Hi y’all,
Lately I’ve been thinking about big open heartedness. I heard this term recently in a talk by a Dzogchen teacher, Lama Lena. She uses big open heartedness as a way to describe the Sanskrit Buddhist term, bodhichitta, which literally translates to “awakened mind.”
But like the best words, bodhichitta evades translation. It feels like the kind of word we should leave alone, the way we leave so many European words alone—déjà vu, saudade, duende. They evoke states of being. They summon a host of qualities rather than trying to define a quality as singular.
Bodhichitta is like that. A tiny poem contained within a single word.
Big open heartedness feels like the second line to a poem. It alludes to a sense of geography, to a place we carry around inside of us but isn’t anywhere particular. The lack of particular location makes big open heartedness feel like a dizzying challenge, something that sounds nearly impossible, but isn’t. When you consider how cruel the world is, how terribly unfair, and how tedious that cruelty and unfairness can be, how all of it is beyond repair, beyond hope, and inevitably, how none of this is going to end well—big open heartedness feels like a rebellion.
It’s funny because people get into meditation to become happier, and you do, but what actually seems to happen is that you experience pain in a more open-hearted way. I suppose that’s why early English translators reached for the word compassion when they were trying to define bodhichitta. Compassion means with suffering, which is ironic because the Buddha says there is a way to end suffering—and yet the way we’re supposed to end suffering is through with suffering. I’m surprised more people don’t run away from Buddhism when they hear they will develop more with suffering. Maybe that’s why there are so many Buddhist-curious people out there, but really not many who want to get deep into the with suffering business.
The vision of a healthy mind in Buddhism is someone who feels pain with others but in a relaxed way that serves a source of refuge. This seems to be possible because there is actually enough space for everything to happen. Big open heartedness itself is a form of spaciousness. When we feel suffering without pushing or pulling at it, that is how we find freedom. Pain exists, but it does not own us. We are too vast to be owned. At some level, the pain is so indistinguishable from life itself it seems ridiculous to push pain away.
I was in my bedroom the other week when I heard a thud on the window. I knew what it was before I saw it. A little bird. I stood up to check to see if it was alright. On the ground, a lovely goldfinch lay motionless. His feet curled underneath him. He had a trim orange beak and a black cap and sunny yellow feathers. He was dead.
I happened to be in a Dzogchen meditation class when this happened. I sat back down on my cushion, a goldfinch shaped-knot in my chest.
We were reading texts about how awareness is like a clear light, unceasing, infinite, unborn. Even so, I really wanted the goldfinch to still be alive. I felt with suffering. He wanted to live and I wanted him to live, and I didn’t want dying to be involved.
I told myself: This isn’t so bad. Goldfinches don’t live very long anyway. This isn’t a bad way to die, at the end of summer. He didn’t know what hit him. There are so many other ways for small birds to die which are more unpleasant. Excruciating, even. Also, it wasn’t the big windows in the living room that killed in but the small ones in the bedroom, and perhaps this is some brutal Darwinian culling of goldfinches who don’t see window reflections well. And it was entirely possible that instant death on a window while a meditation class is going on might be some kind of blessing for the goldfinch, and maybe the goldfinch’s mind-stream continued to fly straight through the window into some radiant wild bird Pure Land.
None of this actually soothed the goldfinch-shaped knot in my chest.
It occurred to me that I loved the goldfinch.
How could you not love such a small, bright creature as it balances at the end of a blade of prairie grass, eating seeds? How can you see a goldfinch and not feel your heart melt a little?
Chögyum Trungpa talks about bodhichitta, and the bravery of it, in terms of a kind of sadness. “When tenderness tinged by sadness touches our heart, we know that we are in contact with reality.” Sadness, in a culture obsessed with happiness, is supposed to indicate pathology. But sadness when it’s related to an easeful, tender way, accords vividly with suffering. A melancholia that does not signal alienation, but a togetherness with everything. The terms are not closed. It does not coddle, but it assures. It does not enable, but it understands. It feels sorry for, but does not excuse. It feels love for, but does not insist.
I was doing myself and the goldfinch a kind of unnecessary injury by trying to make myself feel better. I wanted the goldfinch to be alive, and to be alive is to die. One day I will also die.
I started wishing the goldfinch something more than life and death. A third option. What do I want someone to wish for me when I die? Not eternal life in this form, but a recognition of how things are, not how I’d like things to be. I want to die into that greater knowing, into that big open heartedness.
My husband was at home working in another room. When my class ended, I told him what happened to the goldfinch. He thought about the hungry-looking juvenile fox who has been roaming the neighborhood for weeks, trying to catch rabbits. Then he had the idea of putting the goldfinch’s body out in the backyard under the bushes so that some other hungry animal, like the fox, could eat it, and live. He carried the goldfinch to the soft bed of leaves behind the shed near the evergreen bushes. I wished the goldfinch the same thing I’d want someone to wish for me.
I’d love to know: What are some places in your life where you experience big open heartedness?
Are there any poems, songs, places, or images that just take you right there?
Sneaky Secular Dharma On Big Open Heartedness:
This classic gospel album by Aretha Franklin, Amazing Grace, transforms my heart from hard little nut into a big juicy peach. It saw me through a family loss last year.
“Temptation” by New Order makes me feel like a twitterpated, slightly love-sick club kid somewhere in London back in 1987.
Lama holds PWYC meditations in the evenings during the new and full moons. She gives amazing down-to-earth instructions on non-fabricated meditation that will resonate for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. I was so glad I went! It was fun and silly and also deep and meaningful. And coming out of a very tiring summer (undiagnosed anemia, yay) I really appreciated Lama Tasha’s piece on fatigue.
I see Mary Oliver poems everywhere these days and yet I am not sick of Mary Oliver. My audacious literary fantasy is to write a book of poetry that is as lucid and open-hearted as Mary Oliver’s so that it really makes academic poets roll their eyes.
I enjoyed this podcast episode on The Emerald that includes Tibetan Buddhist protectors—the fierce, wrathful aspects of loving-kindness. The episode was high drama in a way that felt earned.
One of my favorite poets, Ada Limón, talks about poems as offerings to the planet on this podcast. She discusses how meditation influences her work, how we write a poem with “every poem that’s ever been written,” and the relationship between death and duende.
Coming soon! Creativity & Writing Classes Online:
I’m excited to let you all know that starting in January 2025, I’ll be offering quarterly classes on writing towards wonder and the numinous through my Substack. These classes will be free for paid and founding subscribers and available for purchase by anyone who is interested.
We will focus on a particular creative skill-set each class, such as devotion and attention, exploring the sublime, reimagining old myths, the magic of language, the ecstatic in the everyday, and discerning patterns in our work. Each session will include mind-body relaxation exercises and strategies to tap into your own poetic awareness.
These classes aim to provide spiritual nourishment through writing. The approach is Dharma-adjacent but not exclusively Buddhist. Your syncretic and personal traditions are welcome! Atheists who love Tarot, Zen practitioners who work with Amazonian spirits, Christian mystics who vibe with animism, yoginis who connect to Santeria, naturalists who recite Celtic plant-lore—BRING ALL OF YOU, please.
Likewise: prose writers, poets, and artists in other disciplines will all find something they can use, as well as people who haven’t written creatively since the third grade.
In the meantime, if you’re in Chicago on October 1st, please join me for a class at StoryStudio on “Writing Into Wonder and Amazement.” You will leave with a few new pages and hopefully, a renewed sense of enchantment.
P.s.
Y’all will be receiving one post from me in late-October. It will likely involve death, open-casket Appalachian funerals, impermanence, the climate crisis, infinity, and that scene in The Neverending Story where Atreyu loses Artex. I’ll also include a substantial list of interdisciplinary writing and creativity exercises on the themes of fall, death, and decay.
Oh, this is such a beautiful musing, Sarah. I love when you say, reluctantly, that you love the goldfinch. And I absolutely will not forget the image and the profound sensitivity and acceptance of your husband seeing the larger wholeness, and contributing to it by bring an offering to the fox. How beautiful! 🙏
Stoked to hear more about these writing courses!!!