Bodhichitta

 

 

The tenderness for life, bodhichitta, awakens when we no longer shield ourselves from the vulnerability of our condition, from the basic fragility of existence.  It awakens through kinship with the suffering of others.  We train in the bodhichitta practices in order to become so open that we can take the pain of the world in, let it touch our hearts, and turn it into compassion.

Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty

 

 

Grief is experienced and expressed in the most intimate of ways.   For a year after my father died, I spent afternoons at a cafe fragrant with yeast and coffee and buzzing with chatter and music.  It held me in just the right way for my heart to turn over and into itself in the sweet and sorrowful dance of mourning and loss.  My daughter after a long illness had to go through surgery. I took my grief for her suffering to the lake where the evening waters like a soothing Madonna drew the sadness out and into its deep dark center. 

 

If we do not allow grief to touch us, our hearts grow a hard shell that cuts us off from our inner richness and outer connections, from the source of love itself.  When we allow grief in, it does the opposite.  Our hearts become tender, open, and purified. Like ancient clay on skin, grief draws out the impurities leaving behind skin, muscle, and flesh that is refreshed and revitalized.  Open-hearted we let go of negativity and judgements and cultivate attunement to what is important in this one precious life.

 

Even though the texture and expression of grief is deeply intimate, our grief like the breath does not belong to us but belongs to life.  It is what gives meaning to love.  What would it mean to be a daughter or a mother, a friend or a lover, if we did not mourn the loss of the beloved?  Grief softens us the way a steady rain makes the soil soft and ready for growth.  With grief, compassion for ourselves and others can blossom.  In doing the work that grief asks of us, then, we bring more peace into the world.  Loss will be painful.  Grief transformed to compassion gives our losses meaning and purpose.