Tara Brach - 2013-10-14 - Satsang - Peace is this Moment

Episode Date: September 13, 2014

2013-10-14 - Satsang - Peace is this Moment - Evening of question/response with Tara after a meditation on Dorothy Hunt's poem, "Peace is Moment Without Judgment."

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. So again, welcome. I saw a few new people slip in. Glad to have you. When we do this next part of things, any inquiry you have, anything you'd like to share, and if there's anything that came up around that line from the poem, describing peace as this heart space where everything that is, is welcome, whether that resonated or didn't,

or you found that challenge, or whatever, that can be part of it too. So I've been doing primarily open awareness, natural presence kind of meditation lately. So I'm churning a little bit about emotions. No surprise. Because I'm aware that I'm also seem to be in a slightly more

dissociative state than I... It doesn't, not permanently, but there seems to be I'm a little more aware of more dissociation lately. So it just has me in that inquiry around whether

my just sort of the way I'm built I need to be inviting emotion more than I am right now. it's kind of the idea in my meditation. And do you try that sometimes? I mean, do you say okay right now?

I'm in a... You know, not so much. I mean, I kind of just let myself do what I feel like doing. And in the last few weeks, I've been in a more, you know, sort of open awareness sort of place. Is there any sign, anything that lets you know, any subtle duca with the dissociation? I mean, is there anything that lets you know

that there is dissociation, and there may be avoidance. Because usually there's some sign. During meditation, I don't feel dissociated. So, you know, it's like I'm noticing, you know, I'm noticing my triggers in other parts of my life, you know, but when I'm in the, you know, when I'm on the cushion, not so much. You know, I don't, I feel peaceful.

You know, I mean, I feel very there. I don't feel like there's anything I'm avoiding in that moment. So you feel. open and present and are you embodied? Yeah. So you feel awake in your body. Like if you checked in, you're really open to sensation. Yeah, yes.

And the heart space is a, you know, it's a bit of a challenging one for me. So, you know, so it's not that obvious how open I am. Yeah, so I don't think you have to go digging for emotions, although certainly during your daily

life when something gets triggered to the extent that you can pause and say, oh, this is a time to investigate, do it. But to me, the portal, if you're practicing an open awareness, is the body. And so I would be more intentional about your body. And I often, you know,

because I will establish a quality of open presence, but I pretty systematically keep checking with my heart and my belly. And I find that most of the time, what feels like a kind of quiet open presence actually when I let my awareness start sinking down, I start finding layers of tension that I hadn't

been noticing because they're subtle but habitual. So I'll actually take some time to let the breath and the awareness be in those areas until I feel like I'm really allowing the full expression of whatever's there. It's particularly the belly

because we have, the belly is a place where we digest life experience, we process, and so when there's woundedness and injury, we very quickly develop a hardening or an arm around the belly that becomes so familiar that we don't realize that the billy's tight and that there's not a real open flow. And that's really where that's the source of our empowerment, a feeling of really belonging and being part of the universe

and letting the universe's energy flow through us. There's a kind of a courage that comes when we really open that area. So I would do it more like that. Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah, I'm glad you asked. You know, I've heard emotions described by you and others as a sort of a confluence of thought and emotion, and a way, or a sensation, I mean, as a way in which our thoughts register in our body.

And this question is sort of an exploration, and I'll keep it brief. But it's a way in which when I'm meditating, there's a stepping out of my personality, out of this sense of self in some way, observing. And so I'm noticing thoughts and I'm noticing sensation. But emotion, there's some sort of moving away from self where it feels like emotion seems to be.

And so I'm trying to understand how to integrate this observing of sensation and thought into self and stepping out of self at the same time. How do you go about stepping out of self?

There's sort of a natural unwinding in when I'm sitting that I there's a letting go so that I'm not so tied in with my natural self and so there's just this sort of stepping back

that happens as I settle into meditation. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding then what the situation is that you as you settle and meaning that you kind of occupy the space of attending the stories that keep a sense of more solid self aren't there. So there's more dissolution, more amorphous, more porous. And then you're just noticing sensations that come and thoughts that come,

but they don't seem to coagulate into what we call emotion. Right. Right. And then at other times, do you sense emotion as emotion the way you've heard about it? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, yeah, sometimes there's, I'm feeling sadness or I'm noticing fear, that there's just things moving through me that are,

and then at those times I'm more kind of caught up in a sense of self. And so, you know, just wondering about that. And I also think that there's some, you know, I notice this sort of masculine culture around it too. And so it feels like there's some part masculine condition, that, you know, of doing and of male masculine self in there. And I'm wondering if, you know, there's sort of a, you know, I'd like to hear the feminine side of that and how to integrate that.

There's something about that in there. Where do you notice the male masculine self? Is it while you're sitting or are you noticing it at other times? Yeah, I notice it in other times especially. I think there's more bright brain sort of in my sitting in my meditative. Okay, so that would make sense too. So how about this is just a way to kind of frame it,

that in order for emotions to be strong, there has to be a pretty active story going on. Because emotions really are, it's like fight, freeze can emerge without a story. Often there's a story, but it can be just an instinctive response. Like I can in any time kind of pay attention and feel a bit of squeeze in my chest. And there's some anxiety, there's some organismic thing about, you know, am I safe? Is life okay?

But there's not a huge ego-level storyline going on. But for the more complex emotions to form, we have, the stories and narratives have to have taken root so they're setting off a particular biological combo in our body. And it sounds that when you're sitting, you're not so involved with the storyline. So you may have the sensations, you may even have a feeling of fear or feeling of clutch or this or that, but it's not evolved and complex at the level of emotions.

Yeah, it's not so personalized. It's not so personalized because your story's not going. So what that says is if you want to, spend more time waking up through the portal of emotions. You do it when the storyline is there. And here's the thing. You hear so many people say, oh, meditation, it's not what you think. But thinking is part of our experience and the stories are part of our experience. And there's a skillful way to get that the story's there and to let it kind of hover. And so that the kind of atmosphere that it's creating in the body is distinct.

Sometimes I'll leave them when I'm working in workshops. I'll say, you know, accentuate the story. Stop at the frame where it's most intense. What are you telling yourself? You know, because that's a way to become mindful of some of the layers that we're not mindful of. We just kind of, you know, get lost in. So slow it down at the times that the storyline has coagulated a self-sense. And then just get really curious.

Notice the story. Notice what you're believing. And then begin to investigate how it takes shape in the body. even let your face take the expression, you know, like really embody it with curiosity and you'll have that same, the power of the mindfulness, but you'll be contacting a patterning that you usually don't hang out with. Yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing it in, because it's true for a lot of us that we want to get familiar with territory that doesn't always present itself when we're doing a formal meditation. Yeah.

Tara, thank you for reading the poem. I've been thinking about a line in the poem, and it sort of led me down a road where I eventually got stuck. So very briefly, the phrase that piece is a heart space where everything is welcome, and I started to think about the word welcome, and I started to think about it within the context of things like violence and cruelty and hatred. and I think maybe for me one way of figuring that out a bit is to think about welcome as I think you've mentioned inviting issues and emotions in for tea and using rain, recognize,

allow, investigate, and non-attachment. So to sort of work toward the truth behind cruelty and behind violence and so on. So that's kind of where I went. But then I got to the word non-judgment. And that's where I got stuck. So I wondered if you could speak a little more to non-judgment and how that applies to terms like violence and cruelty and hatred.

So let's say I am being with myself, and I sense what is arising in me is strong aversion. aversion towards somebody. Okay? Is that an example? Yes, I guess I was thinking of it more in a broad sense. But I'm a little concerned with the broad sense because those are ideas

and when we say everything that is is welcome what is actually about that idea? It's like you could talk about cruelty out there but if you really want to feel the heart space and welcome what is what is it about that cruelty because it's not the idea that you're welcoming. It's the

energy of aggression. Are the energy of ignorance or the pain of hurt or loss or grief. So if you bring it to that level, then you can start experimenting with, well, what does it mean right this moment to open to that aggression or to open to that, the ignorance, the not seeing, or to open to the hurt that's caused? Does that resonate? Yes. so by doing that

it might lead me to feel sad rather than angry maybe not maybe you'd feel angry maybe you'd feel rage maybe you'd feel powerless maybe you'd feel you know so it can be of inner violence that you're opening to all the weather

but I'm just saying like keep it with what's actually happening inside your body if I may then I'm just wondering isn't that judgment though in what way feeling those emotions aren't they a form of judgment if I'm angry so if you're angry there's a storyline that has judgment so you're opening

to feel how that's playing through your body but you're not adding another layer of judgment the only way we can stop the war because every emotion has an evaluation going on something's wrong and then it's its particular frequency of reacting to something's wrong something's wrong I'm going to depress something's wrong I'm going to aggress

something's wrong you know so you're right there's built into an emotion is an evaluation but peace is stopping the war rather than proliferating and being identified with the emotion you're not adding another judgment to it

you're letting it be there in a space a heart space which actually starts dissolving the identification you're undoing by not adding more judgment. That helps. Thank you. I still need to think some more about it, though. Try to feel into your body because sometimes the problem with rain is like, and I'll do this meditation where I'll say, you know, bring up a situation and then explore feeling how it is inside you and saying yes to it.

And people eventually say, yeah, but if I say yes to the way he's treating me, he's going to keep on stepping on me. And that's not what we're saying yes to. We're not saying yes to violence out there or to cruelty or to... We're saying yes to the actual experience of it in our body because the experience is no. When there's a sense of self, there's a no. There's a resistance or a grasping and a...

I don't want this. So to not keep fueling the sense of a naysaying self if you just have a space where this too, this too is allowed it deconditions that identification those are words until you actually experience what's it like in my body

to feel that aggressiveness and just in a very deep way say you know it's okay yes let it be there in this body and you discover that the sense of selfing melts away around it and it just plays itself it's just another energy that comes and goes thank you Yeah, let me know what you discover.

Thank you. It's about a poem. Also, there was a line about the tiger eating the carrots. So I do accept that if the tiger is here and there are carrots and there is my dog. Probably the tiger is going to eat my dog. And I accept it. There is cruelty there. There is aggression from the tiger.

But I don't judge it because a tiger. because a tiger is a tiger. I accept that it's going to eat my dog and not the carrots. But probably if I see a tiger coming, I'm going to take my dog from the room and leave the room. Yeah. Without judgment. Yeah.

So the word welcome in using the poem, I don't relate it because I'm not going to welcome it. I'm just going to take my dog and leave the room. I can understand that. You know, I think that the same point that you're bringing up, which is a really, really important one, often is with acceptance. Like, if I accept this, it's passive.

Like, how am I going to take care of the situations in my life? And we have a kind of a duty to ourselves and our loved ones and the world to take care of things. And so it's important to say that this moment welcoming in a heart space what's here I consider is actually the precursor to wise action.

That if I can welcome this moment that yes, there's a feeling of danger and there's a feeling of something I love being threatened and I can open to that in a really present way rather than shooting the tiger

I'll just pick up my dog and walk out the room. So the pause to accept or welcome or whatever the language you want is actually creates the foundation for a kind of intelligent and compassionate response rather than continuing in a cycle of reactivity. Yes. So I'm glad you brought that in. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Last time I was here, I was telling you about my idealizing problem, if you remember. I do. and I've been working very hard on it this last month, and I have noticed the shift inside of me and in my life, but I'm still a little confused. So I think I have two questions for you. So I know what this idealizing, idolizing of you and other people in my life is. Like I know what's underneath of it.

Like I've always known. It's yearning. It's grief. It's loss. It's all these things. But I feel like I've gone to the bottom of the barrel. Like I feel like there's nothing else to search for. And you said something to me that there was something underneath of all that stuff.

And I can't remember what it was you said, but you made it sound like it was good stuff, like awareness and compassion. You know? But I can't remember what you said. So that's my first question. Because I've gone to the bottom, and there's nothing else left. Yeah. So in a way you're bringing, I just want to make sure I'm with you,

that you're bringing a real presence and interest and kindness to looking at what's here, right? Yeah, I mean, that's why there's a shift in my life, because I've never done it like that before, like bringing compassion and acceptance and, you know, self-love to it. Okay, so if you get to it, a place where there's nothing else there, all that's left then is that compassionate accepting attention, right? I suppose.

That's what's there. That's what's underneath all the muck. Whether you call it underneath or in between or the space it's all happening in. This is actually the core principle of transformation is that when you bring, bring presence to what's happening and the presence gets deeper and wider and more tender. So that's really a heart space where you're really opening to all those layers that you've described. What you're left with is sensing that the what you are is that heart space. Not a person with all these layers that are gunky.

You've become more and more familiar with the presence that's being offered. and there's a shift in your sense of who you are. That's the discovery. Not that there's some little other layer under there. It's like the very presence itself is the blessing. Well, the little part I'm confused about, like you said, the heart space where everything that is is welcome. Like I understand that.

Like you welcome all of it, no matter how ugly it is or painful or wonderful. But there's a time I have to let some of it go. I can't keep grasping onto this. In a moment of welcoming, it is going, because the welcoming takes away the identification. The only reason things stay is because we're either resisting them or we're fixating on them. But in the moment of true presence,

there's a dissolution of your identification with it. That's where the suffering is. So I'll give you an example. if I'm right now sitting here feeling fear that I'm not going to be helpful and I'm going to let you down or that would be a typical if I go into a certain kind of spiral

like oh my God I'm not saying it in a way that's helping so let's say I get into that right and then there's a oh I'm deficient I'm failing I'm not really a good teacher geez why am I even you know on and on on so if that spirals so let's say we do a big pause and we get to like you guys are all very quiet and I start paying attention to my experience.

And I see the talking, and I see that very familiar old sense of not enough. And then I start breathing with it, and then I start sensing that feeling of, oh, I'm sorry. You know, I'm just sorry for that repeated pattern that's taken me from myself for so long. So there's some compassion there. And then I just start offering real loving kindness to just this tangly space, this kind of achy, tangly thing that comes up, and that loving-kindness I'm offering and there's a little more space and openness and just tenderness and the stuff is playing in there. And then gradually there's this realization of, oh, okay, so I'm this space of loving-kindness,

and this is just a pattern. These are waves that run through, but they don't define me. There was nothing on the bottom of the barrel. It was more the whole space the barrel was being looked at in. I'm back to inhabiting something larger. Does that connect for you at all? To not think of it as these layers that I'm trying to get underneath those.

Even if there's layers that what's really important is the quality of presence, it's how you're relating, because it's the presence itself that is healing, not the particular of what you're noticing. So here for you, a more practical way to say it is

that as you're investigating and bringing kindness and bringing acceptance and saying yes and so on, you know, start turning the attention to that which is saying yes, to that which is aware, to that which is kind. And you'll start discovering that that which is aware and loving is more what you are than any story or feeling that you were looking at. Just play with that, and then let me know next time we're together, okay? Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. So I was thinking about the prayer. I was thinking about all his welcome. And last Monday I went to Jonathan and his talk, and he was talking about climate change. And so I realized when I got there, and he said that's what he was talking about.

I was just, I was like, I really don't want to listen to this. Because it's painful to really think about just all the destruction that's going. on in the planet. But just staying with it, you know, through the talk, when I walked out of there, I felt so much lighter, you know, and so much more, like, reconnected, you know, to just the environment and to life because it was just that it wasn't really welcome.

You know, I was carrying it, probably just, you know, resisting it and distancing myself from it. So I think that's what that prayer means to me and welcoming it is just being able to identify it and then it has its own fluidity. Exactly. That's a beautiful example because that's one of the big examples in our life, climate change. It's like we don't want to hang out with the reality. And what happens is we become a self that's kind of busy and doesn't have time for that reality. And it makes us bigger. It makes us more, there's more pain and there's more belonging,

and there's more tenderness and more freedom when we just welcome the reality. And here, you know, tonight as people mention, identify something that they're carrying, that's what really frees me too because I don't even know I'm carrying it until often somebody names it. Yeah. And it awakens it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

So we've time for one or two more before we do our closing, if there's anyone that has something on your mind. Hello. Now, I've been doing a lot of Apasana for decades now. When I sit and meditate, it's almost this, I get a little bit too wrapped up in the sort of cult of the being in the present moment thing, because I can sort of zap anything. I can go and just watch and open. And I have no problem with that. and I have this related, triggered when you were singing in the stomach,

because that's where I feel my anxiety and things. And I focus on my physical body and so forth. Well, on the one hand, there's no problem. In fact, it works really well. And in a few minutes, I can go to feeling anxious and filled with thoughts and anxiety to just sort of letting go and accepting and just watching and just paying attention and seeing the tightness and seeing the emotions come and go and opening to this. But the thing is, though, after now after years of doing this, I can do that and be in this moment,

but it's almost as if I'm taking a shot of heroin because it's, I have this sense of going from being anxious to being relaxing, letting go and everything and being here in this moment where there's just no problem now. There's all, you know, all the problems are just thoughts and anxiety sphere. And then, you know, a few hours later, you know, I'm back and I have this real world problem again. And all the shit is still there. And so it's sort of like I can, you know, you know, I sort of say to myself, well, gee, meditation is a lot better for me and spiritually and physically than say, you know, heroin or alcohol or something. But it seems like almost like it's a drug and like I sort of escape. And even though it's very helpful and it's in it, and I'm transformative. I'd open and do all these things.

It seems like then there's always, I'm always back to the real world in another couple hours and I can't just, you know, unless I want to go and join a monastery. It's sort of a, there's sort of overlying sort of disappointment like, okay, I mean, this is,

anyway, I can go on, but that's the gist of it. So, well, a question. Yeah, yeah. Dang, so it doesn't work in real life. works great, but it's, I feel little, sort of, some expectations not, I feel like I'm, like I was hoping that I'd have this, by now, this sort of deep, you know, transformation. And I would be just, you know, that these anxieties just wouldn't keep coming up, you know, but it looks like that's just not going to happen. I just have to deal with that.

So I just, maybe I should just say, okay, well, then when I'm anxious, I'll just sit and watch it and just, just do that and just, you know, take what I get and not expect more. But I don't know if there's a more to that, Matt, but it just, it's not really a problem. It's just that, but when you were saying this, I was listening to this, I sort of, you know, and some of my friends who meditate have gone directions I don't agree with. Like some of them have experienced similar things, and they're sort of deny the existence of the world, like, oh, everything's an illusion, you see. And they want to sort of retreat and, you know, into their heads.

it's almost exellopsism, and that to me is ridiculous, because I think there's a real world. But my solution is usually, well, you know, the two arrows things, that I have to accept there's like real problems and there's real sort of pain and stuff, but then I can just try to not add to it. But I sort of want more, you know, that sort of thing like I... Okay, so let me ask you a couple questions.

One is over the decades, has there been any change in how, your day-to-day life has your experience of day-to-day life, both in terms of anxiety, depression, and your sense of yourself. Oh, yeah, yeah, everything's improved. I mean, I'm kinder to people. Oh, yeah, I'm kinder to people. I'm open more. I have less, I less attached to things.

My moods instead of lasting a weekend lasts like 10 minutes. Okay, that's one question. So it has bled in. I mean, you know. It has, though I don't know if I'm just not, I'm getting mature now, not a teenager anymore. I'm not sure how much of it is from meditation. I have no way to test that. Right. I attribute it to meditation, but I... Yeah. So there's two things here, because one is, for sure, people compartmentalize and have their little meditation cave and the daily life. And sometimes

there's not so much bleeding over because they're not really training themselves to notice. It's like all the associations for meditation are linked to right in front of an altar, but not in front of a friend or a boss or in front of your steering wheel. So part of it is very intentionally practicing, you know, practicing being awake, being open, being vulnerable and all that in other situations. And especially with other people. I mean, I feel like it's one of the kind of insanities of the spiritual culture that we come onto retreats and we all sit in our little cushion like this and this is practicing meditation. Then we go back into this. And we don't practice. while we're speaking, like, what would it be like of right now as Tom and Tar are talking,

we had enough pausing that we could sense what's going on, what, how I'm feeling about this energy, you know, and we don't train in that way, and that is a completely necessary and important training. So I feel like one of the things that we all need is to become more committed to bringing practice formally into conscious relationship. and that makes more of the bleeding happen. So what I'm hearing from you is it's happened some and there's a yearning for it to be more

and there's more you could formally do but I would encourage you to really honor that yearning and rather than think it, let it be thought into something more like oh maybe I got to settle for this disappointment or maybe this or maybe that. Just, you know, there's something very, beautiful about our longing to be more free.

And sometimes we get jaded. We've been doing this stuff for so long that we don't let ourselves get real simple and say, wow, okay, there's a longing here. And if you let that get really sincere, it actually carries you into what you want to belong to. See, I've been sort of seeing that longing as sort of a... A grasping?

A grasping or craving. It's marbled. It's always marbled. It's both. Because one of my realizations, the older I get, the more I do this, is that my initial expectations to, like, get rid of all my neuroses and bad habits is, is, is, is, I've got, it's just not going to happen. And I'm now more like, I'm sort of accepting and accept my bad habits and neuroses more as, like, well, that's just my character and I'm just going to accept that as who I am without shame. And that's really wise. And, you know, that can go hand in hand. You can really accept the neuroticness.

I do the same with myself and still feel this longing. And it has a very different feeling than the expectation that my life be different. It's got a much more pure strain of just a yearning to be at home in this moment. True aspiration and longing always has to do with this moment. Okay, well, that's interesting because that's what I want to. I want to integrate those two and rather than have them sort of compete. Good. And I'm not sure.

I mean, I seem to be doing it okay. I'm not complaining. I'm not, things, I'm just sort of reporting this situation because it just, you reminded me of it when you had a couple comments. So you might make that more of an active part of your inquiry,

which is, you know, can you see where the grasping is, but also sense where that purity is in you that really has a yearning for freedom or coming home and practice with it, and habit it. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So thank you each for very beautiful questions and those that were quiet for holding the space. I think you really made it safe enough for us to drop in. So we'll close with just a joining those around the world right now in a way. Much of our reflection has really been in the mode of peace starts

with what's right here in this body, heart, mind. And so you might sense in an honest way if there's anything between you and being at home, at peace with your body or mood, with just what's here. The only thing to do now is just notice to the degree there might be some not-at-home feeling, just to sense whatever wish you have, whatever prayer you have, for your own being to be at peace. This is a chance just to offer a little meta, prayer for your own awareness, just to hold what's here with gentleness, that there be that heart space that has room for the reality of this moment.

You might widen the attention to notice your life and where there may be something between you and another person that feels like a distance that, that in some way causes pain or suffering, where there's not peace or understanding. And just take a moment with that, just to let that be included in this heart space. Again, it's just an acknowledgement of how that is,

noticing where there's distance and just feeling again that purity or sincerity that has a wish about that, a prayer for peace, a prayer for connection and understanding, sensing this heart space again, where the purity is in it that has the potential to really hold what's here. And then just sense us here together

and that this heart space is really a shared heart space. There's no boundaries, there's no dividedness. Heart space is open and tender and inclusive that we're all resting in, aware of, arising from the same tenderness and vascular, vastness, this heart space, and sensing just how vast it is. Imagining and sensing this heart space that spreads out in all directions. Beings all around the world are praying and sensing their sincere yearning for peace.

Just sense that same heart space, all continuous one heart space, that we can hold the earth our mother in that heart space and the violence on this earth, the violence toward this earth, the violence between beings on this earth, that this heart space can recognize and open to and include all the loss, all the sorrow, the fear, the pain of that.

And you may think right now of particular places on it, earth where the violence is so huge and has been so crushing to generations of people, letting the tenderness of heart space hold that, so that we can feel our shared prayer now that all beings everywhere awaken to that loving presence, that is their very essence, that all beings everywhere awake into this heart space that realizes our connection and wishes for healing for peace, for freedom.

May there be peace on earth? May there be peace on earth. May there be peace everywhere. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.