Soft Spot

“We all have a soft spot, a tender heart, somewhere. That soft spot is the door to our true essence, intrinsic awareness. It is this naked tender heart that leads us to enlightenment. If we didn’t already have it in us, we couldn’t activate it. If we don’t have the seed we can’t grow the flower.

Mostly our compassion is partial. We have it for our own loved ones and select groups, but not for every single being. When we generate it for every being our hearts get huge, this is what is called ‘the vast attitude’ impartial compassion. Then we have the same compassion and tolerance for Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Jews and every other tradition. We have compassion for spiders, rats, and mosquitoes as well as our own pet gerbils, ferrets, dogs and cats.

When we have impartial compassion we have it for those who do us harm and for those who love us, every being! When we generate loving kindness we activate the tender heart that longs for the happiness of all beings. …

We can also develop the tender heart by remembering the kindness of someone else. Appreciating the kindness of others opens our hearts. Traditionally the example for selfless dedication is our mother. She gave us her body during gestation, stayed up at night with us in infancy, fed us when we were helpless, taught us to live and protected us. She was thinking of our happiness above her own, and was always thinking of our welfare.

Even if our mothers weren’t perfect, they almost always tried their best to care for us. At the very least, they gave us the gift of our body, which is very precious. If thinking of your mother really doesn’t stimulate a feeling of open heartedness, there may be a friend, loved one or someone else who opens our hearts. We can begin by remembering them. Appreciation and gratitude are a key toward generating the motivation to be like a mother to all beings, and to care for them with motherly love. I remember one of my Tibetan teachers used to call everyone he met ‘mother’ and look at everyone with the gaze of a mother looking at her only child.

Because we have already been born so many infinite times we have had all beings as our parent at some point. So we think about that and we spread that gratitude to everyone. Sometimes I try, as a practice, to treat each person I meet as though they were actually someone who had been a dedicated mother for me, who gave birth to me and cared for me lovingly. It’s amazing to see people in the grocery store, gas station, bank, restaurants in this way. Suddenly they aren’t ‘other’ they are ‘us’. In this way Bodhicitta can spread from a single access point and become huge, immeasurable, and our hearts can open and encompass all beings with love.

When we are engaged in this process we make the effort to change our motivation to serve others, to relieve the suffering of all beings everywhere. Buddha, Christ, and all the enlightened ones arose from this intention. If you look at their teachings you will find love and compassion at the core. The turning away from self-orientation to compassionate response is the key to turning from suffering to happiness. This deep inner turning changes the motivation for everything we do and say, and even what we think. Changing our intention from egocentricity to compassion is the key to reversing cycles of suffering. We do this with compassion for ourselves as well as for others.

We are seduced by and addicted to suffering and perpetrate our own suffering through our actions. Even if we could completely wake up at this very moment, would we want to? Why do abused women when given the opportunity to leave, go back to their abusive husbands? Why do abused children become abusers even though they suffered so much from it? Why do soldiers coming back from war kill their wives and children? Why do smokers keep smoking? Why do we get so caught in our fears, our hopes, our habitual thoughts and judgments, even when we know better? Because there are karmic pathways, these are not so easy to change. Like the gullies here at Tara Mandala where the water rushes after a rain storm, causing more erosion, getting deeper with each storm, these pathways are predetermined and take great efforts to change. This is grossly obvious in the case of soldiers taught to kill in war and who are then unable to stop when they get home. They have developed a pattern, a habit. It’s subtler to see the patterns of our own selfish delusion brought from childhood or ingrained tendencies from previous lives. Whether gross or subtle, the root of all our obscurations is the egoistic attitude.

To move out of selfishness toward working for the happiness of others requires effort. We start with glimmers of open heartedness that we already have. But not everyone can find it that way, because they may have no reference point from childhood.

I remember a young man who came to Tara Mandala. He was damaged from a terrible, loveless childhood. We were talking about compassion one day and he said that he couldn’t conceive of love because he’d never had it. It was difficult to find a way to begin to open his heart. Then an occasion arose which provided him with an touchstone to develop compassion. That summer we had a lot of little rabbits that were around the land. They weren’t very afraid of people, so you could go right up to them and watch them eat tender blades of grass under the gambol oak trees. They were small, furry with little white tails and big soft ears, terribly cute. One day I saw him looking at a baby bunny with a soft smile on his face. So then when we met again, when he told me he couldn’t remember the feeling of love, I suggested he remember his feeling when looking at the baby rabbit. Then he could use that as a way to generate compassion for himself and others. So even though he had no memory of love, he still had the compassionate heart. Everybody has it, even hardened criminals. We just have to want to begin, to make that inner turning.

Even if we only make small steps in the development of a compassionate mind, it can be important. If before we do something we check our motivation and then try to develop an altruistic intention drawing on our tender heart, that will gradually increase it. If we focus on negativity, negativity will grow. If we focus on the positive, that is what will develop. In the same way we can develop Bodhicitta. This is the meaning of training in Bodhicitta. This is called ‘lojyong’, or mind training, and it is the essence of the Mahayana path.

The Tibetans have a saying, “if the intention is good, then all levels of the path will be good. If the intention is bad, then all levels will be bad.” So at every moment we should check up on ourselves, asking “What is my intention?” Then we can know what the results will be. We ourselves are the only ones who can know our deep inner intention and we are the only ones who can generate a change.”

~ Lama Tsultrim Allione is founder and resident lama of Tara Mandala.  She is author of Women of Wisdom and Feeding Your Demons.