Stress Testing the Heart

~ By Ajahn Pasanno ~

One of the things physicians do to get a general sense of the health of the heart is a cardiac stress test. Now here we are in the third month of this global pandemic, social distancing and lockdown, that’s a stress test for a different kind of heart.

This too is important to investigate, to understand more clearly how stress arises and what is an appropriate means of treatment. How do we maintain wellbeing to sustain at least lower levels of stress in order to not be compounding difficulties/problems? And when difficulties/problems arise, how can we be able to recognize how stress manifests and expresses itself?

Whether it’s aversion, irritation or ill will toward something, how too might that be compounded with views, opinions and speculation? The more views we try to take on only adds layers of complexity to something that is already stressful.

As the Buddha said, there is dukkha. We tend to compound it, however. There’s a flowing out, asava, from the roots of the mind something that it perceives as suitable strategies for dealing with life—a flowing out to gratification and affirmation or a flowing out to negation, pushing away and rejection.

These different outflows are helpful points of reflection, to stress test our strategies for dealing with stress and suffering.

So pay attention to stress. Learn how to work with it. We can’t annihilate it, disregard it nor act on it impulsively. Nor can we act like many people who have cardiac problems: the signs were there, but they ignored them—with an explanation or justification to maintain whatever was already creating that stress.

(From ‘Testing the Heart,' a Dhamma talk offered at Abhayagiri Monastery on 23 May 2020.

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For other recent videos of Dhamma teachings at Abhayagiri Monastery (California, USA), please see Abhayagiri Monastery Youtube.

Photograph: From Abhayagiri Monastery Website.