The Cradle of Loving Kindness
Chogyam Trungpa directed his students to “place the mind of fearfulness in the cradle of loving kindness.” In this way, we are able to 
acknowledge and hold our fears, rather than be controlled by them. The cradle of loving kindness is the gentle firmness of the body opening to the experience of fear. Rather than constricting our feelings in a body of tension, we are holding our fear with openness.
Loving kindness is also a term used to refer to meditation practices that open the heart. Referred to as “Maitri” in Sanskrit, these practices are a precursor to compassion practices or “Karuna” as they involve acceptance of ourselves and our experience. Maitri is like a smile we use to greet our feelings. Compassion refers to the action of engaging in suffering. Before we can help anyone, we need to accept ourselves and our own fear. For this reason Trungpa used to say “smile at fear”.
Smiling is a more profound application than we would think. If we’re able to smile at the difficulties in life we are accepting them with a positivity and gentleness that allows us access into our feelings. When we gird ourselves in tension, we are trying to push the feelings away. We are creating an antagonistic relationship with a natural and necessary part of human experience.
Fear is nothing to fear. It is an alarm system alerting us to possible difficulties. It is our emotional and psychological interpretation of that fear that creates complications. When fear triggers an unsettled feeling in the heart, the mind comes to the rescue. However, when panicked, the mind will only have recourse to habitual solutions. It will perform old experiments expecting new results. Driven by anxiety, we will reach for that drink, call our ex or hit send before our higher executive functioning has a chance to assess the situation. In this way, in an attempt to relieve our fears, we create difficulties.
On the other hand, should we STOP and FEEL into our present experience rather than be driven by fear, we can acknowledge and hold it with open arms. If we cannot heal the trauma that causes us to be fearful, we can heal the suffering we feel. The Buddha told the soldier to remove the arrow before we try and strategize our next move. Deal with the immediate now, with smiling kindness. And then open the body to allow our raw feelings to express themselves. Raw feelings are those before we strategize or analyze them into submission.
How does my pain feel? This level of investigation does not need words or concepts. When asked how they feel humans will typically screw their eyes up in puzzlement. This is the big brain trying to interpret a very simple thing: feelings are feelings. You feel them rather than think about them. Feelings are in the body. When we tense the body and hide in the brain, we lose contact with a very intimate part of our experience. In a sense, when we are locked in our head, we lose contact with ourselves.
When we lose contact, we can reset and come back.
STOP – just create a gap in the torrent of mental reasoning.
DROP – bring awareness to the raw experience of the body.
OPEN – release the grip we have on ourselves.
BREATHE – allow the breath to calm the nervous system. Bring yourself back home, back to you.
BE – with your feelings as they are, holding space in your open body.
Once we’ve reset in this way, we are no longer in the grip of terror. We are feeling our fear and being brave enough to stay with that. Released from its reactive defense, the Heart is free to open and heal the wounds we’ve created. And the Mind, released into a more natural flow, can see clearly, finding new and creative remedies for old fears.
When we are able to smile at fear, we are placing our mind of fearfulness in the cradle of loving kindness. And when we step beyond that into openness, we are fearless.
