PRAYER: A Direction of the Heart

Prayer in its widest sense is “a direction of the heart” (Rilke) towards the highest good intuited by the heart in its depth.

Every religion recognizes this Supreme Good and seeks to awaken religious members to its existence through teaching, prayer and religious services. However, the need is always for each person

to realize this Supreme Good that religious teaching and rites can only point to, but never grasp.

 

Living as a monk in a monastic community for 33 years, living the Roman Catholic liturgical life year after year, I became well aware

of this. I also participated in facilitating Christian-Zen Retreats

for seven years and found a deep enrichment in my own life in encountering the insights of Buddhism. I especially found this

true in the Bodhisattva verses of the Metta or loving-kindness meditation:

 

May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all beings enjoy true happiness and the causes of true happiness.

 

Behind these verses is a deep exhortation: “Know from your own experience that just as you do not want suffering but only true happiness you must know that this is true of all sentient beings.”

Deep in our heart we all yearn for true goodness, kindness, happiness. No one wants anything but these. It is, above all,

when we are denied these and form negative beliefs about our selves and reality that the good we yearn for gets obscured and we create suffering in our lives. What is needed is to listen deep within our heart to what we most yearn for and form an intention that expresses this. Then we need to train our attention to cultivate these qualities of heart. We can do this in many ways –

by reflecting on sacred texts, prayer, chanting, meditation, practicing kindness.

 

Consider these parallel sayings of Jesus and Buddha:

 

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15.12-13)

 

“Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.” (Sutta Nipata 149-150)

 

Such verses as these also bring to mind the great life-directives such as the golden rule: “Do to others, what you would want them to do to you.” Again for anyone of us, our greatest challenge is to awaken to the deepest yearning of our heart wherein we connect with one another and with all.  When we do this we will realize that true happiness is the birthright of every one of us. The deepest work we will ever do, that is most beneficial for our self and for everyone, is the inner work of releasing suffering and the causes

of suffering that have impacted our lives (see Accessing Inner Guidance and Healing of Memories). This will always mean awakening to the inmost truth of our being that can free us from any patterns of thought and action that that are not in harmony with this truth.

 

 This is, has always been, Love. Love understood as totally

non-violent, life-giving love, that wills goodness to all.

 

His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama once related to a spiritual gathering that he visited a Benedictine monastery in Europe and that he spoke with a monk who lived for 5 years in a hermitage.

His Holiness asked the monk, “What did you do all this time?”

The monk replied, “I meditated on love.” The Dalai Lama replied to the group, “This is true spiritual practice.” We do not have to retire to a hermitage for 5 years, the sacred shrine; the hermitage of love is always within our own heart.  Another way to say this very simply is that what we meditate on we become.

 

The verse, “meditate on love” can be a bell of mindfulness calling us to wake up and find true direction in our life. One way I have found very helpful to do this in my own life is to call to mind enlightened beings, departed loved ones, who are always present to me.  We are always in communion with many beings of great love and light. They have walked the human path often with great struggle and pain and have realized the Love beyond all pain and sorrow. I say, “I welcome your presence to me, and I trust that you see the deep core of love and goodness in me. What is it that now needs to be awakened from this deepest core you see in me.  What needs to be brought forth in my life for my highest good

and the highest good of all?”

As we say such words as these and listen with our whole being, there can be an intuitive knowing of ourself that is self-validating, self-authenticating. We know that we are seen in love, we are understood in our struggle and pain. We know our self from the deepest loving ground of our life in communion with all enlightened ones who have awakened to this same knowing in them selves.  This is homecoming. The more we open to their deep qualities of love the more powerfully can they act upon us, for we are kin. We all share these deep heart qualities, what they have is ours, what we have is theirs.

 

The beginning of this knowing is trust even though we may not be able to feel that deep, true love abides in us. It is often the weight from our emotional conditioning that makes us feel this way about our self. The big mistake is to take this emotional conditioning as being the real truth of our self. It is not, and almost always as has been said, it has its roots in early childhood.

 

The more we open in trust to the enlightened beings we are drawn to, trusting their all-embracing love, their willing goodness to us, trusting that they see the deep core of love and goodness in us, the more we can be touched and awakened in ways that surprise us. As you read this dare to try it. It cannot harm you. Be willing to say exactly what you feel, “Even though I feel hopeless, a failure,

I trust your seeing the deep core of love in me that I feel in this moment I am cut off from. I trust and welcome your love radiating to my deepest being, I pray, what is it that needs to come forth from this deepest core within me in communion with you, that I

may realize my call to love and serve for the good of all?”

 

Be willing to find the deep voice of The Spirit in you in such prayers. They can open you to what nothing else can. They open us to experience, to know, the inner fountain of life-giving energies we so desperately need. Ask yourself if there is an enlightened being you feel you can open yourself to and trust. As I was a Christian monk for many years, the person of Jesus has been become very meaningful to me. You might want to read my article along with a meditation: Jesus, True Light. All enlightened beings manifest The True Light of our deepest consciousness. Even if you do not have an enlightened being you can name, simply call out to the one, the ones that are most certainly there for you. As you do this, trust

and surrender your life to their all-embracing love present to you.