Extending Mode

This week’s words are from the book Awakening Through Love by my teacher John Makransky. Even though this book was published over 13 years ago, and how we lead the practices has changed several times since then, the focus is the same and the wisdom is still clear.

The path of enlightenment releases the mind from its constricted self-grasping into the infinite openness of its basic nature, which is pervaded by awareness and compassion like the open sky is pervaded by the rays of the sun. The path to enlightenment involves a fundamental reorientation, from identifying ourselves with the narrow, self-centered, and shifting thoughts of the moment to the all-inclusive, abiding nature of enlightened wisdom and love. This path is the opening of the mind to the vast expanse that includes all phenomena without discrimination and to the vast love that includes all beings without discrimination.

Through the non-conceptual practice of wisdom, letting all be in the sky-like nature of mind, we realize we are not isolated from each other; we are not set apart from others within the undivided, cognizant ground of being. As this intuitive wisdom dawns, there is a profound sense of wholeness, of oneness with our world and its inhabitants, a natural intimacy with them all. All thoughts of a brittle self, holding itself apart from the others, starts to collapse in basic unity with the empty, cognizant ground of all.

Complementing that nonconceptual wisdom practice, the conceptual [compassion] practice boundlessly extending love enacts our implicit connection to all other beings, expressing our solidarity with them through the will and energy that wishes them deepest well-being and happiness. Unbounded love prepares the mind for unbounded wisdom and expresses the dawning of that wisdom.

These are the foundational concepts upon which our practices are built. The practices of Innate Wisdom and Compassion are designed to evoke the qualities that John expresses above.