training into tenderness
"We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most," writes Robert McFarland in Underland.
Long before COVID-19, the Buddhist teacher Dzigar Kongtrul said, "The only way forward is for people to bind themselves closer together than ever before. The glue that will bind us has to be our common tenderness of heart."
I wonder about this. How do I train for such tenderness? New ways of connection that are lovelier than ever before. Can I? Shall we?
What is tender but loving, warm, kind? To care, be sensitive, tend, exchange?
In Tibetan, such tenderness of heart and mind is called tsewa. Training in tsewa counters feelings of alienation, depression. Tsewa starts with open heart toward ourselves. A genuine aspiration to feel some warmth.
To my struggling self I say, I love you so.
Tender is what we create to save ourselves. Tender arises from vulnerability yet makes me less fragile. Then tsewa spills over.
Tender are the spaces we open between us when you and I are real. Tender we can be to identities, experiences, labels. Tender is creative.
Tenderness as process rather than product. Tenderness as the courage to let go of opinion, of believing my thoughts, of having to fix. Tender is accepting.
Tender is spring.
Tender is my deepest humanity and highest potential.
Tender is the mind that tries to make sense of what's going on. A new language for how we want to live.
Tender is the mind that cultivates "imagination not as an ability to think up new things, but as a resting amid patterns." (David Whyte)
Tender is the imagining mind that flows between us, no longer defined by the boundaries of skin. At this time in the world. What are the consequences for us as human beings when we shape our sense of self in the space of relationship? The mind as “social,” is what Dr. Dan Siegel writes about. A beautiful spin on social distancing.
"So much of what delights and troubles us, says the late John O’Donohu "Happens on a surface / You take for ground. Your mind thinks your life alone." But of course this is not so.
Tender is us.
How will you train for tenderness?
Hafiz: "Let tenderness pour from you eyes. The way the sun gazes warmly on the earth."
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