irreducible openness

On the long and fruitless drive to the Temple des Mille Bouddhas yesterday (the fruitlessness being a story in itself) I put on a great mixed CD my partner had years ago compiled and named Irréductible Gaulois. As I was mostly focused on my driving, I heard the following lyrics out of all context (from what I have since learned was Sinsémilia's Je préfère cent fois):

Pour être en sécurité
Il faut fermer son coeur à clef

(If you want to live in security
Put your heart under lock and key)

Immediately I disagreed. Thankfully, it was a long drive, my kids were sleeping in the back seat, and I was on my way to the temple (though I didn't end up there) on this Guru Rinpoché day, meaning my mind was already turned toward the dharma. These conditions led to the ability to properly reflect on just why I disagreed, a luxury I don't often come across these days.

There are things that we're scared of, from which we want to keep safe by locking up our heart. They can be heartbreak or another form of personal devastation, news of terrorism or disease or disaster, or even our own demons like envy or anger or selfish grasping. In the case of the song, though I wasn't really listening to it, I assumed we were talking about the dangers of falling in love, of opening so completely to one person that if that basket were to drop, all our emotional eggs would be broken.

What I understood the author to be saying was that to be free from the possibility of our basket of eggs dropping, we need to close off from the possibility itself. We need to prevent ourselves from falling in love, or from the heart-opening situation at hand. Of course, opening our hearts brings risk; I think everyone would agree on that, and most people are willing to take some degree of risk.* However, I think that if we can manage to fully open, to see things as they are in reality, there simply is no risk. If we are wide open to the possibility of the basket of eggs dropping, it will bring no harm when and if it happens. I would even say that security is openness itself, the epitome of which is characterized by stainless awareness of the absolute reality of phenomena.

There is a vast difference between ordinary love and metta, or sublime, ultimate loving kindness. While the love we may have for our partner or friend is ordinarily tangled up with attachment (not to say that this is a terrible thing by any means!), loving kindness emerges from a consciousness free from any idea of self. Free from any idea of other, for that matter. It is the wish for all beings, without exception and without discrimination, to attain happiness. It has nothing to say about how enjoyable it is to spend time with a certain person, how much someone has contributed to our own happiness, or how much we stand to gain from making someone happy. It makes no difference if that someone is a good or bad person, or a spider, or a whale, or a god. And let's not forget that when we talk of all sentient beings, we include ourself, even if (and precisely because) the self/other distinction is not made on an absolute level.

Can we open our hearts to this degree? That is the challenge Buddhist practitioners face. It's no small task, but it is one of our main goals. I believe that when such lovingkindness is perfected, we have reached enlightenment, and have equally perfected our understanding of reality. The self/other distinction falls away, as do all other erroneous, dualistic perceptions, and we can see the interdependence of phenomena very clearly. We are open as wide as wide can be; anything can happen, and we accept all possibilities unconditionally. Things simply appear as they are, all while having no inherent qualities of their own nor any enduring independent existence. Emaho!

There are dangers to the heart, yes. They do show up when we put our hearts on the line, and can even terrify us into closing off. When we think about it, we can see that these menaces are just projections of what could be, and are nothing at all in the present moment. On an absolute level (which we can realize if we truly open ourselves to it), even if the risk comes to fruition and we experience devastating heartbreak, this does not exist. It appears before us, but it is empty of true existence. Just the thought of it is comforting in times of distress, and grounding in times of excitement.

By the way, I made it to the temple today.
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* The song lyrics - which actually go as follows - are indeed a good example of this relative line of thought:

Si pour être en sécurité
Il faut fermer son coeur à clef
J'préfère cent fois me faire plomber
Comme un oiseau en liberté
Plutôt que de vivre planqué
Comme, comme, comme le cafard sous un évier

(If wanting to live in security
Means putting your heart under lock and key
I'd a hundred times rather get shot down
Like a bird flying free
Than live a sheltered life
Like, like, like the cockroach under the sink)