Whenever someone does something that displeases us, or whenever we have had a conflict with another person, and yet three or five years pass and we still remember it — still refusing to forgive them — so that every time we come face to face with that person, resentment stirs within us once again: that is precisely what it means to “hold that person as a prisoner locked inside our own heart.”
As a result, our inner world becomes crowded with prisoners, making it difficult to bring order to our thoughts. And when the mind is difficult to organize, this manifests during meditation — one person surfaces, then another, then another. Those are the prisoners we have locked away and forgotten, rising to the surface. Take note of this.
April 11th, 2018
