Open Heart, Boundaried Mind

Near Eagle Pass, Texas, the U.S.–Mexico border cuts across the Rio Grande. There, steel fencing, razor wire, and floating barriers attempt to hold a line against a river that has traversed borders for centuries. They have failed, tragically. Migrants continue to cross, though thousands have drowned over the decades. The boundary keeps no one safe.

This is an image for how Western culture tends to think about boundaries. Our hyper-individualism and adversarial notions of rights have given us more walls, more surveillance, and greater rigidity around identity, but they have not taught us how to live together.

So too in our relationships, we learn to cut difficult people out, draw lines in anger, and tell stories about being right. Then we wonder why we're left without the connection we so desperately want.

Twenty-six hundred years ago, the Buddha taught that healthy boundaries begin not with walls, but in the mind. He told a parable of a quail who wanders into an open field and is caught by a hawk. The open field represents our unskillful thinking; the hawk represents self-abandonment. We self-abandon not because we cannot control others, but because we lack the inner boundaries that keep us grounded in the heart and aligned with wisdom.

In my work, I see how often people try to set external boundaries with anger, and how it always fails. Anger can feel protective, and at very specific moments it is, but as a habit it's a leaky way to live. Anger escalates conflict, invites counterattack, and keeps us entangled with the behavior we're trying to stop. It also puts the focus on what others have done, not what we're going to do about it.

I’ve struggled with boundaries. I’ve let people walk all over me, but I’ve also mistaken fiercer responses for strength. Wearing toughness as an identity, trying to punish others, overexplaining and justifying, using the past as ammunition, rehearsing arguments — these are all signs of porous boundaries, all ways of wandering into that open field.

Drop the story. Come back to your breath, actions, and the love you have for yourself and all beings. You’ll know you’re safe when your heart is open and your mind is well-held.