayana practices,

They have deities,

There's a number of deities.

And the practice involves,

First of all visualising the deity could be Chenrezig,

Or it could be white or green Tara,

Or Avalokitesvara,

One of these deities visualising them as if they're in front,

And if it's for the deity of compassion,

It would be,

You'd visualise the deity and you imagine receiving infinite compassion,

Just kind of opening up to it and receiving it.

And then it would be there would be a visualisation of bringing the deity down through our chakras,

Down to rest in our heart.

And we would become one with the deity.

And then from our heart,

We would radiate whatever the quality that they're radiating,

They're emanating.

So it was usually it was compassion.

So it's just emanations from the heart.

And then later,

I got more interested in Theravadan Buddhism.

And of course,

The four heart qualities,

The four divine abodes were central in this work were a central feature of Theravadan Buddhist practice.

I mean,

For me,

It was a balance between inside practices,

Which were really quite intense for me,

I would always balance them somehow with the divine abodes.

And more recently,

I've more you say,

Let's say in the last 10 years or so,

I've been understanding these divine abodes as boundless qualities.

Boundless.

Boundless is a translation of a word,

A term called Apamana.

Apamana means boundless.

And this boundlessness is and these qualities,

Warm benevolence,

Compassion,

Appreciative joy,

And equanimity are the states of ways enlightened beings relate to themselves and others.

They are qualities of relationships.

So and it's this sense of boundlessness,

Which is the way it was taught in early Buddhism,

Is a represents a state of awakening.

So when we can abide in boundless metta,

Or loving kindness,

For example,

Or karuna,

Compassion,

Or boundless mudita,

Or appreciative joy,

Empathetic joy,

Sometimes called,

Or boundless equanimity.

Equanimity here is a divine abode.

It is the way awakened beings relate and abide.

But it for us to be in those states are like a temporary awakening.

It's like we're abiding in those awakening states.

This is the way it is to be awakened.

So it's a really wonderful practice.

And there are ways we can nourish and cultivate these four divine abodes,

Or boundless divine abodes.

As well as the four divine abodes,

There are other heart practices that I've discovered.

And I think they're kind of aspects of the four divine abodes.

And these are forgiveness,

Gratitude,

And one that I've learned recently from Stephen Snyder,

Actually,

Who's a Zen and Jhana teacher,

An absolute awareness teacher,

Innate goodness.

So it's a really,

These qualities all rest in our heart.

So I'm going to go through these qualities and briefly describe them in the next,

I don't know,

Couple of minutes,

And then talk about how we can cultivate them.

So,

Warm benevolence or metta relates to this quality of warm friendliness.

It's this wish for happiness for ourselves and others.

And it's really light,

It's buoyant.

It's this lovely feeling of befriending ourselves and friendliness to another.

Many,

I can have,

I've given discourses and whole workshops on metta.

Karunā or compassion,

I like to borrow the term from His Holiness the Dalai Lama,

As sensitivity to suffering,

And the commitment to alleviate it,

Which involves an awareness of suffering,

But not just an awareness of suffering,

Not just empathy,

But action involved in the compassion,

Like the intention for action,

The movement towards action.

I mean,

In neuroscience,

We learn about how there's different types of empathy.

Not all empathy is healthy.

Sometimes we can,

Psychopaths can have empathy,

Because they can tune into what's happening for you,

And then know how to manipulate you.

So not all empathy is fantastic.

Sometimes empathy is not all empathy is fantastic.

Sometimes we might empathise with another person's suffering and just feel their suffering and not differentiate it as theirs and mine,

And not be able to differentiate it as theirs,

Sorry.

And so it causes us a lot of suffering.

But empathy with compassion is different.

There's a whole different lot of neural networks awakened.

And it is this divine abiding,

It is uplifting.

The next quality,

Appreciative joy,

Is also called Mudita in Pali,

Is in early Buddhism,

They really talked about it as the joy that arises from the appreciation of another's good qualities,

Virtues,

Successes,

And skills,

And so on,

The goodness of another.

But I,

You know,

When you consider that there's no real me and them,

When you think about not self,

There's just,

There just is.

I like to think about it as appreciation of good qualities,

Appreciation of successes and virtues,

Regardless of whether they're yours or mine.

So,

So this is a really uplifting quality,

It's a joy.

It's a kind of a bubbly experience,

It's really lovely.

And all of these qualities have near and far enemies,

I won't go into details of the near and far enemies,

Otherwise I'll be here for an hour.

But the next quality is equanimity.

Equanimity as a divine abode means that,

Well equanimity is a really wonderful quality,

It means this,

Usually translates as this unshakability of heart.

You know,

One is not shaken around by the ups and downs of life,

By the eight worldly winds,

Praise and blame,

Loss and gain,

Pain and pleasure,

And fame and disrepute.

One is stable.

When it's considered as a divine abode,

An abiding,

I like to think about it as this sort of centeredness,

This peacefulness,

This quality of divine peacefulness,

That then we can radiate,

We can emanate.

So the other qualities I was talking about,

Actually I'll talk about one way we can understand these four heart qualities,

And then I'll talk about these other subsidiary,

These other related qualities.

And Alio beautifully compares these four heart qualities to the sun and the moon.

Mettha he describes as the sun at midday in a temperate climate where it's beautifully warm,

And you know how in winter you go out in the sun it's lovely and warm?

It's like the sun at midday and it just shines on everything,

Warming everything,

It's really beautiful,

We can bask in it.

Of compassion,

This quality is compared to a sunset,

It's kind of like beautiful,

But the past is somehow,

We're leaving the past behind somehow,

There's some sort of,

Kind of there's a vibration in our heart that's not genuinely happy,

But there's a sort of a soft and uplifting feeling of compassion.

Of mudita it's described as the sun rising at dawn,

And it's kind of this upward lifting energy,

This joyous energy that makes the birds sing,

And you see the sun rays coming through the space of the sky shining on leaves and dew,

And it's all really sparkly.

And of equanimity,

And Alio describes it as a full moon on a clear night,

Just softly shining on everything,

Making it clear but there's a softness about it,

There's a kind of a,

Yeah,

A real luminosity about it.

So these related qualities,

Let's go to gratitude first.

I think gratitude is very similar to,

And sometimes I describe it the same as mudita,

But there's a different tone to it.

With mudita there's a kind of a joy,

There's a joy involved.

With gratitude,

Often people,

You'll find when we're having gratitude,

There's a thankfulness and there's often tears coming to our eyes,

And it's kind of closer,

I reckon,

To a beautiful sunset rather than,

You know,

The sun rising.

But look,

That's just me.

We all know what gratitude feels like.

It's a really lovely quality and it's uplifting.

The next quality,

Forgiveness.

Forgiveness,

I think,

If you look at that term forgive,

It means to bring back to a form of state.

To bring,

Come back to a form of state and it's like we are hurt by ourselves,

Our own actions towards ourselves or another's actions towards us,

Towards us,

And it's like we carry that hurt around like a burden on our shoulders.

When we forgive,

It is like we're bringing back to a form of state.

We're kind of releasing that burden we're carrying around and putting it back,

You know,

Putting it back,

We're letting it go.

And it is this feeling of relief and lightness.

Now,

Innate goodness,

As I mentioned earlier,

I just,

Only recently in the last,

I don't know,

Six or seven months,

I've started learning about innate goodness and I've been practicing innate goodness practice.

It's really wonderful.

And it's described by Stephen Snyder,

Who's a Zen practitioner,

He teaches about absolute,

He teaches very much about the manifest and unmanifest aspects of the absolute.

And innate goodness is a recognition of the absolute and realizing and recognizing our own wonderful innate goodness.

Our goodness does not depend on someone's praise or us getting rewarded for doing things or acting in particular ways or succeeding in anything in particular.

It's just the way we are.

Just,

If we go back to our,

I don't know,

Our sources,

I suppose,

It is that genuine innate goodness that we are.

And something that's really interesting,

I've noticed,

Is if we can recognize our own innate goodness,

We can also recognize the innate goodness in others.

All we need to do is look at them and we'll see their innate goodness.

And if we can recognize innate goodness in another,

We can also recognize it in ourselves.

So,

I'm aware of the time and I won't go on for too much longer.

I just wanted to mention how we can now cultivate these qualities.

And the way I do it is that I,

First of all,

Just bring attention to my heart,

Bring awareness to my heart.

It's a soft awareness.

It's not like a penetrating,

Insightful investigation.

It's just a soft awareness to my heart.

Then I'll just tune into these particular qualities in my heart.

Sometimes I might kindle it,

I might spark it with reminders.

Now,

With loving kindness or warm metta,

What I remember is one of my six grandchildren squealing with joy when they're about three or four,

Something like that.

They're just so lovable that you have this warm quality of loving kindness awaking in your heart.

It brings a smile to your heart and that becomes like a sign that we rest our attention there.

And we just let go of the ego,

We let go of trying and it nourishes it all by itself and it grows all by itself.

It just fills us.

And then we just let it become boundless,

Let it become like up-pamana,

Boundless.

Compassion,

What I use is either my own suffering or the suffering of another.

I'll notice there's a kind of a movement in my heart when I see another suffering or when I think of my own suffering,

Like I might have had some heavy days or a hard time,

I go to myself,

Poor old Malcolm.

So there's a little bit of compassion there and I just nourish that as well.

Let my awareness rest there and it just kind of grows and grows and then it just becomes boundless.

It's lovely.

Mudita,

I used to think of the person that's used for mudita,

In the systems,

In the Visuddhi Magga anyway,

Is a person who is naturally jolly and virtuous,

Naturally happy,

Like thinking of someone like His Holiness the Dalai Lama or I often think of John Hale,

For example,

One of my teachers,

Just naturally virtuous.

I kind of celebrate in their virtuous qualities.

But more recently when I did a long retreat on emptiness and the four boundless divine abodes,

I recognized that if I can think of someone's good deeds,

It can awaken a sense of appreciation.

And that appreciation,

I just nourish that.

It's like you get appreciation,

You get the sign of appreciation in your heart,

And then you just sit with that.

You let go of what stimulated it,

You let go of the kindling and let it stimulate.

On my recent retreat,

I used to think of,

On a retreat I did last year actually,

Or two years ago,

Sorry,

Two years ago,

Not last year,

Sorry,

Last year,

Not this year,

I would think of my partner Mary and how,

What such a good person she is,

How generous and kind she is.

And that would awaken a joy of appreciation.

With the phekka or equanimity,

Generally what I do is I think of the freedom I have when I can let go of my ego.

And I see things as causes and conditions rather than people wandering around doing things.

Just things coming together as causes and conditions,

Taking the personalities out of this equation and just seeing life as causes and conditions arising and passing.

And as a response to that,

I have a sense of peacefulness or a matter of factness.

And it's a kind of a tone in one's heart.

Then again,

Just sit with that,

Let it grow.

With innate goodness,

Innate goodness,

And this has been a really lovely one.

Again,

I think of my grandchildren.

And I think of times when I've just looked at people,

Regardless of age and regardless of generation,

Regardless of my relationship to them,

And I've seen something like the divine in them.

I think of that.

It could be anybody,

Any age,

But it's very,

And it's really easy with my grandchildren.

And I then look in my own heart and recognise that I'm also like that.

So I find my own innate goodness.

Stephen Snyder describes it as a feeling of lightness and buoyancy like.

.

.

It comes from a cold climate,

It's how he talks about a warm breeze.

You know,

I would describe it as a cool breeze.

There's a real lightness in your heart,

So you just stay there.

And it seems to radiate,

You seem to contact it in a lovely way.

And have I talked about forgiveness?

No.

Forgiveness.

I usually say a prayer.

I usually say there's a lovely forgiveness prayer.

Forgiveness,

When I first learned about the Four Divine Abodes and how to practice them,

They would proceed with a forgiveness practice.

And I learned about these Divine Abodes back in 1976,

Actually,

Late 1975,

1976.

And it was always taught before you did a session of metta,

You would do a request for forgiveness and providing forgiveness.

So there is a beautiful prayer that I read,

And maybe I'll finish this little talk off with this prayer.

And you can all.

.

.

I can't join you because you don't have it,

But it's easy to get.

It's the Buddhist prayer of forgiveness.

And if you can't find it,

Feel welcome to email me and I'll send you a copy.

So,

Buddhist prayer of forgiveness.

If I have harmed anyone in any way,

Either knowingly or unknowingly,

Through my own confusions,

I ask their forgiveness.

If anyone has harmed me in any way,

Either knowingly or unknowingly,

Through their own confusions,

I forgive them.

And if there is a situation I'm not yet ready to forgive,

I forgive myself for that.

For all the ways that I harm myself,

Negate,

Doubt,

Belittle myself,

Judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions,

I forgive myself.

And that's the way I do the forgiveness.

It's like,

Again,

It is a feeling,

But I think it's a little bit.

.

.

Because it's sort of cognitive,

I reckon to say a prayer is a good way to awaken forgiveness.

So thank you very much.

I trust this brief talk about the spiritual health of the heart,

The heart qualities has been helpful and may we all be happy,

Peaceful and free.