TAKING REFUGE IN THE HEART

An essay by Conor Byrnes.

Part one of a three-part series on love.

This is a dharma talk transcript from Sept 19, 2026.

When we practice together, we're in a relationship of trust. We're working together not only to go further in our physical practice, but to feel that we're supporting one another on the path of awakening. That means awakening to the meaning of a very mysterious yet often-used word: love. Most spiritual traditions, in one way or another, point toward the experience of love.

That word gets tangled up with our contemporary layer of concepts like dating, commitment, responsibility, and even ownership. These ideas don't necessarily refer back to the ancient idea of love, yet in many ways they rhyme with it. Wherever there is love, that love rests on the experience of trust. Trust is one of the main ingredients for the sensation of being loved and being able to love.

On the spiritual path, we learn to give ourselves the same trust we usually give to somebody else, and perhaps a much deeper trust. Trusting ourselves is not easy. Since we were very little, we've been given every indication that we need to be told to stay quiet, to follow the rules, to always be clean, to always attend to whatever we're told is important. We learn to trust the rules over our own inner signals. Over time, we start to abandon the idea that we're someone worthy of love, because we don't have a deep trust in who we are.

The path of yoga, in its shortest summation, could be described as learning how to relax your mind into your heart. In your heart there is an intuitive sense of kindness and compassion that doesn't know any bounds. It comes before any mental justification can come into play: "these people started it," or "somehow these people deserve it."

The moment we see images of war, of children dying for the causes of some man, or some group of people, hungry for power, our hearts immediately know that this is wrong. Our hearts can't bear to watch it. Then our minds jump in to protect our hearts: "Don't read the news too much. Don't look at that too closely. Somehow this is the way it has to be." But the heart doesn't need the protection of the mind. The mind needs the protection of the heart.

According to the great Tibetan yogis, the kindness and compassion in the heart, maitrī and karuṇā, are without limitation. With sympathetic joy and equanimity, they are counted among the four immeasurables. What we can start to do is trust the indications of our heart. Not mental explanation, but the feeling of being safe, or the feeling of being agitated and uneasy when we see something our hearts cannot fully bear to witness.

It's learning to trust that there is a goodness within us, a universal goodness that exists beyond mental creation. It doesn't need to be conditioned. It is naturally there. When we can trust and relax into our hearts, our responses to what is difficult and to what is beautiful, in our thoughts, our words, and our actions, will be much more deeply aligned with who we are.

Life is precious. Life is sacred. Life is something to be nurtured. And the experience of love is always enhanced when it's shared. The wisdom of the heart is the wisdom most necessary for our time, because it recognizes, without any force, that someone else's suffering is just as real as my own.

The mind is very good at making walls. The heart is very good at flooding the experience with deep understanding.

When we talk about nourishing, protecting, and honoring life, we often invoke Viṣṇu. In the Bhagavad Gītā (4.7–8), Kṛṣṇa says that whenever dharma declines, he takes form again, age after age, to restore it. Viṣṇu comes in his many avatars to restore balance: to bring love, the experience of the heart, back into the center.

The heart, not the brain, is the center of the spine. In the subtle body, anāhata, the heart center, sits at the middle of the seven cakras. The heart is the center of the column that is the manifestation of who you are. And the Gītā tells us who waits there. In 18.61, Kṛṣṇa says: īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṃ hṛd-deśe 'rjuna tiṣṭhati, "the Lord dwells in the heart of all beings, Arjuna." The one who comes to restore balance is already seated in your heart.

So there are many mantras we can use to relax into the heart. The one we're using this month is Vallabhācārya's eight-syllable mantra:

Śrī Kṛṣṇaḥ śaraṇaṃ mama

Literally, "Śrī Kṛṣṇa is my refuge." Freely, and in light of the Gītā: "I take refuge in my heart."

Join your hands together in front of your heart, this space that offers the deep protection of wisdom and compassion, the refuge of light that exists beyond any temporary darkness we might experience in this life. Even beyond the momentary darkness of death, this heart light shines.

Words by Conor Byrnes.

Photography Florian Maas

All rights reserved.