Excerpted from Jack Kornfield's book, A Path with Heart
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you relate to the notion that wherever you are is your temple? Can you share an experience of a time you were able to treat what you encountered as your practice? What helps you be an undivided heart?
Jack's reflection was an affirmation of the decisions I have taken in my life. It makes me so happy to know that where I am at present is where I ought to be and in fact, it is a holy place! At no point in my life, I have regretted the decisions I have taken. My decision to marry my wife and now the decision to live in a village away from the city is nothing short of where I should be. In Gratitude for this affirmation!
I remind myself that whenever I get reactive, it is a time to work and pay attention more fully to what is transpiring. It is a chance to go inward, inquire into what is getting triggered, work with the defensiveness, feel my feelings and try to get to the unmet need that is behind my feelings. Often, a lot is revealed. Sometimes it is simple and has a historical antecedent, and it is just old wounds getting rubbed again.When compassion for myself arises, freedom comes, or the needed action becomes clear, or something else. The compassion isn't just for myself then, it erases boundaries and arises as a kind of warmth that spreads outwards and includes what is out there. Sometimes that is difficult people too....
"Death has not taken birth and Life never dies".Such total eternality of self consciousness (Atman) is in fact that Temple & God really we are longing for and nothing else. I have found this earnest search is the key to the practical spirituality.You are in everybody and everybody is in you made possible by an undivided expanded heart.This is only and simply the love,compassion, sympathy & empathy connecting all in a single worldwide web.
Beautiful . Practise spirituality in the Here and Now . Be true to yourself .
When I was 18, I told my (then) boyfriend (who is now my husband) that I had considered (outwardly) marriying Jesus while still here on earth ... (as in the form of a nun). He told me there is little I could do as a nun that I could not also do as his wife!?! Well, let me just say bringing contemplation and prayer to a married life is just what the Great Doctor (God) ordered! Marriage and Family is impossible WITHOUT God. I am so thankful! God reaches us where we are ... And takes us to where He is! My husband and I are 40 years deep into relationship (34 years of marriage and 6 years dating) ... Without God, we would have come undone by now! My husband and my hearts are (at times) divided. My God and my heart are usually on the same page ... My sin is the only thing separating us. Thanks be to God for the Saving Power of The New Born King, Jesus. Amen
Jack Kornfield's essay and Chief Seattle's statement are beautiful. Wherever you are is your temple, out of which and with which you can express the love from which the temple arises. The challenge is for us to do that. At those times that I live with awareness that we are one, when I see the other as myself, I am compassionate rather than competitive, and I am living my practice. At those times that I live with awareness that all that is is one, I am aware that what I do to this planet and universe I do to everyone and everything including myself, and I am living my practice. What helps me have an undivided heart is reminding myself through thought, reading, discussion, reflection, meditation that I have an undivided heart that is part of an undivided universe. Such awareness brings me peace, joy, and satisfaction.