The Duties of the Heart

 

 

(Transcript by Tob Hawk)

In the 23rd chapter of Proverbs, Solomon, King of Israel, says: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." We have long held this to be essentially a religious statement, but as we study man and his composite nature, we come to realize that this is a very scientific approach to the human problem of consciousness. The individual has an inner life, which was anciently regarded as the life of the heart, as distinguished from career, which was the life of the mind. The individual's thoughts are rational, but also sometimes very selfish, and as a balance to this, he has been given a deep emotional trend - a power to affirm value within his own emotional experience. He expresses this value through friendship, love, un­selfishness, and dedication. These are essentially the powers of the heart.

It may well happen that due to the pressure of circumstances, the internal heart-life of man is compromised, or perhaps even corrupted, and of all the disasters that can occur, this is probably the most serious in terms of human activity. Man, moving from within him­self, must orient in the world in which he lives. If this inner motion fails, or if the inner incentives of life are not ade­quate, the person's external career can never be truly successful; so most of our difficulties, particularly in personal relationships, arise from some failure of the heart in its psychic-emotional func­tion. And today we want to discuss this a little in the hope that we can convey some inspiration, courage or insight, which will help the individual to work with his own heart. Well this is a very very vital part of his entire way of life. In our generation, especially, the duties of the heart have come to be more or less ignored. We use the heart very largely merely as an emotional instrument to be catered to, to be justified in various ways, and to become, so to say, the basis of pleasures, and all too often, without our consent, the basis of pain.

What does the heart really stand for in the mysticism of re­ligion? I think it represents essentially the instinctive adjustment which man strives to make with the creative principle of life. The individual has a two-fold nature and a two-fold social problem. This was recognized long ago when religion divided the mistakes of men into two groups, called sins and crimes. When we make mistakes against the code around us, when we break the laws of our own kind - the statutes that have been set up for the regula­tion of human affairs - we are said to have committed a crime, and we come under the punishment of the code with which we live. If, however, we break the laws of the heart, if we break the laws of conscience and character, if we make certain internal mis­takes which throw us out of harmony with the universal purpose for our existence, we may then be said to have committed a sin. A sin is an act against universal truth; whereas a crime is breaking a rule that men have established.

Actually, all crime begins with what we call sin, inasmuch as criminal codes are established to curb the excesses of human self­ishness and human passion. Therefore, the criminal code became merely an instrument to protect society against the action of the individual who had broken faith with himself. Such codes we recognize to be essential to the continuance of any social order, but we also realize that there are a great many mistakes we make that can never actually come within the boundaries of a crime. There are mistakes for which we will never be punished by so­ciety, by any direct action, or by any direct code, but they are mistakes for which we will be punished; and our punishment lies largely in the damage which mistakes cause to our own psychic integration. The individual who commits a sin is not merely breaking a theological rule or a rule set down by some church; he is breaking faith with life.

Buddhism presents this in a rather simple and direct way, pointing out that the universe in which we live is a great pattern of purposes. These purposes are not always obvious to us, in fact many of them we will not discover in the years of our lives. Yet these purposes are valid. The mere fact that they exist as part of a great archetypal plan of things, not only makes them valid, but makes them inevitable. The codes of law which men establish are constantly changed, modified and too often exaggerated. But the basic laws of the universe never change. No change in human society alters them, because they are not concerned with human society, but with human character. A man being a human being has certain opportunities and responsibilities, related to these opportunities. The individual therefore is responsible to the universe for his character, even as he is responsible to human society for his conduct. All conduct arises in character and the individual will seldom perform an action which his character declares to be wrong.

Thus compromise arises in character itself. Either it fails to assert its full authority or it is incapable of doing so. Deficiencies of character arise from a number of causes. One of the most common causes is ignorance. Another cause which is almost as dangerous is bad example. To live in a world in which all emphasis is upon conduct and no emphasis upon character, will ultimately result in the decline of conduct, because conduct is an arbitrary thing. Will follow certain laws whether we approve of them or not simply because they are statutes and we are afraid to disobey them. But in matters of character we follow the nature of character itself because we know that it is inevitable, we know that it is the one way in which we can hope for personal happiness and security. To break faith with character is to destroy the probabilities of a useful and a well-adjusted life.

Though we do not know all the rules governing character but, as Buddha pointed out, this is not necessary. We learn from daily experience, by observation from history and from the reports in all fields of learning that which essentially can be done and that which cannot be done within the framework of character. We learn from long bitter experience what is not good for character and as we discover the fact we become informed by a process of negation, we know that we do certain things and the result is bad. Where the cumulative testimony of man unites in the statement that these circumstances are bad, have always produced bad, have never brought any integration to anyone and can be directly traced as the source of most of the corruptions of conduct, then we do not need to understand any more than this. We realize that we live within a structure, which we must learn to appreciate and obey.

Buddhism has been called an ethical psychology for the simple reason that it points out, that the individual must be right in character or he will be wrong in conduct. This is a very simple statement yet it is a profoundly true one. In our way of life we have devoted much time and attention to the development of abilities, the development of talents and we have done all that we can do, up to the present time at least, to equip the individual for success or security in the physical world. By this we mean that we have given him the advantages of education, we have taught him a useful trade or profession, we have surrounded him with opportunities and inducements to improve himself, as far as abilities are concerned, and we feel in an abstract sort of way that we have indoctrinated him also in the principles of character. Actually however this last assumption is an exaggeration, we have not. We have simply taught the individual to succeed in this world. We have given him very little understanding of the principles, upon which a successful life must be built.

The majority of our people, in this generation at least, graduate from high school. If they graduate from high school more or less equipped for a trade, or a craft, or a way of life, but they are not equipped to cope with the immediate problems of character. The individual leaving high school can almost immediately make a bad marriage, he has no defenses against this as far as his education is concerned. Nor has society troubled to assist him in outside ways to meet the challenge of his problems. We have divided personal problems from career, we teach career but we do not give adequate insight into the solution of personal problems, therefore factually and actually our education is incomplete. And it is not incomplete because we do not know better, it is incomplete because we have overlooked the fact that character is a financial asset.

Today we may deny that this is true and we look around ourselves and others and glance and the pages of our permanent journals and come to the conclusion that character is a debit, that the individual with character is predestined and foreordained to remain poor. Factually this is not true. An individual with character does not have to fail in anything. An individual without character however is most likely to fail in everything, regardless of whatever other opportunities and privileges he may enjoy.

All those who graduate from school, a goodly number, now pass onto colleges and universities. Here they receive further education, here they are brought up to a professional level, here they are introduced to forms of knowledge, which will prepare them according to our custom for more executive or advanced positions. Yet the college graduate, leaving college, will also often immediately make a bad marriage. He has not been taught those principles upon which a good life can be built, nor assuming that he has other skills but has not received this instruction and he makes a bad marriage. Can we deny that this is going to be a costly mistake in terms of personal security, in terms of finance, in terms of happiness and in terms of incentives for further advancement in physical activity. We know in industry today that a bad marriage will ruin a career. We know also that a bad marriage will endanger the next generation, so those children who come in into that marriage. We know therefore that a bad marriage can be measured in terms of dollars and cents, not only in terms of the cost, but in terms of the consequences. We know also that it may result in heavy alimonies, may result in a heavy loss to the involved parties. Even if the individual receives alimony, as a result of trying to solve a bad marriage, the person who receives the alimony is apt to be as damaged as the person who pays it. So we do realize that lack of character hurts physically. It hurts in our daily experiences with other people. It hurts us socially. It hurts us personally in our estimation of ourselves and efficiency in character is one of the principal causes for psychological complications, which mean in their turn to further physical expense, as a result of years of counseling or even hospitalization for this lack of character.

It is therefore impossible in our complex civilization to say that the development of skills is profitable and the ignoring of character is profitable. Such emmett a conclusion is utterly false. In every department of life character is the foundation of enduring success.

To meet this problem of character therefore we must try to work with ourselves and we must have some courage, some determination to make those changes which are necessary. Always in ethics or in religion we must make certain efforts, or attempts, without any obvious certainty that they will succeed. We must say to ourselves “this I will do because I believe it is better”. Then we must watch and wait for the results of what we have done. In Buddhism experience becomes the final teacher. If as a result of a certain action, performed that thoughtfully and intelligently, a better result comes to us, we then know that we are moving in the right direction. If as the result of a thoughtless action or a selfish one difficulties increase and peace of mind and security are threatened, then we know that this is not good. So thoroughly each person must work out his philosophy of life in his own skin. He must work it out in relationship to what things happen to him as the result of what he does. This becomes the of fact, this becomes the basis of the most certain truths that we are able to understand, and character builds gradually upon the evidence of its own need, and also upon the demonstration of its own value.

Though many persons have looked through the ages to religion for character and largely speaking, if we take the whole picture in consideration, religion has contributed to character. Religion wherever we find it for example does require certain discipline. Most of this discipline in religion is under the general heading of obedience. The individual learns to obey the laws of God as these laws are reveals from the scriptures of his faith. He also learns to obey certain rules, statutes and codes established by his religion. Some of these may be good, some of them may not be very good, but the experience of the individual is that he learns to discipline his conduct in terms of a conviction. He learns to do things that he knows he ought to do, rather than drifting along through the years, doing only the things he wants to do. He also blames the danger of the evasion of fact. He learns how desperately he can get into trouble when he tries to run away from a difficult decision. He learns also how tragic his life can be, when he considers only himself the in a decision and gradually rejecting common responsibilities moves further and further into self-centeredness. The experience of humanity from the dawn of time proves conclusively that selfishness does not pay.

Now we have to estimate what constitutes payment. We know that many selfish people are successful in this role for a time. But if we look into their lives we will find that these people are unsuccessful in the terms of every value that is meaningful. They are desperate, unhappy, unadjusted people, because success without character, success without conviction brings no peace of mind, peace of soul, or serenity of spirit.

Thus we have to decide what we want by success. Do we mean by success that we want certain physical comforts and in order to pay for these we are going to be miserable for a lifetime. Now it doesn't seem as though this decision should be forced upon us. The average person today feels that he ought to be able to do what he pleases and have a good time all along. Nature however denies this. Not because it does want man to do those things which bring happiness, but because nature itself has a definition of happiness and in nature happiness arises from keeping the rule and not from breaking it or ignoring it. Most true happiness is nature's end, nature wants us to be well-adjusted, happy, secure creatures, but nature knows how these things, these ends must be accomplished, and knows that we cannot enjoy the good things of life just because we prefer to remain stupid. To meet these facts we have to get into some basic set of convictions.

As I often pointed out the only source we have for conviction that is adequate is the recognition of natural law. We do as surely as the scientists that this universe is an exact structure and we have begun to realize that our emotional lives are exact structures. If in the development of one of our space exploring projectiles we make a tiny error in some calculation, the projector is a dismal failure. This mistake was not necessarily intentional, certainly no one wanted the mistake, this mistake was not because of hard heartedness, it was probably the result of a certain degree of ignorance. We just do not know quite enough to take care of the problem before it arose. But science realises that this process of knowing enough, this constant research into the laws of the universe, is the only procedure by which we can ultimately get that projectile into space and keep it where we want it. In order to achieve our end we understand law, we must apply to our own problem without breaking law and we must use the lawfulness of the universe to keep that instrument in space. This we recognize. We also know that forever science exists regardless of its intellectual attitude, science is paying homage to immutable principles with which it works every day, and the whole structure of science would collapse if any of these immutable principles suddenly ceased to be immutable. So in the scientific world we accept that in spite of our audacitys, our egotisms and our ambitions we have to work within the structure of law or fail. This seems reasonable, we find it in every department of life, if we break the laws of music our compositions are not good, we break the laws of health our bodies suffer, if we break the laws of mind we are liable to suffer from mental sickness. We also have to recognize that the inner life of man has laws, it has rules.

The heart of man, representing his consciousness, representing his inner mo­tivations and convictions, is also ruled by laws. There are laws of man's affections, just as there are laws governing projectiles in space. Our thoughts must be lawful, or we are sick. Our emotions must also be lawful, or we are sick. And it is just as certain that any pattern built upon ignorance or violation of law will fail in our personal lives, as it is certain that it would fail on a scientific level. Thus, the wise ones from the dawn of time have tried to learn to understand the laws governing the parts of man's nature. They realized that to fail these laws in any respect, is to ask for tragedy.

Tragedies are of varying degrees. Those which arise from con­scientious intention that does not quite work out, are usually more or less minor tragedies; and when we are faced by a major tragedy, if we search inside of ourselves, and examine our motives honestly, we will realize that we are the cause of our own trouble. Some­where we have violated those rules which apply to the way a man must think in his own heart. Nature requires absolute honesty,­ it will settle for nothing less; and where the inner life of man, be­cause it is secret, is permitted to be dishonest, this can never be concealed from the outer conduct of that person. Ultimately, these mistakes will come through to burden and trouble his daily ex­istence.

Today we are obviously in a bad spot from these bearing causes. Every time we read a paper we are offended by the news. Everywhere we look we see evidences of increasing corruption of principles. We see more and more selfishness and less and less integrity. But we are not going to measure this just in terms of what we see, nor can we afford to sit back as some will do. Ignore all this and say so what, we never had it so good. Is this true? I would very much doubt that it is true.

In 1960 which is the last year, on which we have really clear statistics available, one out of every 27 children in the United States was a juvenile delinquent. This is not good. At this time in the United States there is a suicide every 20 minutes, this is not good. At this time in the United States we have better than a million and a half alcoholics, this is not good. We can say we never had it so good. But what we mean is that at this particular moment we as individuals have the idea that we're getting along pretty well. But the rest of the world, so what, no one really cares. And by the time our own mistakes catch up with us completely, we are in such a weakened condition that we cannot even rationalize our own state.

Actually in the world today we have really probably never had it quite so bad, but this badness is so completely obscured by a great financial inflation, that we are trying to get along with the situation as it is. But what are we going to do about the fact that at this moment we are better than 600,000 persons in mental hospitals and probably another 2 or 3 million who ought to be there and are being treated in some way in a hope of keeping them from this unpleasant circumstance. We have at least a half million, maybe a little more, for six hundred thousand, statistically recorded divorces a year. This does not represent our full population as we have a number of religious groups that will not commit divorce or make it so difficult as to be practically unobtainable. We knew more however that from a socialized research project, that 50% of the American homes are in trouble. Under this heading we say we have never had it quite so good. We are just fooling ourselves. We look around and we try to figure out why this situation is as it is, and we also become more and more convinced, that the entire ethical side of our national life has been ignored. Those few persons who retain powerful ethics do so as the result of early training or bitter experience. But practically no effort is made to turn out into our society educated persons with positive ethical convictions.

Thus we see around us a serious deterioration of our way of life. It is a little worse than it was 2,000 years ago. At that time so called ethical deterioration was restricted to a few decadent cultures in the Mediterranean area. Rome could fall apart but the world remained about the same. The so-called primitive people still had their own quiet positive ethical codes. Today the situation is worse. The great spread of communication, of transportation has brought our ways of doing things to practically every backward people on earth. They are all copying us and they are becoming unethical as rapidly as possible. They are also sacrificing the codes which they once held, because they are convinced by general appearances that if they want to be rich and powerful they must follow the ways of Western man. As a result in every nation crime is increasing and so is juvenile delinquency. In every nation it is becoming more difficult to find honest craftsmanship, with continual dissension argument and debate, and whether this way of life touches crime goes up, divorce increases and the sufferings that strike directly at the life of man, they come more numerous and more desperate. So we have to come back to the problem of the individual himself.

Each person has to decide for himself whether he wishes to be happy or not. If he wants to be happy, if he realizes that happiness is at the root of success, and that success without happiness is meaningless in the long run, then he must do those things that will help to make him happy. He must do those things which na­ture says lead to happiness, because nature will not change.

Some people seem to have the idea that nature's observant eye occasion­ally looks in the other direction; that there is no reason to assume that nature can catch up with the mistakes of every private citizen; that there must be some way we can outwit nature and quietly carry along our misdeeds with dignity. But it cannot be done. Na­ture is not an observant thing; it is not someone sitting somewhere watching us. Nature is an involved complex of laws operating in us and through us.

It is not any more possible to fool nature than it is to fool our own stomach, because actually, nature is working in the intricate complexity of our own character. What we do affects us, whether anyone else knows it or not, discovers it or not; nor is there anyway we can separate our action from the inevitable consequence which that action sets up in our own chemistry. Thus, it is not that we are being watched; it is that everything we do has a re­sult of some kind, has an effect inherent in it, and that effect will have its way and will come out regardless of any effort we make to conceal it.

Today we leave this problem of internal regard largely to re­ligion. If religion was a little more vital in its direct contact with things, it might help us to sustain an ethical character, but it is unable to achieve too much because it is hopelessly separated from the daily life of the person. Religion is a thing apart. In the United States, we have a hundred million nominally religious persons. This is a lot of people, but unfortunately it is from this same group that crime, delinquency, and domestic incompatibility arise. It is from this same group for the simple reason that religion, as a separate thing, is not strong enough. We do not give it sufficient attention. We do not devote to it the same thought and care that we devote to the pursuit of our trades and professions. We go to church to listen, but we do not act, and we have not recognized that religion is finally ethics, and ethics is finally science. We do not realize these parallels or their importance to us.

By degrees, then, by attitudes of other persons, by the very depreciation of religion in our physical way of life, we are weaned away from convictions that might have use or value; or we become offended at religion because of the conduct of persons who claim to practice it. This is also a great mistake, for religion is not a person misusing it; it is a principle which endures. The individual who misuses it, breaks faith with it; he does not represent it.

The only way we can really get at some of these problems is to go beneath the mind, which is always justifying, explaining, and trying to prove that we are right. To each individual, his mind is a sort of private defender. He has allowed it to justify his own desire in almost every instance. Instead of using the mind to find out what is true, the individual uses it to find out how he can get what he wants. The mind has come under such tremendous pressure in our economic way of life, that by itself and of itself, it cannot be depended upon. Twenty-five centuries ago, Buddha was pro­foundly suspicious of the mind as an instrument, and after all these centuries, we are becoming more profoundly suspicious of the fact that he was right. We begin to realize that what he said was essen­tially true.

Behind and beneath the mind however are certain primordial desires, which may be considered as almost atavistic. They arise out of the dome of human experience. One of these desires that is as old as human consciousness, is the desire to be happy. Actually the individual wants to feel good inside. He wants to have a laugh in his soul. He wants to rise each day into a good world. He wants to come to the ability to sit down quietly, think about his own conduct and being glad that he did what he did. Happiness also means usually happiness for other persons we care for and the individual achieves a reasonable degree of happiness is a valuable citizen in his community. He is a better parent, a better executive and a better worker. This desire for happiness we've always had.

Another desire that is very deep within ourselves is the desire to be of value. We do not want to live just as parasites upon the face of nature, nor do we wish to live merely to exploit each other. We do these things but we're never very proud of them. And anything that we would like to conceal from another person we should not do ourselves. There's the desire to be of some value or service to others, moves all of us. We do not necessarily feel we must make careers of service, but we like to be appreciated because we have done something worth appreciating.

We like to also have the feeling within ourselves that every day we are gaining on something. We would like to believe that every day we know a little more than we did the day before, that we can do things a little better, that we are gradually coming to excel in something. We like to have the feeling that we are able to do something very well. We like to have the feeling also that we are self sustaining creatures, that in the emergencies that arise we can take care of ourselves spiritually, ethically, morally and physically. When we live these kinds of feelings, we feel better, we face life better. If however we look into our own natures and find that we are inept in all of these things or most of them, we are not proud on ourselves, we may have certain desire to go out and do something better, but unless we have a realization of some degree of valuable accomplishment we are not really happy people.

Thus we discover by actually working with troubled persons that the average person's happiness actually depends upon certain achievements of his own and these achievements are not primarily economic, but they do contribute tremendously to physical living, making this living more valuable and worthwhile not only to ourselves but to any who are dependent upon us or are associated with us. The average person wishes to be a good expression of the problems with which he is working, he wants to feel that whatever he has done, he has done it commendably and to the best of his own ability and insight. The only answer to this type of thinking is to get back inside of ourselves and try to work with the primordial instincts which we have been given as part of our cultural heritage and to get back into that and work with it teaches us a number of things, which perhaps we do not want to know. One of the things that it teaches us is the danger of the kind of  ambition which forces us to compromise in order to succeed. The moment we have to do this something inside ourselves is not happy. We may be outwardly glad for a little while, but very soon the consequences of the false sense of value begins to creep in upon us and we set forth upon a career, which will have too many ups and downs to have any permanent significance for ourselves.

Human heart stands mysteriously within man as a symbol of the spiritual instrumentality of his life. In poetry, philosophy, and literature, the heart signifies the peculiar moral power that particularly dis­tinguishes man. We say, "a good-hearted person," and we mean by this simply that the person is good. When we say that an in­dividual has heart, we mean that he has courage. When we say that he follows the dictates of his heart, we are saying that he is a person of honor and integrity. Thus, the heart has come to be the symbol of the principal spiritual-ethical center in man's life.

How we unfold the principles of the heart will depend upon our ability to educate basic impulses. Knowing that the instinct in all human beings is basically to be kindly creatures, we must then equip this instinct to do these things that are valuable and necessary for its expression. We find that in emergencies, in tragedies and in disasters, the humanity in man moves forward into expression. We forget our prejudices and conflicts, and we work together for the period of trouble, because something in us moves out to help. We have this instinct, and yet we are constantly frus­trating it or failing to permit it to manifest, lest it interfere with our ambitions or our careers. Actually, this instinct to help will advance all career, because it is the basis of our proper relationship with life.

Because of the general lack of background, opportunities, ex­periences, and examples, the individual today does not naturally educate his own heart. We assume that as a person grows up, he matures; but when, in the process of growing up, he dedicates his energies entirely to one purpose, that purpose being to achieve physical success, he fails to educate the rest of himself and is de­prived of the skills by means of which he can accomplish his in­tentions.
If an individual says, "I wish I could build a house," he can keep on wishing for a long time, and still not be able to build a house. But if he has a sufficient desire to build a house, so that he studies the necessary arts, crafts, and trades, he will have the pro­ficiency to build a house and can do it successfully. If an indi­vidual says in his heart, "I would like to be good. I would like to do good," and does nothing to equip himself for a life of con­structive endeavor, he will continue to wish to his dying day that he could do something better.
 
Thus, it is perfectly obvious that the mind must be trained in order to use its faculties well, and it is equally true that the emo­tions must be trained and disciplined if they are to give the in­dividual support in positive directives. We cannot assume that it is necessary to go to school for years in order to be an accountant, but that we do not need any training in order to be well-integrated human beings; nor does the achievement of being an accountant, or a jurist, or a physician compensate for the lack of ethical ma­turity.

How, then, do we train the heart? According to Zen, and most other mystical disciplines, we cannot train the heart by an ob­jective procedure. The mind and emotions are different instruments, and they cannot be educated in exactly the same way. The mind is educated by taking on knowledge, but the heart is edu­cated by casting off error; and the two processes are completely opposed to each other. One of the things we have to do in order to educate the heart is to gradually relax away from those false pressures by which the heart is enslaved to the wrong goals. The mystic has always assumed that if he could attain a proper feel­ing of worship within himself, he would find that his heart is a kind of temple, a sanctuary, a place where the individual can come quietly and reverently into the presence of the indwelling divinity in his own nature. Those who have less religious instincts may have difficulty in conceiving that they are going to come into the presence of an internal divinity, but perhaps for these people, it is enough to feel that they are going to come into the presence of the deepest and most indwelling integrity that they will ever know.

Actually, the heart of man is very close to life. It is closer to life than the mind or the hand. The heart of the human being is the mainspring of the best part of himself, and for the most part, even under evil conditioning and unfortunate examples, the heart does retain a large degree of its basic integrity. Thus, we find that even hardened criminals can reveal some amazing emotional in­tegrity. No individual is completely bad, and the last part of man to give up hope is the heart. We must do all we can, therefore, to preserve this instrument, so that it will not cease to believe in the good.

One way in which educate the heart is to concentrate upon the justi­fication of those better instincts which are embodied in it. We know, for example, that we educate the heart by giving it beauty, music, great art. We know that we exercise and strengthen it by following pur­suits of positive aesthetic value. We know, also, that we give it further strength when we contemplate the essential values in things. We give it more courage if we are idealistic than if we are materialistic. We give it greater value if we have a religious instinct than if we do not have a religious instinct. Everything that causes us to love the beautiful and to serve the good will help us to strengthen the resolutions of the heart.

We also realize that as we go further into this world of the heart, we become more sensitive to the responsibilities of living. The heart naturally accepts responsibilities, while the mind makes the most of opportunities. The heart, if we permit it to, naturally opens and confers itself, naturally seeks the joy, peace and happi­ness of others. If it has been trained away from this point of view by adverse conditioning, then we must try to recondition it by every means within our power. This can often be done by a posi­tive statement of belief, and by becoming more concerned with spiritual value in a material world. We increase the power of the heart by association with constructive religious movements. We also strengthen the heart by becoming better informed about the lives of other people, because information, knowledge, and insight overcome our natural tendency to criticize and condemn. Wherever we permit a negative emotional factor to go uncorrected, we are endangering our own insight and our ability to know truth. There is nothing that blocks truth as much as prejudice, and there is nothing more common in our world today than emotional prejudice.

As we go further, we also find that the heart has duties, and we have duties to the heart. One of our great duties is to set aside some part of our time to a direct effort to understand the heart, to know its meaning, to experience its desires, its purposes, and to share in the natural insight that it possesses. Buddhism points out very wisely that to the degree that we reduce the intellectual con­spiracy of our lives, to that degree we permit both the natural processes of the mind and the natural instincts of the emotions to express themselves. Man actually has to develop hard-heartedness, because it is not natural to him and never will be. He has to develop suspicion and hate. These are not natural instincts. It is the natural instinct of man to be normal, and the idea that normalcy must be cultivated by some artificial procedure, is wrong. What has to happen is that abnormalcy must be reduced by effort. The individual must gradually get away from his mistakes, and when he is through with these, the facts remain clear. If he will stop in­terfering with his own integrity, he will have that integrity. He does not have to develop it; he simply has to stop misusing it.

One of the simple ways to get over a compound misinformation or lack of insight is of course to gradually reduce the tensions of the mind and of the objective emotions by means of which the basic inner life is prevented from functioning. We know definitely that we block that part of man which is the best of him. Mysticism has always taken the ground that we do not know how to be good, we really do not, but we know how to stop making the mistakes that are already hurt us and somewhere as we gradually overcome the mistakes that which is left becomes clearly good. So in Mysticism we have this tendency to retire into quietude. We discovered that one of the problems that we all face is our difficulty in getting alone with ourselves.

It is therefore our responsibility to begin to discipline our emo­tional center. The disciplining is simply a process of freeing it, by a definite effort, from all emotions that are not right, not justified, and not helpful. In this way, we gradually find our way back to the inner heart-consciousness, which is the only thing that can guide us and lead us to bring our conduct into harmony with good character. This psychic heart center in us is the most powerful instrument of value that we have. It is the only instrument that cuts through mentation. As the Rig Veda says, the mind is for­ever slaying the real, so that we are constantly perturbed by the mind; and the great remedy lies in the heart. The heart also gives us the courage of sacrifice, the courage to perform actions which are beyond the call of duty. It gives us the willingness to forget ourselves in the service of other things. The heart makes us un­selfish if we will permit it to; and it is only when the mind cor­rupts this unselfishness that we begin to pervert the heart.

In quietude and in the relaxation of mind, we can gradually become aware of the doctrine of the heart, and we know that as we retire into the heart, we come nearer and nearer to life itself. Man is going out into space to explore life, but he will never find the answer there. The infinite wisdom of the universe has put all the answers that man can ever need so close to him that he does not have to walk around the block to find them. For within the heart of man there are bridges extending to the infinite in all di­rections. The heart is the gateway to the eternal, and those who have never explored this path, who have never attempted to open this gate, are not qualified to say that this is not true.

Down through history, there have been individuals who have explored the regions of the heart. They have sought to know what was in this core, and wherever they have sought, they have come to identically the same discovery. They have discovered that the road into the heart is indeed the golden road that leads to every­thing that is right and proper for the human being; that the individual who finds his own heart, who learns to live with it, who learns to know it as a magic garden within himself - this individual comes into a world of values, and by this circumstance alone, be­ comes enlightened in character. He comes into experiences which are so important that he can no longer afford to sacrifice them, and has no desire to. He discovers that with all the chaos in the world, no man is further from peace than he is from his own heart.

This heart-peace in man is not a selfish peace. It is not a turning away into the self in order to escape the bruises of the world. It is this peace that gives man the courage of his convictions. It gave Socrates the courage to drink hemlock rather than to com­promise a principle; it gave Jesus the courage to die on the cross for man; it gave courage to the Christians in the arena of Rome. It gave courage to Washington as he knelt in the snow in Valley Forge and prayed to his eternal God. It gave courage to Mohandas Gandhi, and made him perhaps one of the greatest men in the modern world. This search for the heart in us is not, therefore, a vanity search, nor is it an effort to find some kind of security against the winds of trouble. It is the search for our real selves, for our normalcy, our happiness, and our peace of soul. It is the kind of search that makes it possible for us to be people, because actually, we are truly human only when we have found the mys­tery of the heart, and have discovered its tremendous contribution to the perfection of our lives.

If we go further into this realization, we come also to great strengths that we haven’t otherwise been able to know. As Zen points out, the discovery of the heart doctrine is not by authority, but by experience. Once we begin to move in on this, once we begin to do those things that are necessary, things happen which we can no longer deny. We discover that we can achieve to this tran­quillity spirit without sacrificing anything that is worthwhile in life. In fact, everything in life becomes more worthwhile. For every small thing we seem to lose in this process, we gain so much more.

We gain values that we will never be able to appreciate until we really experience them. Through the heart, we finally come to discover this lawful universe in which we live; and we discover that this lawful universe also has a heart, and that behind every manifestation of natural law, there is a principle which might be termed eternal love. Through our own heart, we find the heart of the world, the heart of God, and the heart of man. We also find the purpose that moves this great instrument which we call crea­tion. We finally know that the universe, as man himself, is moved not by thought, but by love.

The universe, in its greatest love, therefore, disciplines man. It wants and demands that he shall be the fulfillment of a universal purpose. It wants for every human being that peace which man wants in his own heart. And if the universe did not have peace in its consciousness, man could not, because man is merely a part of the universe. How could man love if the universe were loveless? How could man have any emotion that is not justified by the great energies of space that sustain all emotion? Our natural emo­tional energies must operate in harmony with universal law. Thus, man's love is the proof of divine love; and man's love of God is the proof of God's love of man. And out of the great mystery of love come the only bridges that are real, the only ways in which we can ever become one with life.

By entering into our own hearts, therefore, we truly discover the heart of God. We truly experience the infinite security of this uni­verse. We realize, in a strange mystical way, that it is true that every sparrow's fall is marked; that every atom dancing in the light or mingled into the structure of some creature, is known and is recorded, and has its own destiny governed by the same lave that rules the universe. Gradually, out of this experience of the in­timacy of a beautiful universe, comes the wonderful realization of true security.