Buddha's Heart: Introduction | Audiobook

This is an excerpt from Buddha's Heart, written by Stephen Mugen Snyder, Roshi, and narrated by Keith Ekō Horan.

An inspiring and healing guide to immersive meditation in the ancient Buddhist heart practices — the brahmaviharas. Informed by Jhana Master and Zen Master Stephen Mugen Snyder, Roshi’s experiential understanding and suitable for those at any level of meditation practice, Buddha’s Heart leads us step-by-step through the heart-opening meditations on equanimity, empathetic joy, compassion, and loving-kindness (unconditioned love).

Transcript

Introduction Navigating daily life has never been more complicated.

Life's unrelenting demands disturb our inner state of peaceful quiet.

Constant electronic interruptions can lead to feeling hopeless,

Helpless,

And without inner support.

There is an alternative to feeling overwrought by life.

We can turn inward to engage in soothing,

Nourishing Buddhist heart practices that feed our soul.

These ancient heart meditations allow us to gently,

Lovingly touch our contracted,

Wounded hearts while opening to the flow of the unconditioned heart qualities of our deeper nature.

Engaging heart meditation means following a formula to relax our learned resistances to heart qualities,

Such as compassion,

While opening to receive compassion for ourselves and ultimately directing it for the benefit of others.

I have found heart practices to be a balm for the soul as well as a portal to spiritual awakening and deepening self-realization.

So have many of my students.

As the world descends into increasing overstimulation by non-stop news and constant social media updates,

It becomes critical to find the quiet,

Nurturing comfort afforded by the heart practices in this book,

Contacting and cultivating a deeply felt sense of our undivided wholeness with all other beings.

Ongoing contact with the undivided heart connection with all living beings provides an unshakable knowing that we are never truly isolated or alone.

I first discovered the Buddhist heart meditations in the 1990s.

At the time,

There were no books on the topic that I could find.

I met someone who had learned the practices while spending time in an Asian monastery.

I was clumsy with the meditations to start,

But could feel a growing connection with my own heart.

At that point in my life,

I saw myself as a head and belly practitioner,

Meaning I had intellectual understanding and had developed intuitive knowing in my belly.

But my heart area was fairly inaccessible to me.

I eventually learned that going deep in my meditation,

Belly,

And conceptualizing the emotional issues,

Head,

Were insufficient ways to work with emotional issues that were arising in my life.

If I did not invite the vulnerability in my heart,

Relief escaped me.

In the succeeding years,

I have found comfort by turning to these heart practices when I feel disconnected from my deepest self,

Particularly at times of emotional turmoil in my life.

I did not deeply undertake these heart practices on retreat until 2004.

During a two-month retreat with the support of my teacher,

The Venerable Pao Akshido,

I engaged these practices to a high level of absorption concentration called jhana.

The practices penetrated not only my consciousness,

But also the hidden recesses of my heart,

Which opened and were awakened through the intensity of the jhana level of concentration meditation.

This intensely profound level of accessing these unconditional heart qualities changed me.

I knew the deep connection ever-present with all living beings.

This gave me comfort.

Intimately knowing this unbroken connection with all life,

I could readily open to receive the universal heart qualities described in this book.

After the two-month retreat with the Venerable Pao Akshido,

He encouraged me and another senior student to write a book,

Practicing the Jhanas.

The Saido felt that it would be compelling to others to learn about the ancient meditations from the modern perspective of an accomplished Western practitioner.

He invited me to teach with him on a retreat in 2006,

Which included him observing my one-on-one interviews with students.

After that retreat,

He authorized me as one of the first Western lay teachers in his lineage.

Teaching and guiding students on retreat,

I began to see that several conditions were preventing them from deeply accessing these purification of heart practices.

Psychological blocks and resistances,

The deeply held belief in a separate self,

And a perspective that these heart states were simply emotions.

I wrote this book to address these obstacles and share my own practice experiences in hopes of helping novice and experienced meditators alike to open more fully to the sublime,

Wholesome heart qualities.

In any building project,

A stable,

Secure foundation is needed.

Chapter 1,

Heart's View,

Orientates us to the reality of our deepest true nature and explains why we tend to overlook the warm-hearted support available in the underlying connection with all living beings.

We then shift to preparations for the heart meditations to come.

The second chapter,

Wholesome Support,

Is an in-depth exploration of Buddhist precepts that make us more skillful in our actions,

Which minimizes remorse and regret.

In Chapter 3,

We learn to anchor our practice in concentration meditation,

Specifically mindfulness of breathing.

Concentration meditation is the fuel that powers our journey into the profound depths of our heart.

The foundation section will likely be a refresher for the experienced meditators.

The heart practices presented in the next section are traditional Buddhist meditations handed down from teacher to student for over 2,

500 years.

These timeless and timely meditations are available to anyone with the desire to uncover the precious jewel of love and soften and heal their contracted wounded hearts.

Each meditation in Chapters 4-8,

Innate Goodness,

Upekkha,

Equanimity,

Mudita,

Empathetic Joy,

Karuna,

Compassion,

And Metta,

Loving-Kindness,

Opens us to a different heart resonance,

Exposing its resistances,

Hurts,

And unimaginable curative beauty.

Recognizing and understanding resistances,

Such as anger,

Hatred,

And envy,

Is a crucial part of the process that is explored in a unique way in this section of the book.

When we have the freedom,

The inner permission,

To feel these negative emotions without acting upon them,

They lose most of their unconscious power that otherwise suppresses the tender heart qualities highlighted by these meditations.

For the experienced meditator,

There is a deepening progression of these heart meditations.

Each heart meditation can expand to the point that we drop our perception of being a body or mind,

And our awareness rests in and as each pure heart quality.

Steeping in our pure,

Radiant heart profoundly alters our understanding of who and what we are.

It also opens us to deepening our personal and love relationships through sharing our increasingly undefended heart.

Novice and expert alike will find the practices in Heart Purifying helpful for directing meditative awareness to gratitude for life's blessings,

Offering forgiveness to ourselves and others,

And opening ourselves to the hurt places we hold tightly closed in protection.

Chapter 11 then invites all readers deeper into the undivided oneness of reality,

Highlighting the wholeness embracing each of us.

Finally,

In Culmination,

We see the life-altering results of engaging these practices in meditations.

Chapter 12 shows how these heart qualities can and will spontaneously arise to perfectly meet suffering in the world.

This is the natural functioning of the heart's wisdom.

We then explore in Chapter 13 the journey from deep in the absolute realm,

Through formless reality,

Through experience of absence of self and no-self,

To our everyday world.

Understanding this journey of reality helps us to know,

For ourselves,

That these heart qualities originate from an unconditioned,

Infinite source.

I suggest you initially read the book from start to finish with an open heart and mind.

Allow each section and chapter to fully land in you.

Once you complete the book,

Begin the meditations or practices that call to you or to which you are directed by your teacher.

Take your time with each meditation and exercise.

Be open and curious without expecting or directing towards any specific result.

Let yourself be steeped in the heart wisdom and joy of each practice.

I encourage you to keep a journal to record what you learn about each meditation practice and which resistances you meet,

As well as how you are affected and changed.

Finally,

Allow these practices to work in you and on you.

Take a few weeks or a month to dive deeply into each practice and meditation.

Follow the path where these meditations lead without any expectation.

Thoroughly review your life for people and things for which to offer sincere gratitude.

Be open,

Tender and willing to make contact with the hurt in your heart as you sincerely offer forgiveness to yourselves and others.

Be willing to be new to yourself as your tender heart guides and nourishes you.

I recommend that each reader and practitioner allows themselves to be as soft and permeable as possible while engaging with these practices.

The greater your willingness to be impacted and change,

The deeper your transformation will be.

The more tender your heart becomes,

The more resilient,

Flexible and responsive you will be.

Ironically,

The more authentically vulnerable we become,

The safer and more protected we are.

When we feel safe,

Supported by our hearts,

What would have once wounded our hearts passes through without landing.

This is because we can feel more deeply with fewer historic contractions and can have a response that is true in this moment for us.