The heart is like a mirror. When we dust it off, we are able to see ourselves. The dust is all our stuff - guilt, anger - this stuff is reflected back to us. Practice removes the dust from the mirror of our hearts.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that emotional burdens can cloud our self-perception, and self-reflection can help clear these distractions.
Krishna Das uses the metaphor of the heart as a mirror to illustrate how our emotional struggles, such as guilt and anger, can obscure our true selves. By practicing self-awareness and emotional healing, we can clear away these negative feelings and achieve a clearer, more honest understanding of ourselves.
In practice
In a meditation workshop, one might share this quote to emphasize the importance of self-awareness.
If we know anything about a path at all, it's only because of the Great ones that have gone before us. Out of their love and kindness, they have left some footprints for us to follow. So, in the same way that they wish for us, we wish that all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be safe, be happy, have good health, and enough to eat. And may we all live at ease of heart with whatever comes to us in life.
Grace surrounds us and holds us like the sky holds everything in it … and as soon as I find a way to let go of my story, I keep seeing over and over again that grace is always here and it includes the forgetting and the remembering. The practice is the opening of the hand to catch the raindrops, which are always falling. If you don't open your hand, you get wet, but you don't get much to drink.
Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.
Love is what we are; we don't get it from somebody, we can't give it to anybody, we can't fall in it or fall out of it. Love is our true Being.
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
The whole point of being alive is to evolve into the complete person you were intended to be.
Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you're juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5 P.M. deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you're walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock.
No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.
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