If in our heart of hearts we don’t want the thoughts to have a negative influence on others then they won’t. Even if we have wished others harm in the past we can negate those thoughts by our sincere regret and send out endless good wishes instead. Continue reading Can I Hurt Others With My Negative Thoughts?
it is never too late… Now that you have a better understanding you can help him by recalling both his and your all-pervading Buddha Nature in which nothing is ever lost. Continue reading Is there anything we can do now to help people who have died a long time ago?
When someone is in our heart they are always in our heart – through life through death through all their lifetimes and all our lifetimes too. That is how the Bodhisattva vow works, that is why we can make a vow to bring all beings to Awakening. It makes sense because we are connected with all beings in our hearts whatever life circumstances they are in or identities they have adopted. Continue reading How should we practise for those who have died? Do we focus on their ‘old’ identity? Should we expand the practice to all beings too?
When NHS workers and others risk their lives on a daily basis in order to help others – somehow this gives their life meaning – working alongside others doing the same thing gives their life even more meaning – life is about the joy at the interface between ourselves and others; distinct yet not separate. Continue reading Is our need for love driven by an unconscious recognition that we are not separate?
Each person is a mandala centred on the heart which continues through life and death and into future lives. Each person has a unique pattern of relationships with all other beings all of whom meet in the heart – all our hearts interpenetrate. Continue reading When someone dies, are our heart connections with others strengthened by our shared loss?
We meet at/in the interface, in our presence there, in the heart’s awareness – that is the ‘space’ we meet in. That is why it feels so intimate. That is how we know the ‘other’ inseparable yet distinct from ‘self’ Continue reading What does it mean when you say we ‘meet in the heart?’
To access our ever-present inner resources we need to connect to what I call the Heart Wish, a place somewhere within us that is the source of all our wishes. By this I don’t mean something we wish for; it’s not our ideas about what we think we would like, but a deep place in our being that those ideas emanate from. Continue reading Article: What is the Heart Wish?
Lama Shenpen on our connection to others: “Our living connection with other beings is mysterious. We cannot find any boundary to our awareness and yet another being is another being to be loved and responded to. They are not just our imagination. So that living connection or boundary between one being and another is deeply mysterious and wonderful. It is the source of all joy … Continue reading Our Mysterious Connection With Others
Tibetan Buddhism talks about our connections (Tibetan: Tendrel) with each other as being lasting and meaningful and that they can continue between lives. “This is actually pointing to something extremely profound that one can only come to understand gradually as one comes to understand the full implications of emptiness or openness. What it means is that you cannot separate things off from each other and so there is no way we can ever escape our connections.” Continue reading Connections Outside Time & Space
