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Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love
A practical roadmap to cultivating the heart’s capacity to face and transform our greatest challenges—like the climate crisis, oppression, anxiety, and burnout—from the bestselling author of Say What You Mean.
Meditation teacher Oren Jay Sofer shares a pragmatic guide to living a life of meaning and purpose in a time of great social, environmental, and spiritual upheaval. Through touching stories, insightful reflections, and concrete instructions, Sofer offers powerful tools to strengthen our hearts and nourish the qualities that can transform our world. Each chapter guides you to cultivate a quality essential to personal and social transformation like mindfulness, resolve, wonder, and empathy. You’ll learn ways
· Find more choice and freedom in life
· Strengthen focus, sustain energy, and accomplish goals
· Identify burnout and take steps to renew yourself
· Imbue your daily activities with clarity and vitality
· Respond more effectively to collective challenges
Meditation teacher Oren Jay Sofer shares a pragmatic guide to living a life of meaning and purpose in a time of great social, environmental, and spiritual upheaval. Through touching stories, insightful reflections, and concrete instructions, Sofer offers powerful tools to strengthen our hearts and nourish the qualities that can transform our world. Each chapter guides you to cultivate a quality essential to personal and social transformation like mindfulness, resolve, wonder, and empathy. You’ll learn ways
· Find more choice and freedom in life
· Strengthen focus, sustain energy, and accomplish goals
· Identify burnout and take steps to renew yourself
· Imbue your daily activities with clarity and vitality
· Respond more effectively to collective challenges
304 pages, Hardcover
Published November 21, 2023
174 people are currently reading
6588 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 8, 2024
An enjoyable self-help meditation book, written by a very well-versed Oren Sofer. Oren has a 26 chapter book in which he breaks down the 26 essential qualities of how meditation can help bring 0rder, contentment and joy to your life - hey, isn't that something we all need!! Each chapter begins with a quote that relates to the chapter, and Sofer uses a lot of personal experiences and stories to make his point. I found it very interesting. Now I must admit I was not overly fond of the social action portions of each chapter, but quite possibly many other readers will agree with the author. There are a plethora of self-help and meditation books on the market, but this one seems better written and more helpful than many of the others I have seen.
August 11, 2023
"Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love" by Oren Jay Sofer is a transformative guide that equips readers with practical tools to navigate the challenges of our contemporary world. This book presents a roadmap for cultivating inner strength, resilience, and compassion in the face of societal, environmental, and personal turmoil.
Oren Jay Sofer, a meditation teacher and author, offers a heartfelt and compelling exploration of how individuals can harness their innate capacities to bring about positive change. The book's central premise revolves around the idea that by strengthening our hearts and developing contemplative practices, we can effectively engage with the complex issues of our time. Sofer combines personal anecdotes, insightful reflections, and actionable strategies to guide readers through a journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
The book is organized into chapters that focus on specific qualities essential for personal and societal transformation. These qualities include mindfulness, resolve, wonder, empathy, and more. Each chapter delves into the importance of the highlighted quality, offering anecdotes that demonstrate its significance in navigating challenges and fostering positive change.
Sofer's writing style is both accessible and engaging, making complex concepts within contemplative practices understandable to readers from various backgrounds. The use of relatable stories and practical exercises helps readers internalize the teachings and apply them to their own lives. This blend of theory and hands-on guidance ensures that the book not only informs but also empowers readers to take concrete steps towards personal growth and societal contribution.
One of the book's strengths is its relevance to a wide audience. Whether someone is new to contemplative practices or already experienced in mindfulness and meditation, the book provides valuable insights and techniques. The guidance on mindfulness and its application to daily life is particularly noteworthy. Sofer's emphasis on finding clarity and vitality in everyday activities resonates with readers seeking to strike a balance between inner peace and active engagement.
"Your Heart Was Made for This" is not just a theoretical exploration; it's a practical manual for implementing positive change. The tools provided help readers find more choice, enhance focus, manage burnout, and respond effectively to collective challenges. Sofer's emphasis on cultivating qualities like empathy and wonder encourages readers to approach life with a sense of curiosity and compassion, fostering better connections with themselves and others.
In conclusion, "Your Heart Was Made for This" is a compelling and timely book that offers valuable insights and actionable practices for individuals seeking to navigate a world in crisis. Oren Jay Sofer's wisdom, combined with his relatable writing style, creates a guide that empowers readers to transform themselves and the world around them. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to develop inner strength, face challenges with courage, and contribute positively to the greater good.
Oren Jay Sofer, a meditation teacher and author, offers a heartfelt and compelling exploration of how individuals can harness their innate capacities to bring about positive change. The book's central premise revolves around the idea that by strengthening our hearts and developing contemplative practices, we can effectively engage with the complex issues of our time. Sofer combines personal anecdotes, insightful reflections, and actionable strategies to guide readers through a journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
The book is organized into chapters that focus on specific qualities essential for personal and societal transformation. These qualities include mindfulness, resolve, wonder, empathy, and more. Each chapter delves into the importance of the highlighted quality, offering anecdotes that demonstrate its significance in navigating challenges and fostering positive change.
Sofer's writing style is both accessible and engaging, making complex concepts within contemplative practices understandable to readers from various backgrounds. The use of relatable stories and practical exercises helps readers internalize the teachings and apply them to their own lives. This blend of theory and hands-on guidance ensures that the book not only informs but also empowers readers to take concrete steps towards personal growth and societal contribution.
One of the book's strengths is its relevance to a wide audience. Whether someone is new to contemplative practices or already experienced in mindfulness and meditation, the book provides valuable insights and techniques. The guidance on mindfulness and its application to daily life is particularly noteworthy. Sofer's emphasis on finding clarity and vitality in everyday activities resonates with readers seeking to strike a balance between inner peace and active engagement.
"Your Heart Was Made for This" is not just a theoretical exploration; it's a practical manual for implementing positive change. The tools provided help readers find more choice, enhance focus, manage burnout, and respond effectively to collective challenges. Sofer's emphasis on cultivating qualities like empathy and wonder encourages readers to approach life with a sense of curiosity and compassion, fostering better connections with themselves and others.
In conclusion, "Your Heart Was Made for This" is a compelling and timely book that offers valuable insights and actionable practices for individuals seeking to navigate a world in crisis. Oren Jay Sofer's wisdom, combined with his relatable writing style, creates a guide that empowers readers to transform themselves and the world around them. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to develop inner strength, face challenges with courage, and contribute positively to the greater good.
February 17, 2024
Highly recommended
I would recommend this book to a person, interested in a Buddhist perspective and keen to
Put it into
Practice in everyday life.
I really like the topics the book is organized round like forgiveness and patience. I also like the way each topic is discussed with an introduction that connects with other writers followed by sections on applying to you meditation practice , enacting in everyday life and what to do if having difficulties. It makes for a well-informed , accessible and practically orientated guide . I think this is one I will come back too.
I would recommend this book to a person, interested in a Buddhist perspective and keen to
Put it into
Practice in everyday life.
I really like the topics the book is organized round like forgiveness and patience. I also like the way each topic is discussed with an introduction that connects with other writers followed by sections on applying to you meditation practice , enacting in everyday life and what to do if having difficulties. It makes for a well-informed , accessible and practically orientated guide . I think this is one I will come back too.
December 7, 2023
Interesting book written about meditation, l have read most of the Authors he mentioned.
April 1, 2024
"...lighten up, and I may still get to be a clown someday."
August 31, 2025
Very readable. Probably a great first book to read overview of western Buddhism neatly weaving between individual, social/structural and cosmic levels of engagement. Chapter 6 (pp. 62-73) on Wisdom has the best brief overview of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths that I've read -- a sweet, concise description. Also, see 139-40 for a concise rebuttal of my adolescent commitment to (my then-understanding of) stoicism.
P1 Your heart was made for love: for connection, belonging, and meaningful relationship with other people, beings, and the earth. Your heart was made to give and receive; to know joy, purpose, and freedom. [...] If we do not shape the heart, the world will do it for us, and the world does not have our highest welfare in mind.
P6. Thich Nhat Hanh [...] "Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?"
P12 We can develop a clear, stable, loving, and bright inner life.
15. Without training, we move though life reacting to the world; we live as victims of circumstances and habits. With training, we can shape our interior and our relationship to life.
16. Directing attention begins to train the heart.
18. [...] without consciously tending to the heart, unhealthy seeds take over and distort your inner landscape.
27. What do you know to be true that you can rely on?
41. [....] the untrained, wandering mind tends to ruminate on things that make us unhappy.
45-6. When mindful, we encounter the defenses we've built up over the years to protect ourselves from the raw vulnerability of life. It hurts to be alive in an unjust world of loss and change beyond our control. Without wholesome qualities to digest the stress and pain of a complex and often harsh world, we develop a kind of armor to stay safe emotionally and psychologically. [...] In the absence of better strategies, we find a way to get by. Mindfulness provides a new way of metabolizing the challenges of being human, slowly dissolving and replacing the armor with more enduring qualities like wisdom, compassion, and equanimity -- for armor comes with a price. The shields we put on don't just block out the pain; they also block joy and vitality, and they disconnect us from the truth.
47. Mindfulness not only reveals the dynamics that we were formerly unaware of, positioning us to better address them, but also helps create the conditions to accept all that is unresolved in our hearts. [Winnicot's "holding environment"]
p81 To really hear the deeper needs of people with whom you disagree demands curiosity.
p89. It takes courage to love -- which is to risk loss. It takes courage to grieve, to open to pain.
p94. An essential part of courage is having time and space to rest the heart.
P98. In fact, the term "carbon footprint" was coined by a public relations firm working for British Petroleum to obfuscate responsibility for climate change.
101. Renunciation offers us a way to study craving, instead of pursuing it. [....] When we understand sensory pleasure for what it is -- a temporary rush of sensation -- we can appreciate it without snagging. Freed from the spell of craving, we can survey our situation [..] and wisely assess our response.
103. Relinquishing this fixation on having our way allows us to open to something even deeper: freedom from unhealthy wanting itself. We come to see that the coveted objected, state, or experience is only a ripple on the surface of a wave of craving, driven by deeper forces: the thrill of the chase, the meaning an object holds, the yearning to be released from the tension of wanting. We may even find that part of our mind is addicted to the experience of craving itself -- wanting to want.
108. "The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others." -- bell hooks
109. Kindness comes from kin, highlighting the fundamental truth of our interdependence. [...] It sees the potential for good in all and serves as a potent guide for collective transformation. [...]
Lovingkindness meditation produces measurable increases in positive emotions leading to a wide range of benefits, from increased purpose and satisfaction in life to reduction in depression and symptoms of illness.
113. Wisdom reveals to us the nature of reality and expresses itself as love.
118. But ease must also include integrity, empathy, and wisdom if it is to be skillful; otherwise, it can become a vehicle for harm, amplifying any tendency to exploit others, extract resources, and accumulate wealth for its own sake. [...]
Instead of being born into the warm, familial comfort of a close-knit community, we find ourselves in a disorienting and strained world that's beset by conflict and addictive stimulation. Understanding this can help depersonalize our uneasiness and point toward ways to relieve it.
127. [...] patience relies on wisdom, which understands that all things unfold due to causes and conditions.
132. Can you imagine an experience of patience that feels open and spacious, that dissolves agitation and resistance while including all of life? [...] Consider times when you contract, resist the flow of experience, or rush. [...] What happens when you soften that inner tension and open to the complexity of your experience?
134. When exploring patience, work right at the edge of contact between your awareness and the resistance, breathing, softening, and widening your attention to include what's happening, rather than trying to stop it or make it go away.
137. [...] hardships are not personal failures. A wise heart knows the truth: conditions change without end.
139-40. Engaging what is, the heart opens. For balance doesn't come from suppressing our feelings, detaching from the world, or passively accepting harmful conditions. indifference and apathy may appear cool and even-minded on the surface, but they only mimc equanimity. Equanimity encompasses our internal relationship to what is actually occurring, rather than a blanket approval of external conditions. This inner balance (a synonym for equanimity) includes our feelings, senses our boundaries, and has the capacity for decisive action.
144. This is how it is for me right now.
May I be at peace with things just as they are.
Everyone has their own path.
I care about you and know you must make your own choices.
147. [...] Buddha repeatedly emphasized the central role of friendship and community in his teachings. [...] recounting the many steps leading to awakening, the Buddha traced them back to the same initial cause: being with wise companions.
148. Loneliness hurts, and its roots go deep: children interacting with screens don't learn essential social skills like empathy and conflict resolution.
149. The Buddha's words on friendship point to deeper connections: friendship is also a way of relating. We can befriend ourselves, and all that is within our hearts: including our pain, our anger, even our loneliness. In learning to be good friends to ourselves, we grow our capacity to befriend others, including those we have never met. Ritual, research, and reflection open pathways to connect to ancestors we never knew. Time spent with particular landscapes and ecosystems can build relationships rich in companionship, extending beyond the human.
151. "The only way to survive is to take care of one another." Grace Lee Boggs
153. [..] when our hearts break, empathic connection eases our pain.
159. Integrity means living into the world as we long for it to exist.
160. Many of us associate our early ethical training in our faith traditions with pain. How tragic that something so beautiful as the ethical sensitivity of our hearts becomes tarnished by experiences of coercion.
[...]. integrity is a natural expression of our love and a coherent movement toward happiness and collective liberation. Integrity aligns our conduct in the world with our values [....] Living with integrity engenders trust, offering others the gift of fearlessness.
164. When our minds are not fragmented by deceit or tormented by remorse, we settle and feel glad. If you attend to integrity, a subtle happiness is born, a quiet joy that uplifts your heart-mind and fills your body.
165. Our present world and the world we leave for our children are the results of our actions. What is our moral obligation to future generations?
169. Recognizing the potency of a firm heart, I aspire to hold intentions that are enriching, and to warm off vacillation on the one hand and forceful goal-seeking on the other. -- Ajahn Sucitto
170. Resolve [....] provides the consistency we need to keep watering skillful seeds we wish to cultivate in consciousness, and it offers the restraint we need to withdraw energy from unskillful seeds we seek to relinquish.
171. Resolve knows the value of gradual cultivation, honoring the craft of training the heart. It challenges the popular, seductive notions that freedom comes from the absence of responsibility [...] Always following desire binds you to your impulses and whims and reinforces the felt need for comfort.
173. Wise resolve functions within a range of strategic discomfort -- challenging us to mature without threatening us to collapse.
174. If you can endure your mind's temper tantrums and objections, something deeper emerges: the strength for anything and a peace free from habits and preferences.
181. Joy protects the heart and nourishes courages. [...] adrienne maree brown argues, "Joy is important. It's not a guilty pleasure, it's a strategic move towards the future we all need to creaete. One in which our children are laughing, our children are free."
182. It's not what we experience but how we relate to it that frees us.
183. When we are open, curious, and kind toward all that arises in us, the sincerity of our presence offers its own reward: the joy of connection to truth. [...]. What did you notice? What hinders or supports you rejoicing with them?
185. If the great ocean herself needs replenishment, what could make you think you don't? -- Salma Farook
190. A pithy Tibetan teaching states, "Activities do not cease by completing them. They cease when you stop."
193. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. -- Rachel Carson
204. [...] consistently associated with greater happiness [...] Gratitude also counteracts our negativity bias [...] A mindset of gratitude opens the door to contentment and feeds generosity: the more aware we are of what we have received, the more we long to give back.
205. Bayo Akomolafe [...] "To put gratitude to work in ways that are politically generative, one must consider it alongside grief, loss, and the pain of being carried away from home. When gratitude is reconsidered in the context of loss, we come to grace."
206. Collectively, gratitude flows into celebration.
212. Rather than teaching newcomers meditation, wisdom, or ethics, the Buddha encouraged would-be disciples to begin by giving from their hearts. He understood the power of generosity to nourish well-being, heal our brokenness, and reveal the joy of letting go.
216. [...] "the gift economy is anchored by a trust that the bearer of gifts .. will be cared for in return."
218. When we reveal our needs, allow ourselves to receive generosity, or give from the heart, we become part of the cycle of giving and receiving that sustains all life. We discover within ourselves an abundance of spirit and energy. [...] What would it be like to experience your own needs as a gift to others? Can you all yourself to fully receive?
219-20. Whenever you give, pay attention to three things: first, the impulse to give; next, how it feels during the act of giving; and finally, how it feels to reflect back on the experience. Attune to any joy or happiness you feel.
227. In your own time [...] pose one of these questions to your heart:
* What is sacred to me?
* What do I hold dear in life?
* What upholds and supports me?
* What is the deepest truth I know?
* What is too important to forget?
230. We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. -- George Bernard Shaw
[...]. Rather than distracting us from the work at hand, play infuses our being with vital energy and protects our hearts from stagnation and hopelessness.
232. The more we feel our capacity for choice, the more playful we can be, undercutting engrained attitudes of obligation.
233. amb in Pleasure Activism "There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy."
236. Going a step further, we discover that, with some patience and creativity, playfulness can actually infuse our meditation. Thay was fond of instructing practitioners to meditate with a subtle smile at the corners of the mouth, changing their physiology and brightening their spirits. This suggests one pathway to meditation itself as play.
238. You may need to rest before the energy for play arises. [laughter yoga on youtube]
240. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. -- Dr. MLK Jr.
241. Compassion allows us to receive pain and respond skillfully. It is a strong, balanced tenderness that helps us stay steady in the face of hurt, instead of turning away, lashing back, seeking someone to blame, or numbing out.
244. When receiving more pain and suffering than we can manage, we slide into depression and overwhelm if compassion becomes unbalanced. [...]
To stay engaged and heal our relationships, communities, and world, we must learn to distinguish compassion from its decoys that sap our strength and leave us stranded.
247. [karuna practice] "May your pain be eased," "May your heart be released from this suffering," or "May you find freedom within this hardship." [...] Keep returning to the stable, balanced orientation of compassion, neither disengaged nor enmeshed.
249. Just to live is holy. Just to be is a blessing. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel
250. A superficial contentment arises when the world aligns with our preferences. [...] Yet this contentment is unsteady and fickle, vanishing as soon as conditions shift. [...]
We touch a truer contentment by being mindful of when our needs are sufficiently met.
251. You can train your heart to attune to contentment by noticing two things: the underlying agitation of sensory craving, and the quiet enjoyment of its absence.
253. This was a different quality of contentment than I had ever experienced, as it didn't depend on the content of my experience but arose from appreciating awareness. This contentment shifts our vision from a narrow focus to a wider field, from the objects of awareness (the sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings that fill our lives) to the space of awareness itself.
256. Pay attention to the possibility of experiencing contentment when craving ends. [...] Instead of rushing on to the next thing, let your attention linger. Can you soak in the ease of even a brief feeling of satisfaction? Can you allow yourself to feel content? [..] begin to pay attention to the presence and absence of agitation during the day.
259. Real forgiveness includes kindness and compassion, but without bypassing anger or pain. [...] "forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past"
p5. disagrees with woo-woo hyper-individual, spiritual bypass version of healing rippling out
P9. trauma-informed mindfulness
p26. choice, aspiration, hope (see AEDP conversation on hope)
37-9. Why act? Energy vs self-abandoning?
91. courage as protective
152-3,5-6, 8. empathy
157. empathy practice for self & tx practice
167. others suffering leaves us as beneficiaries or victims
179. felt safety prerequisite for joy/play (trauma a barrier)
189. Heschel on Sabbath
192. pausing
197. wonder k1 exercise. Do w/adults?
214. where does joy & suffering come from
244. true compassion not fatiguing us (see empathic distress)
P1 Your heart was made for love: for connection, belonging, and meaningful relationship with other people, beings, and the earth. Your heart was made to give and receive; to know joy, purpose, and freedom. [...] If we do not shape the heart, the world will do it for us, and the world does not have our highest welfare in mind.
P6. Thich Nhat Hanh [...] "Mindfulness must be engaged. Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?"
P12 We can develop a clear, stable, loving, and bright inner life.
15. Without training, we move though life reacting to the world; we live as victims of circumstances and habits. With training, we can shape our interior and our relationship to life.
16. Directing attention begins to train the heart.
18. [...] without consciously tending to the heart, unhealthy seeds take over and distort your inner landscape.
27. What do you know to be true that you can rely on?
41. [....] the untrained, wandering mind tends to ruminate on things that make us unhappy.
45-6. When mindful, we encounter the defenses we've built up over the years to protect ourselves from the raw vulnerability of life. It hurts to be alive in an unjust world of loss and change beyond our control. Without wholesome qualities to digest the stress and pain of a complex and often harsh world, we develop a kind of armor to stay safe emotionally and psychologically. [...] In the absence of better strategies, we find a way to get by. Mindfulness provides a new way of metabolizing the challenges of being human, slowly dissolving and replacing the armor with more enduring qualities like wisdom, compassion, and equanimity -- for armor comes with a price. The shields we put on don't just block out the pain; they also block joy and vitality, and they disconnect us from the truth.
47. Mindfulness not only reveals the dynamics that we were formerly unaware of, positioning us to better address them, but also helps create the conditions to accept all that is unresolved in our hearts. [Winnicot's "holding environment"]
p81 To really hear the deeper needs of people with whom you disagree demands curiosity.
p89. It takes courage to love -- which is to risk loss. It takes courage to grieve, to open to pain.
p94. An essential part of courage is having time and space to rest the heart.
P98. In fact, the term "carbon footprint" was coined by a public relations firm working for British Petroleum to obfuscate responsibility for climate change.
101. Renunciation offers us a way to study craving, instead of pursuing it. [....] When we understand sensory pleasure for what it is -- a temporary rush of sensation -- we can appreciate it without snagging. Freed from the spell of craving, we can survey our situation [..] and wisely assess our response.
103. Relinquishing this fixation on having our way allows us to open to something even deeper: freedom from unhealthy wanting itself. We come to see that the coveted objected, state, or experience is only a ripple on the surface of a wave of craving, driven by deeper forces: the thrill of the chase, the meaning an object holds, the yearning to be released from the tension of wanting. We may even find that part of our mind is addicted to the experience of craving itself -- wanting to want.
108. "The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others." -- bell hooks
109. Kindness comes from kin, highlighting the fundamental truth of our interdependence. [...] It sees the potential for good in all and serves as a potent guide for collective transformation. [...]
Lovingkindness meditation produces measurable increases in positive emotions leading to a wide range of benefits, from increased purpose and satisfaction in life to reduction in depression and symptoms of illness.
113. Wisdom reveals to us the nature of reality and expresses itself as love.
118. But ease must also include integrity, empathy, and wisdom if it is to be skillful; otherwise, it can become a vehicle for harm, amplifying any tendency to exploit others, extract resources, and accumulate wealth for its own sake. [...]
Instead of being born into the warm, familial comfort of a close-knit community, we find ourselves in a disorienting and strained world that's beset by conflict and addictive stimulation. Understanding this can help depersonalize our uneasiness and point toward ways to relieve it.
127. [...] patience relies on wisdom, which understands that all things unfold due to causes and conditions.
132. Can you imagine an experience of patience that feels open and spacious, that dissolves agitation and resistance while including all of life? [...] Consider times when you contract, resist the flow of experience, or rush. [...] What happens when you soften that inner tension and open to the complexity of your experience?
134. When exploring patience, work right at the edge of contact between your awareness and the resistance, breathing, softening, and widening your attention to include what's happening, rather than trying to stop it or make it go away.
137. [...] hardships are not personal failures. A wise heart knows the truth: conditions change without end.
139-40. Engaging what is, the heart opens. For balance doesn't come from suppressing our feelings, detaching from the world, or passively accepting harmful conditions. indifference and apathy may appear cool and even-minded on the surface, but they only mimc equanimity. Equanimity encompasses our internal relationship to what is actually occurring, rather than a blanket approval of external conditions. This inner balance (a synonym for equanimity) includes our feelings, senses our boundaries, and has the capacity for decisive action.
144. This is how it is for me right now.
May I be at peace with things just as they are.
Everyone has their own path.
I care about you and know you must make your own choices.
147. [...] Buddha repeatedly emphasized the central role of friendship and community in his teachings. [...] recounting the many steps leading to awakening, the Buddha traced them back to the same initial cause: being with wise companions.
148. Loneliness hurts, and its roots go deep: children interacting with screens don't learn essential social skills like empathy and conflict resolution.
149. The Buddha's words on friendship point to deeper connections: friendship is also a way of relating. We can befriend ourselves, and all that is within our hearts: including our pain, our anger, even our loneliness. In learning to be good friends to ourselves, we grow our capacity to befriend others, including those we have never met. Ritual, research, and reflection open pathways to connect to ancestors we never knew. Time spent with particular landscapes and ecosystems can build relationships rich in companionship, extending beyond the human.
151. "The only way to survive is to take care of one another." Grace Lee Boggs
153. [..] when our hearts break, empathic connection eases our pain.
159. Integrity means living into the world as we long for it to exist.
160. Many of us associate our early ethical training in our faith traditions with pain. How tragic that something so beautiful as the ethical sensitivity of our hearts becomes tarnished by experiences of coercion.
[...]. integrity is a natural expression of our love and a coherent movement toward happiness and collective liberation. Integrity aligns our conduct in the world with our values [....] Living with integrity engenders trust, offering others the gift of fearlessness.
164. When our minds are not fragmented by deceit or tormented by remorse, we settle and feel glad. If you attend to integrity, a subtle happiness is born, a quiet joy that uplifts your heart-mind and fills your body.
165. Our present world and the world we leave for our children are the results of our actions. What is our moral obligation to future generations?
169. Recognizing the potency of a firm heart, I aspire to hold intentions that are enriching, and to warm off vacillation on the one hand and forceful goal-seeking on the other. -- Ajahn Sucitto
170. Resolve [....] provides the consistency we need to keep watering skillful seeds we wish to cultivate in consciousness, and it offers the restraint we need to withdraw energy from unskillful seeds we seek to relinquish.
171. Resolve knows the value of gradual cultivation, honoring the craft of training the heart. It challenges the popular, seductive notions that freedom comes from the absence of responsibility [...] Always following desire binds you to your impulses and whims and reinforces the felt need for comfort.
173. Wise resolve functions within a range of strategic discomfort -- challenging us to mature without threatening us to collapse.
174. If you can endure your mind's temper tantrums and objections, something deeper emerges: the strength for anything and a peace free from habits and preferences.
181. Joy protects the heart and nourishes courages. [...] adrienne maree brown argues, "Joy is important. It's not a guilty pleasure, it's a strategic move towards the future we all need to creaete. One in which our children are laughing, our children are free."
182. It's not what we experience but how we relate to it that frees us.
183. When we are open, curious, and kind toward all that arises in us, the sincerity of our presence offers its own reward: the joy of connection to truth. [...]. What did you notice? What hinders or supports you rejoicing with them?
185. If the great ocean herself needs replenishment, what could make you think you don't? -- Salma Farook
190. A pithy Tibetan teaching states, "Activities do not cease by completing them. They cease when you stop."
193. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. -- Rachel Carson
204. [...] consistently associated with greater happiness [...] Gratitude also counteracts our negativity bias [...] A mindset of gratitude opens the door to contentment and feeds generosity: the more aware we are of what we have received, the more we long to give back.
205. Bayo Akomolafe [...] "To put gratitude to work in ways that are politically generative, one must consider it alongside grief, loss, and the pain of being carried away from home. When gratitude is reconsidered in the context of loss, we come to grace."
206. Collectively, gratitude flows into celebration.
212. Rather than teaching newcomers meditation, wisdom, or ethics, the Buddha encouraged would-be disciples to begin by giving from their hearts. He understood the power of generosity to nourish well-being, heal our brokenness, and reveal the joy of letting go.
216. [...] "the gift economy is anchored by a trust that the bearer of gifts .. will be cared for in return."
218. When we reveal our needs, allow ourselves to receive generosity, or give from the heart, we become part of the cycle of giving and receiving that sustains all life. We discover within ourselves an abundance of spirit and energy. [...] What would it be like to experience your own needs as a gift to others? Can you all yourself to fully receive?
219-20. Whenever you give, pay attention to three things: first, the impulse to give; next, how it feels during the act of giving; and finally, how it feels to reflect back on the experience. Attune to any joy or happiness you feel.
227. In your own time [...] pose one of these questions to your heart:
* What is sacred to me?
* What do I hold dear in life?
* What upholds and supports me?
* What is the deepest truth I know?
* What is too important to forget?
230. We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. -- George Bernard Shaw
[...]. Rather than distracting us from the work at hand, play infuses our being with vital energy and protects our hearts from stagnation and hopelessness.
232. The more we feel our capacity for choice, the more playful we can be, undercutting engrained attitudes of obligation.
233. amb in Pleasure Activism "There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy."
236. Going a step further, we discover that, with some patience and creativity, playfulness can actually infuse our meditation. Thay was fond of instructing practitioners to meditate with a subtle smile at the corners of the mouth, changing their physiology and brightening their spirits. This suggests one pathway to meditation itself as play.
238. You may need to rest before the energy for play arises. [laughter yoga on youtube]
240. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. -- Dr. MLK Jr.
241. Compassion allows us to receive pain and respond skillfully. It is a strong, balanced tenderness that helps us stay steady in the face of hurt, instead of turning away, lashing back, seeking someone to blame, or numbing out.
244. When receiving more pain and suffering than we can manage, we slide into depression and overwhelm if compassion becomes unbalanced. [...]
To stay engaged and heal our relationships, communities, and world, we must learn to distinguish compassion from its decoys that sap our strength and leave us stranded.
247. [karuna practice] "May your pain be eased," "May your heart be released from this suffering," or "May you find freedom within this hardship." [...] Keep returning to the stable, balanced orientation of compassion, neither disengaged nor enmeshed.
249. Just to live is holy. Just to be is a blessing. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel
250. A superficial contentment arises when the world aligns with our preferences. [...] Yet this contentment is unsteady and fickle, vanishing as soon as conditions shift. [...]
We touch a truer contentment by being mindful of when our needs are sufficiently met.
251. You can train your heart to attune to contentment by noticing two things: the underlying agitation of sensory craving, and the quiet enjoyment of its absence.
253. This was a different quality of contentment than I had ever experienced, as it didn't depend on the content of my experience but arose from appreciating awareness. This contentment shifts our vision from a narrow focus to a wider field, from the objects of awareness (the sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings that fill our lives) to the space of awareness itself.
256. Pay attention to the possibility of experiencing contentment when craving ends. [...] Instead of rushing on to the next thing, let your attention linger. Can you soak in the ease of even a brief feeling of satisfaction? Can you allow yourself to feel content? [..] begin to pay attention to the presence and absence of agitation during the day.
259. Real forgiveness includes kindness and compassion, but without bypassing anger or pain. [...] "forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past"
p5. disagrees with woo-woo hyper-individual, spiritual bypass version of healing rippling out
P9. trauma-informed mindfulness
p26. choice, aspiration, hope (see AEDP conversation on hope)
37-9. Why act? Energy vs self-abandoning?
91. courage as protective
152-3,5-6, 8. empathy
157. empathy practice for self & tx practice
167. others suffering leaves us as beneficiaries or victims
179. felt safety prerequisite for joy/play (trauma a barrier)
189. Heschel on Sabbath
192. pausing
197. wonder k1 exercise. Do w/adults?
214. where does joy & suffering come from
244. true compassion not fatiguing us (see empathic distress)
December 9, 2023
I often read books on growing heart qualities. This one stands out.
This book offers great grounding and encouragement in ever-changing times. Author Sofer weaves together narratives from his own experiences, along with practical ways to consider over 20+ heart qualities such as kindness, patience, compassion, and more.
This book feels accessible for those who have no meditation experience or interest. And at the same time there is plenty for those who are long-time meditators.
Each topic includes sections for 'reflection', 'meditation' and 'action'. There is much to ponder upon, and ways to engage - internally or with the world at large.
I highly recommend this book as a salve for our times. It is one I know I will return to regularly, as I continue to seek to give my best self to others, community and the world.
This book offers great grounding and encouragement in ever-changing times. Author Sofer weaves together narratives from his own experiences, along with practical ways to consider over 20+ heart qualities such as kindness, patience, compassion, and more.
This book feels accessible for those who have no meditation experience or interest. And at the same time there is plenty for those who are long-time meditators.
Each topic includes sections for 'reflection', 'meditation' and 'action'. There is much to ponder upon, and ways to engage - internally or with the world at large.
I highly recommend this book as a salve for our times. It is one I know I will return to regularly, as I continue to seek to give my best self to others, community and the world.
January 7, 2024
Two things really appeal to me about this book: The first is its structure - there are 26 "qualities" presented in the book (things such as courage, generosity, attention, and so on), each with reflections, meditations, and suggested actions for cultivating them. As the introduction to the book suggests, spend 2 weeks cultivating each quality, and you have a year of contemplative practice and self-improvement laid out for you. Since I happened to start reading this book with the new year coming up, I've set a resolution to spend the next year following that program. So I'll need to do another review when I've spent more time with this material.
The second thing I really like about this book is that Sofer does a really good job bridging the gap between contemplative practice and action. One of the pitfalls of westernized secular meditative or mindfulness practice is that it can become very self-focused - just a way to stress less, or endure the difficulties of modern life without doing anything to change them. At worst, it can become a method of spiritual bypass, shutting people off from recognizing the difficulties in the world. This book looks at the whole picture, presenting both inward-focused practices that can help you feel better, be more productive, stress less, and so on, but also connecting those practices to how you relate to loved-ones, community, and the larger world.
The second thing I really like about this book is that Sofer does a really good job bridging the gap between contemplative practice and action. One of the pitfalls of westernized secular meditative or mindfulness practice is that it can become very self-focused - just a way to stress less, or endure the difficulties of modern life without doing anything to change them. At worst, it can become a method of spiritual bypass, shutting people off from recognizing the difficulties in the world. This book looks at the whole picture, presenting both inward-focused practices that can help you feel better, be more productive, stress less, and so on, but also connecting those practices to how you relate to loved-ones, community, and the larger world.
Read
December 22, 2024Sofer’s meditations have helped thousands of listeners on the Insight Timer, the Ten Percent Happier app, and YouTube discover a sense of resiliency during times of crisis, and his new book offers a groundwork that will teach readers how to discover strength through meditation while also giving them a sense of the theoretical underpinnings of his approach to meditation. Like Tara Brach and Kristen Neff, he bases his work on the idea that humans were made for love and connection, and he helps provide supportive structures that reintroduce that loving kindness to those of us who may have strayed from an innate sense of belonging. He’s structured the book in 26 chapters so that readers can use it as a year-long course in self-discovery and transformation, and he acknowledges that many of the practices are difficult or recursive, thereby creating safe space for readers to explore who they are, how they connect, and what they can find in stillness. He gives readers reflective practices, ways to go deeper, action steps, and advice for navigating challenges in ways sure to help people create new neural pathways as they reconnect body and mind through breath.
December 13, 2023
In the face of the evolving metacrisis, I, like many, believe that the continuance of our species will in some sense depend upon whether or not our species is able of evolving into a more broader and more compassionate moral imagination, or heart, if you will – a heart more aligned with an ethos of care for each other and for the earth than its current self-destructive orientation.
Your Heart Was Made For This is a first-rate guidebook for training such a heart, serving as a best tools and practices resource for cultivating essential heart qualities and capacities. Oren’s passion and depth of training in Buddhism, generative social action and communication form the backbone of an inspiringly evocative series of reflections and practices for everyday bodhisattvas.
I whole-heartedly recommend Your Heart Was Made For this to all sincere meditators looking to align their cushion practice with compassionate in-the-world action.
Josh Summers (Everyday Sublime Podcast, co-author of The Power of Mindfulness: Mindfulness Meditation Training in Sport)
Your Heart Was Made For This is a first-rate guidebook for training such a heart, serving as a best tools and practices resource for cultivating essential heart qualities and capacities. Oren’s passion and depth of training in Buddhism, generative social action and communication form the backbone of an inspiringly evocative series of reflections and practices for everyday bodhisattvas.
I whole-heartedly recommend Your Heart Was Made For this to all sincere meditators looking to align their cushion practice with compassionate in-the-world action.
Josh Summers (Everyday Sublime Podcast, co-author of The Power of Mindfulness: Mindfulness Meditation Training in Sport)
December 25, 2025
This book would probably be ideal for anyone new to meditation and mindfulness practice, or someone who wants to build a solid practice. It’s structured in twenty-six chapters to provide a year long framework for cultivating wholesome qualities like kindness, ease, integrity and gratitude and providing ways to translate these qualities into wise action. Sofer is a good teacher, extracting practical examples from his own not-even-close-to-perfect life to warmly illustrate how to translate the teachings into practice.
December 3, 2023
This is the powerful healing book we need to calm our collective nervous system while overwhelmed by the storm of current affairs. What a gift during these stressful times. I'm grateful for Oren's wisdom and generosity.
October 16, 2023
Excellent. Great approaches and ideas on a variety of qualities and everyone can benefit from thinking more deeply upon. Highly recommended.
I really appreciate the free copy for review!!
I really appreciate the free copy for review!!
Want to read
June 17, 2024The author suggests in the opening that you spend a couple weeks with each of the 26 chapters amounting to a year's time to finish the book. I thought I'd give that a whirl.
September 4, 2025
I enjoyed reading this weekly. Just 1 chapter to think about and consider. It felt like the right thing to be reading at a time like this.
March 8, 2024
I found this much more approachable than the similarly-titled Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World. One of the best primers I've read for meditation & mindful living. I was familiar with the author from his sessions on a meditation app, & was pleased to find that he was narrating his own audiobook -- very well done. This is intended as more of a course than a single read-through. I hope to go back and revisit some of the chapters.
Want to read
April 7, 2025Incredible interview with the author on the 10% Happier podcast. TBR.
December 12, 2023
Oren offers wise and practical guidance for meeting the challenges of these times with contemplative practice. Each quality Oren discusses in the book has the potential to help readers meet every moment with greater presence and compassion. This book is a valuable resource for those who want to develop beautiful qualities of the heart and make concrete steps toward collective change.
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