' The Sacred Heart '...

The image of the "Sacred Heart" has always spoken deeply to me. It is a man with an exposed heart that is entirely open to pain and so is filled with compassion. It is wrapped in a crown of thorns, which speaks to me of this openness and suffering with others pain. And it is a heart that is on fire with love and compassion symbolized by the flame which burns on top of it.

In the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition they call this heart, "bodhichitta" or "awakened heart". The heart is a great universal symbol, not confined to any one religion and certainlly not confined to any one special spiritual personage, which is how we often think of people like Jesus or the Buddha or Krishna or Ramana.

We all have within, a tender, vulnerable, unconditionally open human heart that could potentially open, awaken, and burst into flame at any moment. The essence of this openness that we are already is that it is open and vulnerable to our own pain and the pain of all the world. But it is also clear-eyed and at deep peace with what is, no matter what it is. It is open and even vulnerable.....It feels all the pain of the world without being overwhelmed by it.


-Francis Bennett