True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

because for Buddhists, we are joy, but we are also pain; we are understanding, but we are also ignorance. Meditating

Whatever you do mindfully is meditation. When you touch a flower, you can touch it with your fingers, but better yet, you can touch it mindfully, with your full awareness. “Breathing in—I know that the flower is there; breathing out—I smile at the flower.” While you are practicing in this way, you are really there and at the same time, the flower i

We could say that when the energy of compassion and love touches us, healing establishes itself.

We are surrounded by miracles, but we have to recognize them; otherwise there is no life.

you. From time to time, I let myself look at the full moon; I take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and I practice: “I know you are there, and I am very glad about it.” I practice that with the full moon, with the cherry blossoms . . . We are surrounded by miracles, but we have to recognize them; otherwise there is no life.

Buddhist meditation is based on the principle of nonduality. This means that if we are mindfulness, if we are love, we are also ignorance, we are also suffering, and there is no reason to suppress anything at all.

The next time you are angry, practice doing walking meditation in a natural setting, for example. You breathe and you concentrate solely on breathing: “Breathing in—I know that I am breathing in; breathing out—I know that I am breathing out.” After a minute or two, you practice this way: “Breathing in—I know that I am angry; breathing out—I know th

If there is a deep pain within you, meditate.

We know well that suffering helps us to understand, that it nurtures our compassion, and that for this reason it is vitally necessary for us. So we must know how to learn from suffering, we must know how to make use of it to gather the energy of compassion, of love, of understanding.