“Hearts are meant to be broken.” - Oscar Wilde

'The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion.' said Bhikkha Bodhi, one of the contemporary American Buddhist teacher.

'Dreaming in the Garden' Artwork by Sofan Chan

So called Suffering is a layer of distorted reality you believe is the only truth for you. This distorted reality trapped you like fishes caught in the fisherman's net. You lost your capacity to be free and wild. Some of you may have a sense that you are trapped in a false reality and even a false identity, but don't have any ideas how to get back to your true nature and experience love, happiness and inner peace. Like fishes in the net, get pulled out from the water, gasping for the air, tightly binded with no room to move. Look deeper, this process of investigation the pain and suffering so deeply buried in your psyche will take you back to experience the divinity within. During the investigation, your built-in survival mechanical protective devices have to all cracked open, like the fish finally broke free from the fishing net, the prisoner free from the jail confinement... the heart free from the shackles and chains of the past pains; and then you can perfect your own capacity to love again. 

'Gaia' Artwork by Sofan Chan

 
Who to love – yes, the one who you live with 24 hours day – yourselves. What to love – your goodness and your ugliness, the flaws and the perfections, the mistakes you have made as well as the successes you think you have worked so hard for and well deserved.
How wise was Buddha as a spiritual teacher and the healer of the mind, who did not teach people on how to pursuit happiness. Instead, he taught in his first sermon after he became awakened on how to investigate where we were entangled with - our distorted reality – anger, hatred, frustration, disappointment, shame, guilt and all other lower forces.
Buddha said it clearly, ' there is suffering in world and there are also ways out of suffering.”
Aren't you intrigued by this simple statement? It goes straight to the heart and by pass all the distorted reality of the mind.

To be wild and freeagain, you have to go into your deeply buried demons of the past and to experience them, meet them, be with them and accept them as our faithful friends. In this encountering you look them in the eye with love and compassion, knowing the pain were there to enrich your capacity to love. Now, you allow yourselves to unpack this bundle of burden, like unloading the rubbish that you have been carrying for so long. 
 
As you know , it is the human nature to love pleasurable feelings as much as possible and avoid unpleasurable experiences at all costs; even if you experienced unpleasurableness , we tend to suppress them into the dim dark corners of the psyche. Deeply buried. Just in case these demons come out to haunt us again. To investigate these demons in order to experience true happiness, you may question, “Are you kidding me?”

Should the spiritual path be light hearted, glory and full of joy and happiness. Why can't we just come together sing the ancient Sanskrit words and dance to the Shiva and Krishna to experience ecstasy in psychedelic ways?

As ancient sage said, ”you burn your incense, ring the bell, light the candle and pray to god for betterment. Be prepare, eventually god will come and put you into the raging fire of the furnace, burn you and burn you until pure gold comes out from the raw iron ores.”You scream  out loud for the unbearable raging fire you have to endure, you cry out for justice and ask: why you give me so much pain to endure. “I did not ask for punishment as such,” you said to yourself.

Are you a true seeker on this spiritual path? If you are, be prepare to uncover the depth of your wounds, your grief from the past, unfulfilled longing, the sorrow that you have stored up during the course of your lives in order to come to inner integration and harmony.

As Oscar Wilde wrote, “Hearts are meant to be broken.” The cracks of our broken heart are the springs where the pure gold pours out, drops by drops, to enrich the human capacity to love again.

Buddhism Reading card Deck by Sofan Chan

'Mind Garden' Artwork by Sofan Chan