Yesterday, my two yoga practices focused on opening the heart. In the morning practice the instructor asked, "What color is your heart?" Without a moment of hesitation, I knew my answer. The color of my heart is black. What I don't know is what that means. In American culture, black has numerous negative connotations (except, for example, one wants one's finances to be in the black). Yet, the color black is the presence of all colors. Black contains all the possible colors of my heart (as opposed to white, which is the absence of color). So, my darken heart, my black heart, though closed, is a huge, beating, organ of possibilities. Who (or what) will tap into and unleash the colors in my heart is the open question. The answer: I just don't know.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Cultivating the Mind of Love: The Practice of Looking Deeply in the Mahayana Buddhist Tradition, with a foreword by Natalie Goldberg (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1996) ("Walking joyfully in the ultimate dimension, / walk with your feet, / not with your head. / If you walk with your head, you'll get lost." Id. at 120.).
