The Wise Heart: Buddhist Psychology for the West

have a really loving heart, and I’d just like to know that you’re praying for me.’”

The ability to concentrate brings vitality and clarity to any activity, whether basketball, computer programming, or chess. It enhances lovemaking and turning pottery; it is essential to making music, writing legal contracts, or forging complex business deals. In each of these areas, the ability to focus is crucial.

The functional self, even at its most healthy, is not who we are.

Mindfulness brings perspective, balance, and freedom.

If you close your eyes and feel carefully, you won’t feel a “body.” Body is only a word, the idea or concept level. What you will actually feel are areas of hardness and softness, of pressure, heaviness, and textures such as rough and smooth. This is the earth element. You will also feel areas of warmth and coolness. This is the fire or temperature

RITUAL: LANGUAGE OF THE HEART Just as we can be transformed by visualization, we can be transformed by the power of ritual. Ritual is one of the oldest human languages, perhaps the most universal. It speaks in elemental symbols, and these symbols, like dreams, are our original language. The word ritual comes from the Latin ritus, “to fit together.”

“beginner’s mind.”

PRACTICE: ONE-SIDED THOUGHTS Choose an important area of your life where you have difficulty or conflict. Bring to mind the key beliefs, the thoughts you hold about the situation, the people, the institution, the circumstance: “They are …,” “I am …,” “It is …,” and so on. After you have brought the beliefs to mind, question them. Are they completel

Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting. It is a sign of our unwillingness to