an ah att a

8/2/2019 An Ah Att A

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Anahatta/ Heart Chakra

Anahatta is the Heart chakra and is located behind the breastbone ona line between the nipples. It is associated with the heart and lungs, thethymus gland, cardio-pulmonary plexus and the skin. It is said to be greenin colour.

Its traditional symbols are: the blue hexagram of Vayu (Air/ SpaceElement) and the antelope or deer. Anahatta is said to control the skin andsense of touch. Anahatta works through the balance of heaven and earth(the mind and beyond-the-mind) and the dynamic of love, giving andreceiving, and dominion. The heart is an almost universal symbol for loveand compassion.

Anahatta is the central chakra, half way between muladhara andsahasrara. It is the centre of the human being as human (rather thananimal). In this sense it is the new beginning of a different order of being. Ithas been called the muladhara above the diaphragm. From here wedevelop and grow as spiritual beings. And what is it that differentiates thespiritual from the mundane, from the egotistical it is love. It is love thattakes us personally beyond the prison of our limited self; it is love that isthe cause for us to reach beyond our seemingly in-built selfishness, toembrace the world to recognize and help others in a genuine and skilfulway. And in so doing, understand, experience and know (gnosis) more ofwho we truly are infinite, eternal, divine.

Just as all the chakras have their apotheosis in muladhara, the higherchakras have their basis and beginning, root and support in anahatta. Thereis a great link between muladhara and anahatta so much so that anahattais considered the ruler of muladhara. This gives an extra clue as to how toboth purify and clear problems from muladhara and empower it. As onequick example of how to consider this: remember that the main emotion ofmuladhara is fear, particularly fear of death. Now, with the addedperspective of anahatta, we can see that there is no fear without love. Wefear because we love we love our life. And conversely, in the relativesense there is no love without fear we fear losing love, or losing the objectof our love, or not being worthy of love and so on. Of course, we can learn

to love beyond fear and this is the lesson of anahatta. The teachings ofanahatta release us from the fear of death, through love and realizingemptiness.

Going beyond selfishness through the path of love and compassionfrees us from ego; from desire for ego-power; from delusions of grandeurand arrogance; from delusions of insignificance.

Love, compassion, tolerance and understanding free all the chakrasfrom the ego. In that space of profound good humour all the chakras comeinto a natural balance and vitality they are empowered and they evolve.This is why it is said that the best healing practice is compassion practice, isto practise compassion. Can you see how this is so?


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The love and compassion of Anahatta is of course, in the relativesense, the love of humans and gods. With this love, though, there is stillselfishness the ego still has an agenda and a say. This love andcompassion is still good it is the path we are walking and it holds theaspiration to realize and manifest the unconditional love and universal

compassion of our true nature.It is the unconditional love and universal compassion that are (or can

be) expressed in anahatta, which transform your very being from themost rarefied or subtle level of spirit to the very cells of your body.

In order to realize and bring forward unconditional, unlimited love andcompassion, we need to go beyond the relative mind, the limited self, thefractured and distorted ego-I. We step from human love to the love of thebodhisattvas and eventually to that of the Buddhas.

It is no accident then that anahatta, the chakra of love andcompassion is also the chakra of Space. Here, the space is spaciousness which is awareness. The awareness, naturally beyond the limited mind; thevery nature from which the limited mind arises. To realize this spaciousnessat the level of anahatta is to realize ego-lessness; it is to realize theemptiness (tongba/ shunya) of self and phenomena. It is the peace that isvitalized and enriched by a cosy warmth, which is the very nature oftongba-nyi. It is not the end of the spiritual path by any means, yet it is agood indication that were on the right track and it also gives us the abilityto be naturally good human beings stable, good-hearted, and easy. It canbe reached by practising shamatha with a good motivation.

Just as it is said that our true nature is wisdom and love &compassion, we learn in anahatta that the wisdom is spaciousness or the

wisdom-realizing-emptiness and the love & compassion is unlimitedbecause it is the energy or movement/ radiance of the wisdom.

In very simple terms we can explain as follows: by now you know howyou feel at the end of your shamatha session. Sometimes there is a specialkind of feeling everything has just settled and you are very awake. Youfeel almost like you are sparkling; you feel very alive. Everything lookswonderful and even the people and situations that might usually bring youdown or cause you to react negatively even they are seen in a new light its not so bad, not so serious, not so stuck not so real.

This state ofshamatha is, you could say, a spark of the energy ofanahatta. Your heart centre has opened and energized a little more and in

there you find a wonderful warmth for yourself and for everyone andeverything you bring your mind to. And it is easy and spacious and quitestable and firm without being stuck or dead in any way. This is showing uswhat emptiness is, and how quite naturally, love and compassion arise outof it. More particularly it shows us that these qualities are already presentand that stilling the ego-chatter through the skilful method of shamathawith the motivation of bodhicitta is all that is needed for the qualities toshine out.

Unstruck sound is a reference to the lack of inherent nature emptiness of self and phenomena and also to the energy (sound) of that

which is the warmth of love and compassion. Why is it unstruck? Because


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there is no one there to strike it! In other words, you dont have to force ormanipulate anything (in fact, you cant anyway) all you need is to relax.

The transition from manipura to anahatta is the transmutation ofpassion, power and lust into compassion and love. This does notmean thatwe become sickly-sweet and passion-less like some kind of wilted flower or

vegetable! This image of love and compassion is completely fake and isbased in ego manipulation. People displaying this sort of sugar-coatedsympathy are being manipulated by their ego and are trying tomanipulate you! Never fall for this fakery.

No the transmutation of the qualities of manipura into those ofanahatta vitalizes them and releases them from egos thrall. Passion, thefire of the soul burns brighter and with greater enthusiasm released fromthe contraction of egos horns-of-dilemma, from egos negativity.

Please note that no spiritual path is anti-passion. Lots of westernstudents of Buddhism would do well to learn this. Even bodhisattvas arevery passionate about compassion! It is only egos version of passion,which is more truly about attachment control and neuroticism that is ever aproblem.

So here we learn generosity. To give and also to receive. Generosityis the attitude of generosity and includes all beings including ourselves. It isthis attitude of generosity that empowers anahatta and raises the vibrationof the lower chakras. The greatest expression of this generosity is thebodhisattva motivation:

For the sake of others longing to attain complete enlightenment.

This allows the energy of Heaven and Earth to meet. The heart is the bridgebetween our love and cosmic wisdom, universal love. Our heart is thebridge from the relative mind to beyond the relative mind. As such bothcompassion and devotion as spiritual paths are found here.

We can also say that anahatta is the first of the transpersonalchakras. This follows from apprehending emptiness and going beyond ego which is saying the same as going beyond a centralized I-consciousness,and independent fixed I persisting in time. Thus, the more fully one opensthe heart and the heart centre, the more fully one can communicate withthose around. Communication and understanding happen through the heartcentre. By opening more fully to the nature of the heart, we open to the

greater in us, the greater-than-us which is the greater-of-us. It is throughthis capacity of being greater than the I that we really see what is there tobe seen, really hear what is there to be heard, and so on. Thecommunication here can also be telepathy or empathy. Diagnosis intradition medicine systems takes place through the heart.

So can you see that without love and compassion no realcommunication is possible? No real contact with the actual world ispossible. Without heart, the world and all the people in it are no more thanextensions of your ego. You never really see, hear or touch anything oranyone. And you, in turn, are never really seen, heard or touched. While the

heart is imprisoned within the fortress of ego you have a seeminginvulnerability but also you are not actually participating in life. You see,


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as from the window of a tower, while life goes on beyond the walls of thefortress. Maybe you feel a sort of safety, but you also feel cheated likeyou and your life are inauthentic; like you are missing something, ormissing everything.

So you open your heart, to love and to real communication. And in

this you also feel vulnerable and you are: vulnerable to your weaknessesand also vulnerable to your strengths. You are vulnerable to life and to themagic and wonder of being alive!


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