An invitation into the feeling heart and body, grounded in the path of Buddhism
By Rebecca Bradshaw
What does our heart really want? Do we know? Perhaps the complications and distractions of modern life have kept us so busy that we haven’t had time lately to check in. Try it now. Take a minute and ask your heart: What do you really want? Ask a few times if you need to. If you’re not the type to talk to your heart, just put the question out there and make space for an answer. Wait for a response from somewhere quieter than your cognitive mind, a voice that emerges from lower in the body. This answer is important because it is your homing instinct in your travels and provides fuel for your quest. It is your own inner wisdom, your questing heart, guiding you to freedom from inner bondage.
Perhaps our deepest human aspiration is the unbinding of the heart- mind, the release of the contracted burden of our heart into a wider space of freedom. Related to this, many of us feel the yearning for more aliveness, a deeper connection, more authenticity, and greater joy in this life right here on earth. We sense that something has been lost, some connection is missing, something more real is just out of reach. In modern life we have grown increasingly estranged from our embeddedness in the world. Living primarily in our heads, we’ve become strangers to our own bodies and sense experience, disconnected from intimate contact with the world around us. We spend more and more time indoors in synthetic environments and on-screen in virtual realms, further and further away from the earth. We’ve lost our roots and feel unstable and shaky, estranged from our home. Yet even so, all of us have had times of quiet, connection, and belonging, moments of homecoming that we know as a deep sense of place. We’re homesick for that place, and our yearning is our guide back.
We try to get home through the only way we know: rational thought. We keep attempting to think our way to peace. How do I become happy? How do I fill this void that I feel every so often when I put down my phone or pause in the hurried schedule of my day? If I just think long enough, I’ll be able to find the answer. But thinking is part of the exile. The answer isn’t in thought, the paradigm that we know. The answer is in the embodied heart, that untamed territory of feeling and sensing. What will we find there? Do we have a yearning strong enough to make the journey?
Down-to-earth dharma calls on us to establish a genuine connection with the world around us—to walk with a free heart and mind through this world, feet on the ground, eyes open, alive. Let’s engage our Buddhist practice to sing with the wild insecurity of the world, to let our hearts be touched and to respond. Life is calling on us to engage, to come out of our safe cognitive cocoons and sink through the heart down into earth, embodied. The world is getting crazier, and we need to be ready. We should know how to be present, to feel our connectedness and respond, for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our planet.
The list of problems we face—economic inequality, racism, sexism, social injustice, gun violence, polarization of views, authoritarian regimes, war, the climate crisis, and the extinction of species—can feel overwhelming. How are we going to respond?
We’re not going to be able to think ourselves out of all of this; we’re going to have to feel our way. Love is going to get us through now and in the coming times. Wisdom is needed, too, but love is going to keep us alive.
My book, Down to Earth Dharma, is an invitation into the feeling heart and body, grounded in the 2,600-year-old path of Buddhism. May it enable us to answer the call of the heart’s yearning, healing our homesickness. May it provide understanding of how we got here and how we might evolve. May it open us to authentic connection to the world around us. May it help save us.
From Down to Earth Dharma by Rebecca Bradshaw © 2024. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com
