Take Care Of Your Heart

“What is hell?” Father Zosima asks in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Brothers Karamazov. “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

Notice he doesn’t say “the suffering of not being loved by someone else.” Because as painful it is to be rejected by another person, you can still move forward and find love in your life. But to die with a closed heart, to never have had the joy or purpose that love brings, is more painful than being burned by a thousand fires.

Often, though, we don’t feel the pain of a closed heart, because we’re in our heads. The thinking mind might make a case for why you should be over that old resentment, when in reality your heart is still closed to that person. The thinking mind might make a case for why you should date someone, when in reality your attraction is totally disconnected from your love. The thinking mind makes its cases, but the heart is not really up for debate.

When we’re in our heads, we may think the opening or closing of the heart is some kind of metaphor. But it’s real: something you can feel, if you’re sensitive, right at the center of your chest. And as you learn to feel love, rather than think about it, you may be surprised that the heart can be closed even when the mind is open.

One of the Buddha’s teachings that Westerners often have trouble with is that too much chasing after sense-pleasure blocks the heart. People protest: “What’s wrong with a little TV or ice cream?” But right and wrong belong to the thinking mind. There’s nothing WRONG with any sense-pleasure. And yet, in chasing after what we don’t have, we often lose ourselves and our connection to the pure, simple joy of being alive.

You have to take care of your heart. It’s not a question of, “Can I make a case for what I’m about to do next?” It’s a question of, “What is this actually doing to my ability to love?” It takes a lot of honesty to answer that question, but in that honesty lies our salvation.

Tapestry with the Offering of the Heart (1400–10)