The Heart Breath of Timeless Living
A Path of Bare Bones Awakening

for mature practitioners

(to be seamlessly sung as a naturally flowing quartet)

© Dec. 2009, Tarchin Hearn

The phrase mature practitioner refers to someone who is emotionally resilient; has the skills and energy to look after herself or himself at levels of body, speech and mind; has a deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, his or her seamless interdependency with all that is; and has a natural tendency to respond with compassion to the needs of others. For such a being, I offer this practice; a music of contemplation, a naturally flowing quartet, a bare bones glimpse of awakening. May it sing in your depths and act as encouragement to deepen what you already intuit in the fullness of your being.

1. True Refuge
Now is the place to practice,
right here,
just as you are,
this very moment in all its vastness;
a continuity of freshness
resting resplendently,
at ease in the fullness and flow
of what is presently occurring.

Ripening in faith and trust and wonderment,
letting be,
this matrix of seamless creativity;
the miracle of community that you are,
communing with a community of myriad beings
living around you and through you.

Beginningless – endless;
a mandala of unfathomable knowing,
a mode of experiencing that is utterly inclusive,
a way of abiding, singing with awakeness and capacities for vast engagement,
a solid ephemerality,
a fusion of immense presence and compassion-filled interest;
in the great river of buddhist teaching, such knowings and experiencings
are the ground and source of true refuge.

Become skilled in this resting,
this life affirming freshness,
this gestating womb of nature becoming;
deeply belonging,
profoundly at home;
Where else, and what else, could one be?

2. Healing Through Deepening Understanding
Dwelling as rich immediacy and solid presence,
allow the long learned talents of preference, aversion and indifference
to reveal themselves in the theatre of your body/mind/knowing/experience.

In the midst of their occurring;
look into them,
feel them,
reflect on them,
experiment with them.

Allow a space for fresh understanding to arise.

Explore the singing of the universe giving rise to these tendencies.
What is actually going on?
What is going on in the midst of you being interested in these experiences?
Look at them in terms of general principles.
Investigate particular situations.
What kinds of new possibilities do you discern?
How do these qualities affect your attentiveness; the way you engage with other beings?
How do these patternings, and the experiential study of these patternings, further life?
How does everything connect?

3. Creative Activity
As the intensity of preference-ing and aversion-ing softens in the glow of understanding,
and an easeful flowing wonderment with whatever is occurring,
both within and around you,
dissolves the paralysis of indifference;
then,
use the talents and abilities that have developed
over the course of your own rich life, and the evolutionary journey of life unfolding,
to bring forth beautiful mind-states
and life enhancing and life affirming environments
for the benefit of every living being,
and all of us together,
a great community of inter-becoming,
this living earth.

4. Union
Refuge, healing and creative activity;
as these practices gradually reveal themselves to be various faces
of a vibrant living whole,
qualities of bliss/ease,
clarity/awakeness/curiosity,
and a sense of life as an un-interrupted creative flow of interdependence,
will certainly deepen.

Being the fullness of the human animal that you are,
the thought may occur that there is no need to practice or cultivate anything
beyond simply and profoundly opening.
This way of wonderment is beyond categorizing with words and concepts.
Impossible to rigorously describe, yet intimately familiar;
there may be a sense of always having known this.
Resting with no-thing in particular to do,
apart from the fullness of the ‘doing’ that you are;
utterly ready and able to help when there is opportunity to actually be of service;
Every action becomes a gesture of worship.
Every thought becomes an unvoiced prayer.

Refuge, healing, creative activity and union:
this naturally flowing quartet of bare bones awakening,
is a life long music.
It is infinitely refinable,
mysteriously fulfilling,
and profoundly humbling.
It is the heart breath,
the unhidden secret,
of timeless living.

These words have spilled forth as a song of friendship.
May they touch you to your core and reverberate a deep knowing;
a knowing that is truly what we are.