(Photo: Vanessa Pike-Russell’s Flickr photostream)

When your heart is broken or you’re otherwise dealing with strong painful emotions, the idea of feeling genuine loving kindness for anyone can seem far-fetched, much less yourself or the one who broke your heart. Loving kindness is soft and gentle, but your heart feels cold and numb or enflamed with rage—not loving at all. You may feel so unlovable and needy and freaked out that if you could shut your heart down and turn off emotion altogether, it would be a blessing. Love is the enemy. Love stinks.

So if I tell you that you still possess the most profound, elegant, indestructible well of love imaginable, you might not believe me. If I tell you that the solution for your heartache is not to seal up your heart, but to open it further, that might sound dangerous. And if I further told you that your capacity for love has never been greater and the cure for your broken heart is to offer that love to your ex, you would definitely tell me I’m crazy.

It’s possible. But hear me out. I want to offer you the practice of loving kindness as the healing balm you need. You could try it yourself and see.

The Buddhist practice of Loving Kindness (metta in Pali and maitri in Sanskrit) has been in use for over 2500 years. The story is that some monks were sent by the Buddha to meditate in a particular forest. As soon as they got their meditation gear (I guess you could call it that) settled, certain tree spirits began to harass them by making scary noises, emitting an awful stench, and generally causing commotion. I sort of picture it like trying to meditate while fifty 10-year olds bang pots and pans while farting. One can only imagine. [Read more →]

I and Twitter pals Hiro Boga (@hiroboga), Mahala Mazerov (@luminousheart), and Jennifer Louden (@jenlouden) all wrote on the same topic today: The process of writing.

For a kaleidoscopic view of this issue (storytelling vs truth telling), check them out.
Hiro Boga: Tsunamis in the House of Wholeness
Jennifer Louden: How to Be a Writer Who Loves the Gap
Mahala Mazerov: When Stories Hurt

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You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. ~Franz Kafka

Right now, I’m in the beautiful Colorado Rockies, teaching a meditation retreat for writers. We spend most of the day writing, interspersed by periods of sitting meditation. In the first practice, our aim is to find our voice, say something, tell a story. In the latter, the encouragement is to let go of “story” completely and instead focus on the breath, which is always in the present moment.

How can a practice that is all about story go hand-in-hand with one that is about dropping it?

On the face of it, these seem like opposites. However, they are so alike as to be almost identical.  Here is why I say that: [Read more →]

This post first appeared on the Huffington Post. Check it out for all the cool, wacky, sweet comments.

Meditation has been getting a very good rap lately. Very good. Scientists have proven that it actually makes you happier. It is included in mental health programs. It is being taught at gyms, schools and in the workplace. It has stopped being associated with gurus, swamis, or anyone who wears robes to work. Somehow it has become acceptable and not scary. This is wonderful. But it has also made for some misconceptions.

I’ve been practicing meditation for 15 years and my main knowledge of these misconceptions comes from holding them myself and refusing to let them go because they just seemed so … convenient.

I’ve also been teaching meditation for four years. Between my own pigheadedness and that of my students, I’ve had ample opportunity to observe these misconceptions from close range.

There seem to be three primary ones. [Read more →]

There are some things I’m good at, if I do say so myself. I know about generosity. I know from patience. I know how to try really, really hard. I’m devoted to the search for wisdom.  However there is one skill that I truly suck at and, without it, all these other good qualities are considerably weaker than they could be. That skill?

Discipline.

Readers of my blog may be aware of an experiment I conducted about a year or so ago called “The Great Discipline Experiment” or GDE, in which I took all the things I KNOW I want to (and should) do—meditate, journal, write, exercise, drink a lot of water, answer all my emails, eat healthy, take vitamins, spend time focused on those I love—and tried to do them. Every day. Period.  For a month. I had become sick of being all “I need to take better care of myself” and “I must write Every Single Day” and “Susan, you are WASTING YOUR LIFE. Get with it.”

I should have been able to do this, right? I mean, these are things I want to do, should do, must do in this life. They are non-negotiable. [Read more →]

It often happens that I wake up completely devoid of self-confidence. I have no idea when or why this is going to happen. It drives me mad. I sit down to write and some inner Miss Thing tells me I have nothing of interest to say. I want to call a friend but Miss Things says, oh she has no interest in talking to you. I want to ask a colleague to collaborate with me on something and she pops up with Ha! He is busy with way more interesting people and would have to find a nice way to blow you off. Uncomfortable. Better go back to playing online solitaire. Trolling Ebay for the perfect whatever. Rechecking email for the 11ty thousandth time. I procrastinate. I fight with myself. I develop many theories for why I lack confidence and which strategy to employ to combat it.

Then I remember something very important. I’m a Buddhist. I know exactly what to do, and it has nothing to do with self-analysis or strategizing, although at the right time (meaning a time I feel confident), such things can be enormously fruitful.  But my practice has taught me to do something else instead, and that something is quite radical, almost un-American. [Read more →]

Trungpa Rinpoche cuts right through to the core of our confusion and gives it back to us as wisdom. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

“We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our ’self-improvement’.” From The Myth of Freedom

(handy for working with strong emotions in general)

Nothing feels worse than a broken heart, the kind you get when someone you love ends the relationship. Feelings of shame, remorse, grief, rage, and terror can overwhelm even the most heretofore stable human being. Heartbreak has the power to reframe a workable life as a disaster.

Surprisingly, Buddhism has a tremendous amount of helpful advice for working with these terrible girl/boy-loses-boy/girl emotions. It takes an approach that is quite different than the usual advice books, which basically fall into one of two categories:

The first category is called “You Go Girl!!” (Sorry guys, all the books are aimed at women.) This kind of book suggests that you need to up the cocktails:sobbing ratio, that if you go out with your friends who all tell you that you were just too awesome for him/her, get a cute outfit and a new ‘do, and cry on as many shoulders as possible, you can dance your troubles away.

I don’t think this is bad advice. Hey! You are awesome! You can look super hot! You have great friends who remind you how to have fun! This is all cool. It won’t, however, do much to alleviate the pain, beyond stuffing it for a few hours.

The second category is called “There is something very, very wrong with you and you made this happen.” This is the kind of book that says you brought this heartbreak on yourself by carrying forward unhealed wounds from childhood or, god forbid, by thinking the wrong thoughts. I kind of hate this. Of course it’s really, really important to heal your wounds and to examine your thoughts to see if they might be sabotaging you—but when the intention for doing so is to avoid pain rather than increase your capacity to love, it is unlikely to heal you. This kind of advice is often out to convince you that you can create a safe world for yourself and that you can make love safe.

Love can never be made safe. It is the opposite of safe. The moment you try to make it safe, it ceases to be love. I realize this is a bummer, but think about it. Love is predicated on receptivity, on opening up again and again and again to your beloved, each time afresh. To do this, you have to let go of insisting that he or she conform to your standards for what a lover should look like, do, be, say, and instead allow him or her to simply be him or herself. Then you take it from there. To do otherwise, to continually choose who you wish this person was over who he or she actually is, is, well, it’s not love. I don’t know what it is. (Of course none of this stands to reason should any form of emotional or physical abuse be present. At this point you can forget everything I just said and protect yourself.)

Most often, the efforts to heal a broken heart center around putting it behind you and recreating the illusion of safety. Buddhism counsels something else, something best said by the American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron: “Feel the feelings. Drop the story.” That is the pith advice and it means turning toward what you feel, not away. It means letting the feelings be just what they are without trying to explain them, shore your self up, or excuse or blame anyone. This is called being a warrior. The more you allow feelings to burn clean in this way, the less confusion you create.

I have three suggestions for figuring out how to accomplish this very mysterious feat of feeling without attaching a narrative as to what it might, could, should, or dare not mean.

1.    Develop a non-judgmental relationship with your mind. This is best done through the practice of meditation, instruction here. When you’re under the sway of strong emotion, you come into contact with a state of being that I like to call Insane Obsessive Thinking. If only, I should have, what I really meant was, how dare she, I am a loser, you are a loser, love stinks… On and on and on. It’s really quite painful. Without addressing a mind run amuck, the chances of skillfully working with your feelings is kind of limited. So I suggest introducing a note of discipline to your everyday life, beginning today. Spend some time everyday, not squashing your icky thoughts and promoting your good ones, but simply watching your mind in a relaxed way—no matter how wild it gets, you can remain steady. This is what meditation teaches you how to do.

The mind of heartbreak is like a wild horse. You can’t just jump on and except to ride. It will throw you again and again. So instead you hang around for a while until a sense of trust develops. Meditation teaches you how to do this, too.

2.    Stabilize your heart in the open state. When you regain some sense of dominion in your own mind, naturally your attention will turn toward that raging, screaming, 24/7 searing thing in the middle of your chest—your heart.

One way to look at heartbreak is as love unbound from an object. Freed, it careens and ricochets and crashes into walls. Your capacity and longing for love is enormous and when you lose it, this is what you discover. You had no idea you could feel this raw, vulnerable, open…and it’s the openness that is so precious.

Buddhism does not counsel closing back up, not at all. Instead, in recognition that this openness is the ground of loving kindness, compassion, and the ability to connect deeply, it suggests you leave it broken and seek to stabilize it in the open state. Yes, leave it broken. The way to do this and not walk around sobbing all the time is through the practice of Loving Kindness meditation, which you can find here. In this way, you begin to shift your search for love a tiny bit, away from “I want to find someone to love me” and toward “I want to find a way to give love.” With this slight transition, the whole world changes.

When most people say they are looking for love, what they means is they are looking for someone to love them, and then they will return it. But you can turn this equation on its head entirely and have love in your life every single day by choosing to give it. This, by the way—giving love to others—is the secret, guaranteed, no fail way to heal your broken heart. Try it.

3.   View your whole life as path. With a sense of clarity in your mind and stability in your heart, the third stage becomes something altogether different. There is no practice associated with this one. With mental clarity and emotional stability comes the ability to see your entire life as path. You have created the foundation for an entirely authentic life, one full of joy and sorrow, meetings and partings, giving and taking, and deep meaning. The dark power of heartbreak has led you there.

With this openness, you see that your life is telling a story. I have no idea what it is and you may not either. But trust me, your life has a life of its own and the violence of heartbreak has the power to shatter all illusions about who you thought you were and reintroduce you instead to who you already know you are. This is an extremely powerful situation.

With a broken heart, you see how vast your longing for love is and how impossible it is to make love safe. It’s just not possible. So what do you do with these two truths? This is your path. No one can tell you how to reconcile them. The place to begin is by paying attention, by cultivating agenda-less awareness of yourself, others, and of the flow of life. When you do so, you start to notice that every single day, you are continuously cycling in and out of moments of falling in love and having your heart broken. Both are always present, shifting toward you and away, each one a tiny lesson on how to be fully alive.

Pass it on.

(And please comment! I love to hear what you are thinking and feeling.)

Bindu Wiles, a blogger who brings a fresh, warm, down to earth voice to my favorite subjects: Dharma, Creativity, and Writing, interviewed me for her blog. The interview felt like talking to a sister.

I had such a wonderful time teaching from The Wisdom of a Broken Heart this past week in D.C., N.Y., Toronto, and Montreal (where the book is called La Sagesse d’un Coeur Brisé which makes it sound so pretty). Over and over, I’m struck by the deep well of tenderness that resides in each of us and how a broken heart puts you squarely in touch with that tenderness, like it or not. I truly believe we are born to respect this tenderness; to be kind and expect kindness. Clearly, the world doesn’t always encourage that, but the moment you extend kindness to another, their own kindness is called forth. Kindness can and will and does change the world.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama said, “my religion is kindness” and it’s not because he’s some kind of wimp. It’s because he knows that this is how to bring peace to our war-torn, aggression-fueled world where people use fundamentalist scare tactics to incite us to be kind only to those who agree with us–and to consider the rest as barely human. This makes me cry pretty much every, single, solitary day of my life.

I just wish we could all be nice to each other is my constant refrain. But how? Especially when there are those who equate “nice” (or decent, kind, humane, tolerant…whatever word you prefer) with sloppy loser-ness? Au contraire, my friends. Real niceness is not sloppy, it is sharp. Because to be genuinely nice, you have to pay very close attention to who and what is around you, otherwise your niceness is according to code and not to whomever is standing in front of you. And loser-y? Far from it, in fact the farthest you can get from it. To be nice (kind, decent, etc) is predicated on opening your heart and letting the world touch you, without agenda and without judgment–and then responding to humanity with humanity. This takes exceptional courage and intelligence. I mean think about it.

So if it’s not about being all oh I’m so nice to everyone I always put myself last, (gag) then what is it about? And how do you do it? I suggest signing

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The NICE Manifesto
Please print (or take a screen shot) and (electronically) sign. Feel free to add more stipulations.

I, ___________________, being of sound(ish) mind and body, do hereby commit to the path of NICE, fully recognizing that NICE could mean any number of things and is not merely (nor will it ever be limited to) exhibiting sweetness. In addition to sweet and depending on circumstance, NICE could require one to be tough, giving, angry, remote, strong, generous, and/or soft.

I know being NICE can change our world into a peaceful one. To demonstrate my commitment, I agree to the following:

1. I recognize that only by being aware in the present moment will I know which kind of NICE to be and so recognize that the path of awareness and the path of NICE are inseparable.

2. I will exhibit extreme good manners, even when no one is watching. Good manners include (but are not limited to) qualities such as friendliness, generosity, patience, discipline, respect, discernment, dressing appropriately, and always, always cleaning up after myself.

3. When encountering those who disagree with me I will continue to view and treat them as human, no matter how barbaric or threatening I may consider their views. This means not wishing they were dead or thinking such things as, “The world would be so awesome were it not for _______ (Sarah Palin, Michael Palin, Islamists, Feitishists, Night fears, Stephen Frears, Darwinians, North Carolinians, Psychiatrists, Physiatrists, Bad drivers, Noisy neighbors, Townies, Junkies, Flunkies, Spelunkers, Circus Buskers, Motherfuckers, People who like Justin Bieber, and so on).

4. I will practice speaking clearly, honestly, and skillfully, which means also knowing when to shut up. When others are speaking, I will not use that time to think of what I will say next, but will instead give myself over to listening completely, fully, and properly.

5. I acknowledge that love is the most important thing in life and vow to give my heart away at the least provocation.

Signed: _______________

Date: _________________

The first person to email me back 5 signed manifestos wins a free copy of my book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.