“Truth or Dharma is a living presence in the world, rather than a truth about the world.

The Truth within us is reflected in the world around us and communicates with it. For example, it is the beauty within us that recognised the beauty in the world. It is the pain within us that enables us to feel compassion for others. That is how the Truth can communicate with us through the world and life situations.

Another example, the impermanence is the world and other beings reflects back to us the impermanence of our own life and body. In the same way, noticing the impermanence of our life and body arouses compassion for others in the world around us who are of the same nature.

Truth appears as beauty, love and pain and each time we respond to it from our heart, we take another step on the path back to realising that the Truth is actually what we are.”

Lama Shenpen Hookham

This is an excerpt from Trusting the Heart of Buddhism Book 2 – one of the many course books from the Living the Awakened Heart Training. 

The training is a structured, comprehensive, supported, distance learning programme in Buddhist meditation, reflection and insight. It teaches us how to meditate or how to deepen our meditation practise and how to take that awareness practice into our daily lives.

The Living the Awakened Heart training, which is open to all and offered on a donation basis, brings the profound Dzogchen and Mahamudra teachings to a Western audience in an experiential, accessible way, through spiral learning.

Find out more and how to join at www.ahs.org.uk/training