Start Where You Are

Abstract

This book is about awakening the heart. If you have ever wondered how to awaken your genuine compassionate heart, this book will serve as a guide. In our era, when so many people are seeking help to relate to their own feelings of woundedness and at the same time wanting to help relieve the suffering they see around them, the ancient teachings presented here are especially encouraging and to the point. When we find that we are closing down to ourselves and to others, here is instruction on how to open. When we find that we are holding back, here is instruction on how to give. That which is unwanted and rejected in ourselves and in others can be seen and felt with honesty and compassion. This is teaching on how to be there for others without withdrawing. I first encountered these teachings in The Great Path of Awakening by the nineteenth-century Tibetan teacher Jamgön Kongtrül the Great. Called the lojong teachings, they include a very supportive meditation practice called tonglen and the practice of working with the seven points of mind training