Life can harden the heart, or it can soften it. We always have this choice. Below is a short map of how to meet it in practice.

The Vulnerable Point

Inside each of us there is a vulnerable point called bodhichitta. Chitta means mind and heart at once; bodhi means awakeness and complete openness. This point is as tender as an open wound and inseparable from our ability to love. Even the cruelest people have it: everybody loves something, even if it is only tortillas.

The same point is linked to compassion, the ability to feel the pain we share with everyone. We habitually fence this pain off with walls built of opinions, prejudices and strategies, and we reinforce them with anger, craving, envy, indifference and pride. The vulnerable point works like a crack in those walls. Once we learn to notice it, we can use moments of vulnerability (love, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment, a sense of inadequacy) to awaken the open heart.

Under the armor of anxiety, panic, resentment and blame lies genuine sadness. It connects us with everyone who has ever loved. It humbles us when we are arrogant, softens us when we are unkind, and wakes us when we prefer to sleep. This continual ache of the heart can be accepted as a gift and shared with others.

We are never separated from the awakened state, even when we feel hopelessly confused. The openness and warmth of the heart is our true nature. It is like the sky, which stays the same however many clouds cover it. We know the clouds better, so the sky is hard to believe in. But we can touch it even in the hardest of times, because it is available in pain as well as in joy.

Two Levels of the Open Heart

Unconditional. Direct experience free of concepts and opinions. It cannot be pinned down; it is like knowing in your gut that there is nothing to lose.

Relative. The ability to keep heart and mind open to suffering without shutting down.

Those who train wholeheartedly in both are called bodhisattvas, or warriors. They are warriors of nonaggression who hear the cries of the world and are willing to “train in the middle of the fire.” They enter difficult situations to ease suffering, and they cut through their own reactivity and self-deception. Our tools are the same for everyone: meditation, loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.

Uncertainty and the Nest

We want healing, but without discomfort. We try to control the uncontrollable and look for security and predictability. But uncertainty cannot be avoided. Not knowing frightens us, and it is also the adventure itself.

This training promises no happy ending. The “I” that looks for something to hold on to gets a chance to grow up. So the central question is not how to avoid fear, but how we relate to discomfort, to our emotions, to the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day.

We are often like timid birds who do not dare to leave the nest. It has long smelled stale and no longer serves its purpose. No one is coming to feed us, protect us or keep us warm, and yet we keep waiting for the mother bird. We could do ourselves the greatest favor and finally leave. That takes courage, and a few hints do not hurt. But we can begin with a question:

Do I prefer to grow up and meet life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?

When the Ground Gives Way

The Buddha’s students had long studied impermanence and the absence of a solid self. They knew that nothing is solid or predictable, and they understood that grasping creates suffering. But the longing for ground runs deep, and the ego can turn anything into a foothold, even the belief in change: “I have understood that everything is impermanent, so now I stand on firm ground.”

So in the teaching on supreme wisdom (prajnaparamita) the Buddha took away even this last support. Whatever we believe has to be let go. Every description of reality is a trap, and every conclusion has to be dropped, because holding on blocks wisdom. Krishnamurti did something similar. He was raised to be the “avatar,” and he disbanded the order built around him because it gave people too much ground to stand on.

Form Is Emptiness, Emptiness Is Form

This is the most famous paradox in Buddhism, from the Heart Sutra, and it has two halves.

Form is emptiness. Form is what simply is before we project our beliefs onto it. To see it as empty is to remove the barriers and veils and understand the perfection of things just as they are. First we drop our preconceptions. Then we let go even of the belief that we should look without preconceptions. We keep pulling the ground out from under ourselves.

The trap. One can become addicted to this state: it gives a feeling of freedom from our doubtful emotions and the illusion that we can float above the messiness of life.

Emptiness is form. This half brings us back. Emptiness shows up as war and peace, grief, birth, old age, sickness, death and joy. We are asked to stay in touch with the throbbing quality of being alive. The practices of relative bodhichitta help here: the four limitless ones (loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity) and tonglen. They let us engage fully with the vividness of life with an open, unclouded mind. Things are as bad and as good as they seem, and there is no need to add anything extra.

Nothing to Hold On To

The teaching goes on to deny everything one could grasp: the three marks of existence, suffering, the end of suffering, imprisonment and liberation. There is no final attainment, no ultimate answer, no place to stop. And when the mind is free of warring emotions and the belief in separateness, fear disappears.

The teaching on supreme wisdom is really a teaching on fearlessness. To the extent that we stop struggling against uncertainty and ambiguity, our fear dissolves. Total fearlessness is full enlightenment: whole-hearted, open-minded engagement with the world. Meanwhile we train in patiently moving in that direction. By learning to relax in groundlessness, we gradually connect with the mind that knows no fear.

The Mantra of the Path: the Heart Mantra

This mantra comes from the Heart Sutra. It is known as the Heart Mantra, or the mantra of Prajnaparamita, perfect wisdom.

OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA

As a seed contains the tree, the mantra contains the whole teaching. It can be rendered: “OM gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, so be it.” Or: “OM groundlessness, groundlessness, more groundlessness, even beyond groundlessness, fully awake, so be it.”

It describes a path on which we step further and further. Whether you are a beginner or have practiced for years, you are always stepping further into groundlessness. Enlightenment is not the end of anything. It is only the beginning of fully entering the unknown.

Practice: Six Steps

1. Notice the wall. When anger, envy, indifference, pride or the urge to justify yourself arises, stop and name it: “here is a wall.” Behind it there is usually a fear of being hurt.
2. Find the crack. Look for the vulnerable point: sadness, tenderness, gratitude, loneliness, embarrassment. Do not run from it; stay with it.
3. Stay with discomfort. The question of the training: “How do I relate to what is unpleasant?” Not how to get rid of it, but how to be next to it.
4. Widen the circle. Ask yourself: “Who else is feeling this right now?” The pain becomes shared, and that is the beginning of compassion.
5. Let go of the conclusion. When the mind says “now I understand how it all works,” that is a new foothold. Let it go, and then let go of the thought that you must think nothing.
6. Return to life. Do not hang in “everything is empty,” and do not hide in “everything is too real.” Live what is happening as it is, with nothing added. Formal practices help as well: meditation and the four limitless ones.

In the morning, or before a difficult meeting, you can ask yourself: “Do I want to grow up and meet life directly?” If you like, repeat the mantra as a reminder that the path continues.