ARTICLE

April 27, 2018

What Makes Your Heart Quicken & Quiver?

Add to favorites

When do you feel most alive? How do you know? Mirabai Bush explains how mindful practices can help you discover the link between your passion and living a compassionate life.


Omega: In your book Compassion in Action, which you wrote with Ram Dass, you say, “Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to. It’s being drawn to action by heartfelt passion.” What is your heartfelt passion? 

Mirabai: For me, it’s about serving. I've always been interested in service and compassion but my life really changed when I worked for the Seva Foundation, an international public health organization, as director of their Guatemala Project. I was there when the country was recovering from the violence of civil war. It deepened my compassion and my commitment to responding to the suffering of others immensely. And it taught me a lot.

We weren't there to teach them meditation; we were there to help them build compost piles and roofs on their community centers. We needed to understand their strengths as well as their needs, so mostly we listened and learned from them. We would raise money and then listen carefully for what they needed and what could help. 

What I learned for myself was that I could never have done it if I didn't have the ability to renew myself and care for myself. One year the corn got a blight and the whole crop failed. I remember walking into the village and meeting some women, who I knew by that time, who just threw themselves into my arms and cried, holding onto their children. It was heartbreaking.

What sustained me was being able to go back to my room to sit and cry. I allowed myself to just center and remember equanimity and impermanence, compassion and love. I would get in touch with it all and then be able to go back the next day. The last thing they needed was for us to fall apart.

Before that, I was not as attentive to self-care and personal sustainability. But that experience really taught me how much we have to do in order to be a vehicle for helping others in this life.

Omega: What advice do you have for others to help find their heartfelt passion?

Mirabai: Listen from within and pay attention. Pay attention to what’s alive and ask yourself: When do you feel most alive? What is your heart responding to in the suffering of others?

Sometimes people define compassion as the quivering of the heart. I like that. It’s like your heart actually starts quivering in your chest when someone tells you about something or you meet someone who's struggling with something.

Of course listening from within doesn't always mean sitting silently and just listening. It’s inquiring into your mind about what it is that you really care about and really think. Listening happens in engagement with others in conversations, too.

Omega: How can someone’s individual practice help create and fuel a more just and sustainable world?

Mirabai: Individual mindful practices lead you to a sense of the interconnection of all life. The Tibetans say that the cultivation of compassion depends on two things.

One is your self-compassion and your deep understanding that when you are suffering, you are suffering. Get in touch with what it feels like when you feel bad, and then remember that everybody feels bad sometimes. It’s part of the human condition.

The second part is an appreciation for what it is we share with others. There are so many ways in which we are diverse, unique, and different from each other. We celebrate that and we do lots of practices to discover how to appreciate people's diversity. But the complement to that is remembering what we all share and the ways in which we are all the same as humans.

And then, of course, the Buddhists say to go where the suffering is, which seems to be pretty much everywhere these days. Get out into the world and discover what’s a good match for who you are, what your talents are, and what’s needed by others.