In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte , Padmavajra shares his thoughts on and#8220;The Centrality of Emotion.and#8221; Catching up with what we know and transforming emotion. From the talk and#8220;Introducing the Great Loveand#8221; the first in a five part series on all aspects of the Metta Bhavana practice and and#8216;The Great Loveand#8217; in Buddhist discourse and practice and#8211; from metta (loving kindness) itself to Bodhichitta.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
The Centrality of Emotion
[ Music ] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. [ Music ] For Sankarachta, this issue of emotion is central. In a very early lecture, he said something which I've never forgotten, that he said that the central issue of the spiritual life for most people is finding emotional equivalents for intellectual understanding. The central issue of spiritual life for most people is finding emotional equivalents for intellectual understanding. We know so much, I know some people think that they don't know very much about the Dharma, but I think given the standard of education that most people have, it's much stronger than the experience of being in India, for example. We know so much, we know all about love, we know all about how to be. There's numerous books on how to be, how to respond creatively to people. There's loads of books on Buddhism about the way things are and the way the enlightened person is. The real issue is not knowing but being, turning that into experience, turning it into being. That's the real issue. Making our emotions or having our emotions, getting our emotions to catch up with what we know. Emotion is the driver of our lives and the driver of our spiritual lives, so we need to engage with emotion. We need to transform emotion, hence the alchemy of love. The whole, the symbolism of alchemy is the transmutation, the transformation of base metal, of base elements into gold or into elixir. So this is what we're doing. Our emotions, whatever they are, are our base elements, our raw material, and in a way the more emotion kind of sloshing and swirling around, as David Bellamy might say, the better, really, because there's more to transform. The bigger the lump of clay, the bigger the Buddha, thus the Chan saying, the Zen saying. So through Metabhavana we're transforming our emotional life, which means actually transforming our lives in their totality. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donny and thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [BLANK_AUDIO]