The interconnected nature of our lives is felt more deeply at times. This often occurs when the causes and conditions create space to tune into the subtle sensations in the body. It’s a time for deep noticing, utilizing carefully placed attention. This is when an insight can occur. A bodily knowing, the deepest kind of truth.
Writing or speaking about it can take away some of its power, as the mysterious weaving of threads both past and present that allowed the insight to come forward do not typically have words associated with them. This is an inner knowing. A reminder to myself too, to hold the stillness of the space and allow, allow, allow. Allow it to come forward, to feel deeply, and to softly and freely release.
This is the weaving of our heart tapestry ~ experience over experience, moment through moment. Our heart tapestry carries us into the world with others and guides us during our daily activities.
So it seems that there is upmost importance to give attention to what threads we weave into our heart tapestry. What activities we choose to engage in. Who we choose to interact with. Our environment. Our relationships. Body, speech, and mind. There is urgency too. As it affects not only our own life, but those around us and how we are able to benefit others in the world.
My Own Heart Tapestry
The image of the heart tapestry emerged for me during a period of stillness and allowing. Feeling into the emptiness of losing my mother earlier this year, while becoming a mother only a year before. Saying goodbye to my mother the same night as the previous year that I brought my own sweet baby home.
This was prompted by her birthday approaching, the first in which she is not alive. The insight that emerged was that this is also intimately connected to leaving my home of five years, Sangha, teacher, and meaningful life I had cultivated at the Zen monastery. Only now do I feel the interconnected nature of both of these events and how they relate both then and now.
Impermanence is one of the foundational teachings of Buddhism. The past five years have been a particularly ripe time for this teaching in my practice. In receiving the Buddhist precepts, one feels into the intention of home leaving. Leaving the family home for an intentional family, the Sangha, whom you vow to benefit and support.
The complexity of this arose for me now as I took these vows years ago, and then with sadness had to leave my practice community due to a difficult situation. Luckily and with intention, practicing with death has been has been foundational in my practice over the past years. Feeling into the loss of my mother and my aging family, coupled with my challenges within my own Sangha is ripe territory for understanding the weaving of my own heart tapestry.
Simply acknowledging and noticing how these seemingly unrelated events are deeply connected allowed a healing. A bodily healing. A new space opens that one can move freely into. An unknown, open, tender new space with new possibilities.
The Practice
In practice, it’s not about the insights. It is about creating time and space to just be in your body. In the complex and flowing nature of your six senses. Releasing thinking.
This can be in zazen, walking meditation, or in the bath. It’s about creating space and time to just be. The fruits of practice will come, sometimes after days, sometimes years. This is not the point. Just sitting or laying down or walking mindfully is the practice.
This is how we open ourselves to noticing the interconnected nature of our lives, and intentionally begin to weave our heart tapestry with nourishing speech, mind, and actions that we bring forward into our human experience each day.
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