Anahatta/ Heart Chakra

Anahatta is the Heart chakra and is located behind the breastbone on a line between the nipples. It is associated with the heart and lungs, the thymus gland, cardio-pulmonary plexus and the skin. It is said to be green in colour. Its traditional symbols are: the blue hexagram of Vayu (Air/ Space Element) and the antelope or deer. Anahatta is said to control the skin and sense of touch. Anahatta works through the balance of heaven and earth (the mind and beyond-the-mind) and the dynamic of love, giving and receiving, and dominion. The heart is an almost universal symbol for love and compassion. Anahatta is the central chakra, half way between muladhara and sahasrara. It is the centre of the human being as human (rather than animal). In this sense it is the new beginning of a different order of being. It has been called the muladhara above the diaphragm. From here we develop and grow as spiritual beings. And what is it that differentiates the spiritual from the mundane, from the egotistical it is love. It is love that takes us personally beyond the prison of our limited self; it is love that is the cause for us to reach beyond our seemingly in-built selfishness, to embrace the world to recognize and help others in a genuine and skilful way. And in so doing, understand, experience and know (gnosis) more of who we truly are infinite, eternal, divine. Just as all the chakras have their apotheosis in muladhara, the higher chakras have their basis and beginning, root and support in anahatta. There is a great link between muladhara and anahatta so much so that anahatta is considered the ruler of muladhara. This gives an extra clue as to how to both purify and clear problems from muladhara and empower it. As one quick example of how to consider this: remember that the main emotion of muladhara is fear, particularly fear of death. Now, with the added perspective of anahatta, we can see that there is no fear without love. We fear because we love we love our life. And conversely, in the relative sense there is no love without fear we fear losing love, or losing the object of our love, or not being worthy of love and so on. Of course, we can learn to love beyond fear and this is the lesson of anahatta. The teachings of anahatta release us from the fear of death, through love and realizing emptiness. Going beyond selfishness through the path of love and compassion frees us from ego; from desire for ego-power; from delusions of grandeur and arrogance; from delusions of insignificance. Love, compassion, tolerance and understanding free all the chakras from the ego. In that space of profound good humour all the chakras come into a natural balance and vitality they are empowered and they evolve. This is why it is said that the best healing practice is compassion practice, is to practise compassion. Can you see how this is so?

The love and compassion of Anahatta is of course, in the relative sense, the love of humans and gods. With this love, though, there is still selfishness the ego still has an agenda and a say. This love and compassion is still good it is the path we are walking and it holds the aspiration to realize and manifest the unconditional love and universal compassion of our true nature. It is the unconditional love and universal compassion that are (or can be) expressed in anahatta, which transform your very being from the most rarefied or subtle level of spirit to the very cells of your body. In order to realize and bring forward unconditional, unlimited love and compassion, we need to go beyond the relative mind, the limited self, the fractured and distorted ego-I. We step from human love to the love of the bodhisattvas and eventually to that of the Buddhas. It is no accident then that anahatta, the chakra of love and compassion is also the chakra of Space. Here, the space is spaciousness which is awareness. The awareness, naturally beyond the limited mind; the very nature from which the limited mind arises. To realize this spaciousness at the level of anahatta is to realize ego-lessness; it is to realize the emptiness (tongba/ shunya) of self and phenomena. It is the peace that is vitalized and enriched by a cosy warmth, which is the very nature of tongba-nyi. It is not the end of the spiritual path by any means, yet it is a good indication that were on the right track and it also gives us the ability to be naturally good human beings stable, good-hearted, and easy. It can be reached by practising shamatha with a good motivation. Just as it is said that our true nature is wisdom and love & compassion, we learn in anahatta that the wisdom is spaciousness or the wisdom-realizing-emptiness and the love & compassion is unlimited because it is the energy or movement/ radiance of the wisdom. In very simple terms we can explain as follows: by now you know how you feel at the end of your shamatha session. Sometimes there is a special kind of feeling everything has just settled and you are very awake. You feel almost like you are sparkling; you feel very alive. Everything looks wonderful and even the people and situations that might usually bring you down or cause you to react negatively even they are seen in a new light its not so bad, not so serious, not so stuck not so real. This state of shamatha is, you could say, a spark of the energy of anahatta. Your heart centre has opened and energized a little more and in there you find a wonderful warmth for yourself and for everyone and everything you bring your mind to. And it is easy and spacious and quite stable and firm without being stuck or dead in any way. This is showing us what emptiness is, and how quite naturally, love and compassion arise out of it. More particularly it shows us that these qualities are already present and that stilling the ego-chatter through the skilful method of shamatha with the motivation of bodhicitta is all that is needed for the qualities to shine out. Unstruck sound is a reference to the lack of inherent nature emptiness of self and phenomena and also to the energy (sound) of that which is the warmth of love and compassion. Why is it unstruck? Because

there is no one there to strike it! In other words, you dont have to force or manipulate anything (in fact, you cant anyway) all you need is to relax. The transition from manipura to anahatta is the transmutation of passion, power and lust into compassion and love. This does not mean that we become sickly-sweet and passion-less like some kind of wilted flower or vegetable! This image of love and compassion is completely fake and is based in ego manipulation. People displaying this sort of sugar-coated sympathy are being manipulated by their ego and are trying to manipulate you! Never fall for this fakery. No the transmutation of the qualities of manipura into those of anahatta vitalizes them and releases them from egos thrall. Passion, the fire of the soul burns brighter and with greater enthusiasm released from the contraction of egos horns-of-dilemma, from egos negativity. Please note that no spiritual path is anti-passion. Lots of western students of Buddhism would do well to learn this. Even bodhisattvas are very passionate about compassion! It is only egos version of passion, which is more truly about attachment control and neuroticism that is ever a problem. So here we learn generosity. To give and also to receive. Generosity is the attitude of generosity and includes all beings including ourselves. It is this attitude of generosity that empowers anahatta and raises the vibration of the lower chakras. The greatest expression of this generosity is the bodhisattva motivation: For the sake of others longing to attain complete enlightenment. This allows the energy of Heaven and Earth to meet. The heart is the bridge between our love and cosmic wisdom, universal love. Our heart is the bridge from the relative mind to beyond the relative mind. As such both compassion and devotion as spiritual paths are found here. We can also say that anahatta is the first of the transpersonal chakras. This follows from apprehending emptiness and going beyond ego which is saying the same as going beyond a centralized I-consciousness, and independent fixed I persisting in time. Thus, the more fully one opens the heart and the heart centre, the more fully one can communicate with those around. Communication and understanding happen through the heart centre. By opening more fully to the nature of the heart, we open to the greater in us, the greater-than-us which is the greater-of-us. It is through this capacity of being greater than the I that we really see what is there to be seen, really hear what is there to be heard, and so on. The communication here can also be telepathy or empathy. Diagnosis in tradition medicine systems takes place through the heart. So can you see that without love and compassion no real communication is possible? No real contact with the actual world is possible. Without heart, the world and all the people in it are no more than extensions of your ego. You never really see, hear or touch anything or anyone. And you, in turn, are never really seen, heard or touched. While the heart is imprisoned within the fortress of ego you have a seeming invulnerability but also you are not actually participating in life. You see,

as from the window of a tower, while life goes on beyond the walls of the fortress. Maybe you feel a sort of safety, but you also feel cheated like you and your life are inauthentic; like you are missing something, or missing everything. So you open your heart, to love and to real communication. And in this you also feel vulnerable and you are: vulnerable to your weaknesses and also vulnerable to your strengths. You are vulnerable to life and to the magic and wonder of being alive!