Tulku Thondup - The Heart of Unconditional Love: A Powerful New Approach to Loving-Kindness Meditation

SHAMBHALA PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2015 by Tulku Thondup Rinpoche

The Buddhayana Foundation Series XIII

Line art on previous page by Robert Beer, used with permission.

Photograph of Shadakshari Avalokiteshvara reproduced courtesy of Sothebys, Inc. 2005.

Standing Avalokiteshvara painting by Zashi Nima, photograph reproduced with permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Thondup, Tulku, author.

The heart of unconditional love: a powerful new approach to loving-kindness meditation / Tulku Thondup.

pages cm

eISBN 978-0-8348-0053-3

978-1-61180-235-1 (paperback)

1. MeditationBuddhism. 2. Compassion

Religious aspectsBuddhism. I. Title.

BQ5612.T49 2015

294.34435dc23

2014020623

In memory of Elsie P. Mitchell

C ONTENTS

This book differs in significant ways from my earlier book, The Healing Power of Loving-Kindness (2009). That work emphasizes the development of loving-kindness in the traditional way, which focuses first on individuals such as a loved one (for example, ones mother) and then on others. The uniqueness of the present book is that it offers new ways of applying loving-kindness meditation, as well as new and more effective ways of perfecting the highest states of loving-kindness, unconditional love.

In this book, we try from the very beginning to generate unconditional love in ourselves by feeling the Buddhas unconditional love through devotion and to serve others with that love. We try to see the whole world as a world of unconditional love and to perfect the ultimate unconditional love that is free from concepts. I have not explicitly written about this anywhere else, nor seen it in other books. This is the first time I have talked about transforming oneself and the world through this meditation. Yet, at the same time, this presentation extracts the very heart essence of Buddhisms ageless wisdom teachings.

The transformation is anchored in the fact that when our mind is immersed in loving-kindness, it becomes a mind of loving-kindness, and all our perceptions and actions reflect that. This premise is so simple, so understandable, and so logical. It is a new way of presenting, thinking about, and conceiving of ourselves and the world as the heart of the Buddhas loving-kindness and of finding the Buddha within. The origin of the book and how I came to discover the method of loving-kindness meditation according to Four Buddha Stages are explained in the Introduction.

There is quite a bit of repetition in the book. Whenever I get the chance, I explain things over and over. Thats because, by repeatedly focusing on the words, meanings, and experiences of loving-kindness, we can better extract its essence, like honeybees accumulating an abundance of nectar by extracting it repeatedly from the flowers. This principle applies in many areas: devotees receive blessings by praying repeatedly; laundry is cleaned by repeated washing cycles; dough is made soft and pliable by repeated kneading; and muscles are made stronger by many reps of exercise. Also, with repetition, terms and ideas that are initially strange for many of usincluding the meaning and the experience of unconditional lovebecome understandable, then familiar, then enjoyableand finally, our own intimate nature.

With the aim of making this book more accessible to readers who are somewhat new to Buddhism, I have added a glossary of terms that might be unfamiliar to some. The endnotes are reserved primarily for scholarly citations and linguistic information. For the sake of brevity, abbreviations keyed to the Bibliography have been used in endnotes for Tibetan-language text titles. (Please see the paragraph for more details.)

I hope it will become clear that you dont have to be a so-called Buddhist to meditate on and pray to the Buddha of Loving-Kindness. If you belong to another tradition and prefer, you can adapt the methods in this book to pray to and meditate on the source of loving-kindness of your own tradition. The important point is that the source of blessings should be the embodiment of unconditional love for all beings.

I am grateful to Harold Talbott for lending his gifted knowlege and unstinting dedication in editing this book thoroughly, as he has kindly been doing for my writings for over three decades. I am grateful to Lydia Segal, my wife, for carefully editing this book with her literary gifts. Our deeply shared devotion in the beauty of loving-kindness inspired me to offer this book, which is as much her book as mine.

I am greatly indebted to Michael Baldwin for single-handedly providing all the facilities I could possibly want for my research and writing projects. I am thankful to the members and the patrons of The Buddhayana Foundation for most generously supporting my research and writing for the past thirty-three years. I will always be grateful to Fred Segal and Micheline Segal for their kindness and care. I offer my gratitude to my Dharma teachers, loving parents, noble grandparents, and the kind friends who shared their unconditional love in every possible way.