LOTUS HEART SUTRAS

Lotus Heart Home || Sutras part 1 || Sutras part 2 || Sutras part 3

LOTUS HEART SUTRAS

I'm nobody,
who are you?
Are you
nobody, too?
That makes
two of us.
We're crazy.
How dreary
to be a
sane body.
How dreary,
like a frog.
To belch
one's neuroses
all day long,
while sitting
in a fog.

Who can own the word of God?
How can one buy or sell that which cannot be owned?

Being happy is simpler than you think.
It's as simple as thinking.

Thinking one new thought to replace
the 50,000 thoughts you normally think
throughout the day.
Thinking a Lotus Heart Sutra.

A sutra is a thread, a cord.

To these slender chords hold tight, and fast. For as
filament fine as they may seem to be, they are enduring,
indestructible Truths, which connect is to the Truth,
to the eternal, which is beyond words.
The Truth beyond truth.

Centuries ago, in the legend land of Crete, the maiden Ariadne handed
Theseus a thread of Love. "Follow this," she said, "
And it will lead you from the maze, to me. There, in the
light of day, I will be waiting, to embrace you."
Like the fine filament which led Theseus from the
labyrinth's murky depths, through its seemingly impenetrable
midnight, away from the Minotaur monster's devouring grasp: so,
too, these threads will lead you through the maze of your
own mind, away from the monster who fear-lurks there. And,
step by step, you will ascend from this tomb.

As you walk upward, light will begin to ray through the
dark, until you emerge into brilliant light, into a sunrise land
of freedom love, where joy sings birdsong symphonies.
And blessed bliss blows breezily, puffing white island clouds
across a summer-clear sky.
This is the kingdom of the Heart. This is the kingdom
of God.The labyrinth is the kingdom of the mind. It is
the kingdom of the Ego.
The Minotaur is our own Ego. In the recesses of our own
mind he lurks, waiting to devour us. Although he has the
body of a man, he has the head, the mind, of an animal.

It is this which makes him a monster.
To live, to truly live, we must confront and slay him.
Theseus descended into the maze, expecting to die. Instead,
he emerged, reborn.
But first he had to kill the Minotaur.
And it was Love, it was the Heart, which saved him
from death.
The man of Love has the mind of Light.
So, like Theseus, in loving trust, cling tightly to these
threads, and begin your ascent towards the Sun of
Consciousness. Towards the ever-radiant Heart which beams eternal
Love upon all that is. And loves all that is, in every moment.
Some call this sun God. Others call it Allah,
Brahman, Yahweh, the Absolute, or the Ascendant. I call it Heart.
Or the I AM.
All are the same Sun of God.

The Heart is a seed:
waiting to open, waiting to flower.

The lotus seed has an incredibly thick case. So thick, it
can remain intact, uncracked, for years.
Or even centuries. Lifetimes.
Several years ago, botanists discovered an ancient lotus
seed. For centuries, it had lain dormant, buried in mud, on a
pond bottom. Carbon dating proved the seed to be a
contemporary of Buddha.
Unlike Buddha, whose heart grew into a glowing lotus of
the greatest compassion, the seed had never blossomed. Instead,
it lay eternally in the dark, in its casket shell. Yet, within, lay
the potential for life. At any moment, the shell might choose
to crack, to become a flower. However, in order to bloom,
the seed had to give up being a seed. In order to live,
the seed had to die.
The very shell, the closed, impenetrable barrier which
seemed to defend and guarantee its existence, had to open,
and fall away.
Only then could the imprisoned heart manifest, and grow.
It took great work to free the seed. The botanists had to
handsaw the shell open. But, then, the miracle happened.
After the seed was replanted in a new pond bottom, a
little, threadlike shoot of green life emerged from the crack.
Wending its tender way through the thick murk, towards sunlight,
it finally surfaced. Then the stem thickened, into a spine. At
its top a bud formed, and blossomed, to float its
many-petalled, swan white grace upon serene waters. Like the Heart
floats on the calm surface of the clear mind.
Encased in fear, the seed exists within you, longing to fulfill
its potential, and become a lotus.
Allow the illusion of fear to die, so that your seed may
blossom into the Lotus Heart of Love, and truly live.

These sutras are also mantras.

Mantra, which is derived from the Sanskrit verb
man (to think), means an instrument of thought. Which, indeed,
is what man is. An instrument, a creator, of thought.
And also its creation.
He is both the musical instrument that creates the note,
and the note that is created.
In every moment, he creates a note. Or a silence. The
thoughts he chooses to think are the notes he plays, and each
thought note has a different vibration. So, in his mind, man
composes thought-song. Then these songs radiate from him, into reality.
Like any music, it affects those who hear it. Anger creates
a low vibration. Love's is high and pure and crystal clear.
Every morning, in the woods, I awaken to birdsong.
Every morning, the song is the same. Each bird has its own note,
its own trill of song. It begins with a three-note warble. Then
a second bird adds a high, rivulet trill. In the middle of the
trill, a third bird joins in with a low undercurrent. The second
falls silent; a fourth begins.
When each bird has contributed to the song, the first
bird begins anew. And the same song goes on, around and
around, until the dawn becomes day.
If a bird left, or a new bird arrived, the song would change,
If a bird changed its note, the song would change. So would
the atmosphere of the woods. Every time you think, you create
an atmosphere. Not only in your inner world, but also the
outer one. Think carefully, then. In every moment.
These sutras are structured to create a specific song, a
specific vibration. If you change a note, you change the song.
Therefore, play the notes exactly as given.
I once taught the first sutra to a friend who
practiced affirmations. At the time his attitude was somewhat
derogatory: there's nothing special about this. It's just
another affirmation to add to my collection.
A week later, he telephoned, pressuring me to give him
the second sutra.
"If there's nothing special about these, why do you want
the next one so badly?" I asked. "Do your affirmations do the
same thing?"
"No," he admitted. "They don't."

The surface of the mind is like a record.

And every thought we have is a needle. That etches a
groove into its ever-impressionable surface.
A thought like, "There's something wrong with me."
As we think this, then re-think it, then think it again,
the groove grows deeper and deeper. Until it becomes a deep
rut in the brain. And we find ourselves constantly,
compulsively thinking, "There's something wrong with me."
The only thing wrong with you is the fact you think there's something wrong with you.
And this constant thinking, this deep rut, becomes a
program. A habit. That takes control of our minds, and our life.
To break the habit, to end the program, the old grooves must
be erased.This is why conventional psychology may be
ineffective. For, each time we recite the past, and relive those
old emotions, we merely deepen the groove.
To be free of our past, we must not remember.
We must forget. We must let go.
By erasing all the old grooves. By replacing the
negative, downward thoughts, which only serve to deepen our
dissatisfaction and unhappiness, with a positive, upward one,
which leads to joy. To the Heart.
By thinking the Lotus Heart Sutras.

The mind is like the ocean.

Across its surface, thoughts move, stirring it into
motion. Some, like gentle breezes, softly riffle little licks of wave
into life. Others, wilder, stormier, gust it into seemingly
uncontrollable tumult, and tempest. Into crashing, smashing waves.
And yet, were one to dive beneath the surface of the
wildest storm, one would float effortlessly in a place of peace,
of eternal calm and silence. A place untouched by the
passing breezes, or wildest winds of life.
This place exists in all of us. Beneath the surface of the mind.
I know. Because I have been there.
I can go whenever I choose.
And so can you. By practicing the Lotus Heart Sutras.
For this place of peace is the Heart.
And the more I go there (and I may be there in every
moment), the less the surface of my mind is stirred by
the winds and storms of life.

The surface of the mind is like a stream.

Whenever it moves, it babbles.
If a stream doesn't move, if it becomes blocked or
dammed, the standing water becomes stale, lifeless, choked with scum.
Whenever we hold onto a thought, instead of letting it go,
the memory stagnates in our mind. Or our body.
For it is the very movement, the frisky play of the
stream, which keeps it pure and fresh and alive. To dance in
free rivulet grace, its every overlap and twist winking
reflective sparkles of life light joy. Most forms of meditation attempt
to control the mind by fighting thought, by attempting to
dam its flow.
This simply causes water which is already stale with
unhappy, distressing thoughts to become even more
stagnant, for the way the body releases stress is by thinking.
Have you ever noticed that when you are upset, your mind races?
That thoughts arise even more furiously?
To block the release of thought is to block the release of
stress. What we need is to release the stress. Let it go, let it
flow. Downstream, and away. As thought. For it is never
thought itself which causes us distress. It is the type of thought
we choose to think. In this type of meditation, we allow the
mind to flow freely. We control the mind, not by damming it, but
by controlling our choice of thought. Instead of choosing an
old, stagnant thought, one which breeds disease, we choose
to think one which will sparking sing and dance downstream.
A Lotus Heart Sutra.
And the more we think it, the more natural it becomes
to think it. Until our mind is like a singing stream,
perpetually babbling praise, and joy, to the sky above, to the
earth below, to every rock and tree in passing.
The sounds of a stream are only sounds. Our mind
attaches meaning to these sounds, and calls them language.
But this movement, truly, is only sound.
And as we listen to ourselves more and more deeply,
these movements become untranslatable sounds, an
ocean of inward sounds, the waves of our soul singing.
The sounds of silence.

Your thoughts are not your mind.
Waves are not the ocean.

The mind creates thoughts, but those thoughts are not
the mind. You speak. Are you your words? Or merely
their creator?
Waves are not the ocean; they are a movement on the
surface, on the top layer of the ocean. The thoughts which
constantly arise and move through your mind come from its
surface, which is only 10% of the total mind. The sutras will
enable you to dive beneath the surface, and explore the entire ocean.
Think of yourself as being in a boat, adrift upon the
mind's surface. The sutra is a line cast into those depths. And
each sutra reaches a different depth of the ocean. Think of
the Heart, of consciousness, as the sun, and of each sutra as a
ray of sun, of light, striking the ocean of the mind. When the
sun strikes the ocean, only the surface appears to be illumined.
But light is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed,
only transformed. After the light rays pass through the
surface, they continue to move, into the depths. Whenever you think
a sutra, you are allowing light into your mind.
If the ocean were able to store light, it would
eventually become illumined, not only no the surface, but to its
very depths. It would become a perfect reflection of the sun.
The goal of meditation is not merely to remove the
old grooves, and stresses, but to replace them with light. This
light is consciousness. And when this consciousness, this
light, completely fills the mind, and the Heart, one is in
"Enlightenment".

Your body contains your life:
Past, Present, and Future.

Every organ, every muscle, every cell, every fiber of
your being is both the record, and the creation of your past.

That muscle in the upper right shoulder, the one that
bulges like a great knot? It's the remainder, and the reminder of
on-the-job stress. The thin, tight mouth? It grew thinner,
and tighter every time it was tightly clamped, to hold in all
the things felt, yet never uttered. The crippling backache?
Years of unexpressed anger.
Whenever we judge or repress an emotion, whenever we
hold onto it, instead of letting it go, we carry it with us, in
our body. And so we carry our past into our present, to create
our future.
To change the future, we must change the past. By letting
it go. Holding onto the past, and stress, will cause our body
to age more swiftly. To experience pain. And illness.
Letting go leads to youth and health.
This meditation heals both the body and the mind by
releasing stored emotions and stresses. All the repressed anger will
arise. To be released. Forever. The uncried tears will be cried.
And then we are free of them. Forever.

And then we are free.

The more one studies the mind,
the more one realizes how ignorant it is.

On the surface.
For the surface of the mind looks at the surface of things,
and makes surface judgments.
And analyses. And assumptions. And perceptions.
It creates stories.
Based on judgments, perceptions, and assumptions which
may not even be true.
(This is how we drive ourselves crazy.)

Lotus Heart Home || Sutras part 1 || Sutras part 2 || Sutras part 3

Last modified: 2/19/99
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