Waking Up: A Heart Like Vincent

I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly.
-vincent van gogh

Van Gogh's prose touched me near the end of the film, "Loving Vincent". The film is a visual journey through his creative heart. Over one hundred artists worked to depict a story of Van Gogh's artistry, vision, struggles on film. What touched my heart were the feelings on his heart that were expressed in his paintings and letters that gave me insight into how he realized truth that the world wasn't ready to see and hear.

I think our hearts continue to be broken and we fall in love in countless and unimaginable ways. To be fully engaged is a path of falling in love with the world while feeling brokenhearted from the sadness, struggles in ourselves and in other beings-From a friend dealing with the end of a marriage to very young immigrant children being separated from their parents, incarcerated. From neighbors grieving the sudden death of their son to personally working to heal the scars of overt and internalized racism.

I am prepared to have my heart broken because it lets me know I'm alive, fully engaged in the world and willing to take action. To live with an awakened heart it needs to be open, full, clear and strong. My heart needs to be vulnerable in order to be fearless.

Van Gogh's artistry expresses an independent nature, one could call it fearlessness through his bold use of color, both rough and graceful movement of his pen or brush. Sunlight illuminates the sky, brightness seeps through windows. Sensitivity and vulnerability to his surroundings imbue his prose too. He saw things differently. Did he feel things differently, too?

Am I reaching for the stars to feel his heart was bold and vulnerable, fearless and open?

Waking up-

"Would it bother you if I smoke?" I said no. I didn't want him to hide. I've witnessed many who look like they need to hide-often alone outside when it's cold and wet or hot and arid-it looks isolating and lonely. So I said no, it wouldn't bother me. But my heart was heavy.

My breath is your breath.

My heart sunk a little when I found out that my adult son smokes.

A few weeks later, I started a letter to try to say with kindness, tobacco companies are profiting from addicting you to nicotine. Before I completed the letter I listened to a wise teacher and poet confess to our class, "I finally realized why I smoke!" They went on to say, I've been crying while preparing lectures and sometimes during teaching sessions. Adding, "You don't know how many of my poems begin with, my heart is breaking." Smoking allows this teacher to pause emotionally, to push aside emotions that are too strong in the moment. I recognized that sometimes our thoughts and emotions feel so strong and we don't know what to do. When this poet reads their poetry and cries, I become a witness. I come along on their journey of sorrow, of heartbreaking struggles and how they bear witness to global tragedies, felt to the core. Those of us in the class that day were lucky. We benefited from the vulnerable and empathic heart of our teacher and poet and our hearts opened.

Lower Hamlet rose garden, Plum Village, France-present moment, wonderful moment.

I pushed myself to look deeper.
I imagined my son and loved ones in my life who smoke. Can they shut down painful emotions and feelings by smoking? And yes, sometimes it looks like they are receiving a kind of temporary relief.

A sudden wave of understanding arose, not fear. Love surfaced, not judgement. A wide open wish, a wish for everyone to struggle less, find a way, someday, to be with difficult emotions.

The letter I wrote was different. I began again. A love letter.

I breathed for you for nine months.

A montage of Vincent Van Gogh's letters

I felt the pull and remembrance that we were once physically connected, his life dependent upon mine and that's where the tug at my heart originated. Yet, in that moment, all I felt the need to do was to bow, to acknowledge something different was hitting my core. What I needed to say in my love letter was: Dear Son, May you find peace, solidity, calm and ease in your body and mind, someday.

My heart broke open a little that day because I let myself fall deeper in love with my son as I awakened to how we sentient beings cope with our suffering, our strong emotions, thoughts, and perceptions.

I think I see with different eyes; the eyes of understanding and the eyes of love. I will do my best to support and love my son because I once breathed for the two of us. I am taking care of my feelings with compassion for our future descendants. I am laying a path of healing for all who come next. When I look with the eyes of love, impermanence, and compassion, I know we can nourish and help each other.

I want to continue to fall in love, to feel more connected to life, not less.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche a Tibetan Buddhist teacher once said,

"If you search for an awakened heart...you find tenderness, you feel sore and soft and if you open your eyes to the the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness, not from being mistreated, this sadness is unconditioned, your heart is completely exposed. No skin or tissue is covering it. Your experience is raw and tender and personal. For the warrior, this experience of a sad and tender heart is what gives birth to fearlessness. Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. You are willing to open up without resistance or shyness and face the world. It is this tender heart of a warrior that has the power to heal the world." -from The Sacred Path of the Warrior

One of Vincent Van Gogh's most precious gifts was his wide, open and vulnerable heart; one that I believe was broken over and over again. He may not have had much "skin or tissue covering it." I am a recipient of his tender heart. I benefit from his expression in his paintings and sketches beyond language that lives on. He felt the world that way. Vincent fell in love over and over again.