| Reclamation of Heart in Our Times of Dismemberment: From the Four Truths to the Four Bodhisattva Vows
Within the Four Truths is the potential of the Four Bodhisattva Vows. Together, as a teaching frame, they offer a powerful template to guide our personal practice as it intersects with the collective challenge of our times.
In the journey of awakening, initiation into the timeless Dharma is often accessed through a process of deconstruction of self and a direct meeting of dukkha, suffering, or our unacknowledged shadow. In the same way, the experience of our collective self in these times of intensity, is of daily dismemberment while being plunged into a confrontation with an overwhelming assault from our accumulated, collective shadow.
However, rather than caving in, such intensity can fuel our practice with a necessary sense of urgency. It has the potential to energize not only external acts that protect the Earth, her species, and each other, but more fundamentally, the necessity of embodying the innate freedom, clarity, and loving power of our authentic, intuitive heart, our wise, discerning mind, and our fully embodied innate intelligence. |
