Heart Practice—Variation on the Nectar Flow–Changing the Oil Under the Hood of Your Heart

In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Soyal Rinpoche in Chapter 19 “Helping After Dying” Rinpoche shares a beautiful HEART PRACTICE on pages 313-316 “that can truly help you when you are suffering from deep sorrow and grief. It is a practice my master Jamyang Khyentse always used to give to people who were going through emotional torment…and I know from my own experience it can bring enormous relief and solace…So whenever you are desperate, anguished, or depressed, whenever you feel you cannot go on, or your feel your heart is breaking, I advise you to do this practice. The only conditions to the dffectiveness of this practice are that you need to do it with all your might, and that you need to ask, really to ask, for help.”

Find The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in your library to read the complete practice. It’s components are: Invocation, calling out, filling the heart with bliss (through the nectar flow), and helping the dead.

Taking a lovely bath today, a quirky visualization of the nectar flow came to me. I could see and feel it all happening as if my heart were going through a tune-up, an oil change. The old oil drained out. I’d been a couple of quarts low. The new, golden oil flowed into the chambers of my heart, filling me up, and making me feel more complete. When troubling thoughts arouse, I was more able to see through these as alternative stories. When my heart was filled with the golden oil, it was as if a healing ungent had been applied, and I felt more able to enter life with a good heart.