This time on the Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast, Spring Washam speaks about how listening with the heart and cultivating lovingkindness can lead us away from suffering and towards our true nature.
Links from this episode: Spring Washam | Heartmind | Spirit Rock Retreat Center
Show Notes
Remembering Who We Are (Opening) – What keeps us from remembering who we really are? Spring explores the innate nobility that comes with our true nature and what pulls us away from it.
“So much of what we are doing is remembering who we are. Remembering ourselves, our nobility, it’s as if we all have forgotten. We are trying to make sense of this life and how to be in it with more love and compassion.” – Spring Washam
Listening with the Heart (9:15) – We look at the interdependent connection between the heart and the mind. Spring reflects on the growing body evidence from Western science about this link and how long established practices allow us to better listen to what the heart is telling us.
“There is this vast interconnectedness that comes through the heart. Not so much the mind, but through this other way of listening and being. I feel like that is what we are doing here – trying to figure out a way to listen and to be.” – Spring Washam
The Three Poisons (20:40) – Spring speaks about the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion that, according to The Buddha, obscures our heart and mind. She looks at the vast repercussions these poisons have for both ourselves and the world at large.
“The mind of greed is the endless wanting and craving, it is so painful. We try to satiate it because what we actually want is the end of wanting. When we are wanting something in any moment we are not happy, we are saying this moment isn’t enough.” – Spring Washam
The Heartbeat of the Universe (47:00) – We close with a reflection of the power that lies in compassion and loving-kindness
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries, without them humanity cannot survive.” – His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
Joseph Goldstein explores the awakened heart-mind of compassion known as bodhicitta on Ep. 42 of the Insight Hour Podcast
Art via Benjavisa Ruangvaree Art