Tara Brach - 2014-10-30-Retreat Talk - Removing the Barriers to Love

Episode Date: December 5, 2014

2014-10-30 - Removing the Barriers to Love - In our daily trance of feeling separate, we spend many moments wanting others to be different so we can feel better. This talk explores the heart awakening that unfolds when we deepen our commitment to seeing what is happening inside us. Only then can we see another with clear eyes, and realize the love that arises from our inherent Oneness.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Good evening. One person at a previous retreat described his changing experience, how he would go into spaces of really openness and clarity and then plunge into all sorts of feelings of pride and then self-aversion and just this roller coaster. and he at the end described his takeaway. And he said, the joy is in getting real. It's that, as many of you have noticed, the words this too, that keeps on, no matter what the it is, keeps on including. It's a tender presence that life, different weather systems can move through.

So I thought I'd share one note that in a way describes this from one of our friends here, and the titles, Feels True. Settling into what is here, what is true, the felt sense that I ate too much. Sit with the fear that I'm getting fat. Hand on belly, I offer compassion, and receive, instead, confirmation. So we start right there and say, well, this too, right? I think one of the most compelling questions that arises around now, because some of us at least start leaning forward and thinking about the what's next at home, the question's really, okay, I've touched something I cherish or value, some quality of open-heartedness.

and being, and how to live with that, more moments. How many of you have that's just been kind of right at the core, like how to really live with that more? It's been one of our traditions on the final night to offer some reflections on what sometimes described as the bodhisattva path or bodhisattva pathless path, that's what it really is, which is really living from awakened heart. It comes from a wisdom, realization that we all have the same shared essence of loving presence.

And more that recognition, that's what we are, and we can together hold this life that comes up. We belong together. When we use the words bodhisattva path, often what comes to mind is some ancient tradition over the last 1,500 years that's from the far east that only certain people at certain stages of spiritual evolution managed to consider themselves walking on. And I remember my first retreat sitting in a hall about this number of people, and the question that the teacher posed was, do you trust? that you're an awakening Buddha, that awareness that presence is waking up through this body mind right here

that you call self. And I wonder if you might just consider that for a second. Do you trust that this very heart mind right here is awakening? It had occurred to me to do a hand raise on this one and I'm going to not, because it's really one to take one to take. some time with. I remember when the question was posed to me, I went, yeah. Well, sometimes. And then the sometimes came when I started remembering all the moments at home when I just got so small, so contracted, so reactive. So I'd like to do in our time together tonight is really explore how we can bring alive this awakening heart. in widening circles. And it's described that way on purpose because this path of awakening

always starts with and it keeps coming back to what's right here. And if we get too wide too quickly, and I think some of you might have noticed how this happens, it becomes an abstraction. Yes, I'm going to embrace this whole world and send prayers to this whole world. And it's just an idea because that tenderness is not resonating. So we keep coming back right here. And the deep understanding is that love and a very, very open, pure love, compassion and empathy are intrinsic. There are innate capacity. And really over the last, I think it was about 75 to 100,000 years ago, I think it's what scientists say. There was the development of mirror neurons in our frontal cortex.

And human evolution went on hyperdrive from then on. In other words, after our brains developed these mirror neurons so that we could actually sense others' intentions and moods. We began to collaborate, communicate, exchange information in ways that allowed us to flourish and become dangerous, but flourish. So basically what that means is that evolution selected for mirror neurons because our experience of relatedness of interconnection actually supports survival. So it's evident in animals, many animals, I mean, the higher up the chain, so to speak,

the easier it is to see. I read a beautiful story about it took place in India. There's a problem in India with there's so much development that wild elephants end up trampling through small villages. And, you know, it's horrific. And there's been a lot of death and destruction. But in one story, and males usually are alone, and they're the ones that are just like, that are racing through these little towns. and in one a male elephant stampeded through a little hut. And there was a little room where a child was in bed.

And the child started screaming and crying and fear. And the elephant stopped in his tracks. And all this debris had fallen all over the child in the bed. And using his trunk, he removed every piece of debris around the child and then very quietly turned around and walked away. The parents watched, they were frozen in terror, watching this elephant walking out. And as it goes, elephants,

when another elephant's in distress, you know, it's known that they caress, they caress each other, and there's little chirps and rumbles, and they have ways of taking care of each other. There's something about hearing these stories, And it's humans of all ages. And one story of a young boy, four-year-old,

was his next-door neighbor, was an elderly gentleman and recently widowed. So one day the little boy noticed the man was outside on this porch crying. And he went into the yard, climbed onto the man's lap, and just sat there. And his mother looked over and saw his son and the old man sitting together. And when the child came home, the mother asked him, you know, what they were talking about. And he replied, oh, we didn't talk about anything, Mama. I just helped him to cry. This capacity is in us.

It's in each one of us. And the more that we recognize how connected we are, the more it wakes up, that everything we say or think or do, affects others. And everything others do... I mean, if you think of in this room, the quality of respect, the quality of care

has a profound effect on Sanga, on community, on sensing safety and being able to get quiet and touch and be intimate with our inner being. You know, if we're with somebody who's agitated and judgmental, all sorts of alarms go off and we feel unsafe. And when somebody's warm or friendly, it's our body really responds. Tickmat Han kind of a wonderful description. He describes

the boat people. This is at the time of the war in Vietnam when many people were for their lives fleeing as refugees, and they'd leave in these small boats, and they'd be caught in storms, and they'd know their lives were in danger. And he described that if one person on the boat could keep calm and not panic, that was a help for everyone. And he said people would listen to that person, and in some way become more serene, there was a chance to survive the danger. And this is what he writes, is, our earth is like a small, small boat. Compared with the rest of the cosmos, it's a very small boat and it is in danger of sinking. We need such a person to inspire us with calm confidence to guide us. Who is that person?

The Buddha Sutras tell us that you are that person. If you are yourself, if you are your best, then you are that person. Only with such a person, kind, calm, lucid, aware. Will our situation improve? I wish you good luck. Please, be yourself. Be that person. When we're not caught up in fear and grasping, we have a longing to be of benefit.

It's natural. I mean, just imagine moving through the day and sensing that your smile are your words or your prayers, we're really touching and making another person feel better about themselves or more at peace, in some way remembering and being able to rest in more happiness. That feels good. And part of it's our ego project to be a good person. We have those projects, you know, that we're making a contribution. But it's much deeper than that. It's that sense of belonging. We're more who we really are. We're more at home.

So the real inquiry for us is, well, what really nourishes this bodhisattva heart? What nourishes Bodhisattva heart? That's the awakening heart mind. And this whole week, we've really been exploring these two interrelated facets of the path, and one of them is intention, and they other is attention, intention or aspiration, or deep aspiration, and attention. How we pay attention. So I think of aspiration as the heart's way of calling us home. It's kind of the voice of the heart calling us home. It's that longing to realize and trust and live from who we are. And the sign of aspiration. If you want to deepen your practice by formally reflecting on aspiration, there's some signs of what really true aspiration is. And one of the signs is that there's a kind of quality of

real innocence or sincerity. It's not covered over by anything. There's no jadedness. There's no manufacturing. It's very pure, very sincere. Another quality of aspiration is it's embodied It's a heart quality. You actually feel a kind of a real resonance in the heart area when you know you've arrived at something that's a true aspiration. The other is that it's always about this moment. I mean, it might include a vision of the future, but if you want the test, is this a real aspiration?

It's an aspiration on really what's possible right here and now. So we have this quality of aspiration to awaken these heart minds and then attention. So if aspirations like the voice of awareness calling us home, attentions, the eyes of awareness that seek to recognize with real honesty. Okay, so what is happening now? To recognize it with honesty and with a tremendous amount of compassion. So these are the words of Rumi. your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

So when we begin to inquire and what we're going to be doing, I'll have a few reflections that you might explore tonight. As we explore these kind of bodhisattva trainings is the way I sometimes think of it. I'd like to emphasize close in, like the people right in our life, and to ask that basic question, what is between me and loving presence right here in this relationship and right here in this one? Because that's where the rubber hits the road. When we go home, it's really how are we living it with our circle right here. So what gets in the way?

What's between me and loving presence? Well, often there's a belief that the person's acting this way and that means that they don't love us or care or something like that. That's just an example. And along with the belief, there's a reactivity and therefore I feel defensive because there's hurt and I'm trying to protect myself. So we begin to investigate what is between me and loving presence. And there's a general understanding that the more we're caught in stress, the more that we're in fight, flight, freeze. The more we're feeling fear with somebody, are grasping, needing something to be different, the less will be able to really connect. There's a study that I quote a whole lot because it's

probably got one of the best reminders for me of any research that's ever been done. And it's called the Good Samaritan study. It was done at Princeton. And seminarians were given up. practice sermon and half of them were assigned to the story of the Good Samaritan and half of them a random Bible story. Okay, so they're in this building and they're given their assignments and they're supposed to go to another building to do their practice sermon. Now on the way to the other building they pass somebody in distress, somebody that's moaning in distress. So the real question being studied was would these seminarians stop and help. Okay, here they are, and half of them just are about to do the Good Samaritan parable, right? And the outcome of this research was that whose stop was determined

by how much time they believed they had before they needed to give their sermon. Okay, if they believe they'd be late, they didn't stop to help, even if they were about to go deliver a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Now this is really relevant to my life You know because I you know I have this thing where I'm talking a lot about you know Being generous and kind and responding to people And there's there's a beautiful saying that To be kind you must swerve regularly from your path

You know it doesn't you might be have this goal Like I want to get this done this done and this done But to be kind it's like oh I'm going to respond right here to this well I get hooked on my list and being on my way and thinking there's not enough time and forget what matters so I think of this study a lot and I like to share it when I can we leave home we leave home our wholeness what matters our heart when we are caught in wanting something are running away from something And what happens is, this is just different language for what we've been exploring all week,

is that in the moments that we are caught in chasing after something or pushing something away, our sense of who we are shrinks. And we're no longer resting in the reality of our being, our wholeness. We have actually become unreal. We're an unreal self. We're living in a very small, tight identity. and when we're in that, everyone that we encounter is an unreal other. When we're living in our small ego identification, kind of identify with the mask of the

moment, the grasping self, the fearful self, the busy self, the self-important self, that mask looks out and sees others and just sees the mask. We can't see behind the mask. Does that make sense? So if we're the busy person about to do the lecture on Good Samaritan, we don't see who's really there. That's not a real human. It becomes like a stereotype, but we're not, our body and our mirror neurons are not activated in those moments. Fight-flight freeze, the grasping and the resistance means that that part of our frontal cortex that has the neurons related to social relationship very dim down.

okay so when we're in that state of a contracted self others are unreal others and they fit into kind of three categories and one category is they become an object of something we want like what I want from you is approval and what I want from you is money and what I want from you is you know more attention I want your time you know it's like something we're wanting and the other domain is they become aversive. In other words, pushing away an object of fear or dislike because that object's going to either ask too much of us or judge us or in some way threaten us. And if they don't fit into either of those categories, when we're caught in unreal self and unreal other, we ignore them because they don't matter to us. So those are the three categories.

So we are living in this mask-to-mask world and we're not sensing who's there, which means we can't respond to our world from wholeness, from our hearts. We respond from a small place. Favorite illustration is a story of a Taoist master who was known to sit in his little hut on the top of a mountain and he'd sit naked. meditate. And this group of Confucianists were really very disturbed by his way of his lifestyle. It just offended their sensibilities. So they decided, they got together and they said, we're going to go teach him something. So they decided to hike up the mountain and talk to him about proper conduct. And there he is, and he's sitting there. The sage is sitting naked, meditating. And they basically said, what are you doing sitting in your hut without any

pants on. His response, this whole universe is my hut. This little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing inside my pants? So we go around a lot with ideas about how there should be different. We really do. And in my life, the word should is one of the most quick and useful flags, really quick and useful flags, that lets me know in some way I'm arguing with reality. People are as they are. So should is a sign of unreal other. It's like if there's a slightest should, we can't see who's there. Similarly, the idea I should be different means we can't really connect with ourselves. In any moment you're judging, and sometimes we feel a little like we're judging it, it's kind of like that's the ethical high ground. Well, I should do it differently.

But in those moments, we actually can't make true contact with our being. We can't see what's here honestly. Our vision is actually obscured. It's distorted. So the Bodhisattva trainings are really trainings on how to see honestly and kindly what's here. It's how to see the stories, how to see the shoulds, how to see the controlling, how to see all the ways we create separation. It's a really beautiful and courageous question to say, how am I creating separation right now? And then to begin to look and to look closely. So we start looking and we might start looking at the wanting that's going on because as soon as there's existential sense of separateness we feel incomplete like something's missing and yes we start wanting so it's totally

natural but if we really play it out we can't see who's here so if we decide and if you begin to sense in your life you know you might even be thinking of people in your life and you begin to sense, well, what happens when others become a vehicle to meet our needs? What happens? What happens when we want and expect others to make us feel more safe, more special, more comfortable, when we want them to give us more pleasure? In India, there's a teaching that when a pickpocket sees a saint, he or she only sees the saint's pocket. It's like that. When we're wanting something from someone else, we can't see that

person. Now that's a real natural narcissism in our early development. There's a story one woman described she's driving carpool and she goes to pick up a little boy for preschool and she noticed

an older woman hugging him as he left the house. She says, is that your grandmother? And he said, yeah, she comes to visit us for Christmas. How nice this woman. and asks, where does she live? At the airport, he replied, whenever we want her, we just go out there and get her. But of course, it doesn't end, you know, with childhood narcissism. We all have it in different ways. This is Florida Scott Maxwell. She says, no matter how old a mother gets,

she still looks to her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. It's true, really. So any expectation blocks intimacy, any expectation from another. I remember Richard Gere saying how much he loved and trusted the Dalai Lama, and he said he's the only person who doesn't want something from me. People lose their realness if we have a filter that senses they have something to give that we want. I remember reading in. In Forbes, somebody sent me this, that a very, very distant relative of mine. And when I say distant, like, you know, eighth cousin, second remove, whatever they're called,

like way out there. Anyway, I had met him three times, probably when I was under the age of 11. And he's now a billionaire. He's, like, way high in Facebook or something. So it was really funny to watch my mind, you know, I was thinking, hmm, wonder if he'd want to donate to minds. I'm very into this, you know, mindfulness in schools, or what about the one or sung? You know, I just started, anyway, that filter of wanting.

It's wild how quickly it comes up. There's a Jewish proverb that I've always thought was cute, and it goes, with money in your pocket, you are wise, and you are handsome, and you sing well, too. Okay, so first to say, it's natural that wanting mind comes up, and if we're willing to bring honesty and a real kindness of forgiveness to it, we can begin to loosen the identification that gets in the way of intimacy. So a reflection, okay? If you will, just to close your eyes. I'm just letting some different people in your life, in your closer circle and family, friends, people you see regularly or come to mind.

And as each one comes to mind, sense if there's wanting, if there's some element of wanting something from that person. You might pick one person where you do sense some distinctive wanting, not supercharged, just that you know it's there, where you're wanting in some way that person's to see you, or approve of you or improve because of you, or you want their time or help or something. Just picking one.

We'll just drop it down a little bit more. When you're with that person, what's the experience of your own wanting self? What does it feel like? Your body, your mind. Just inquire, is this who I am? Real simple, is this who I am? when you're in that wanting self

what's your sense of the other person when you're wanting something from that person are you aware of that other person are you aware of that other person's needs or hurts or yearnings or what's going on for that person

is there any attention to that you might just for a moment sense who you'd be what it would be like to be able to step out of the wanting self for a moment and just experience who that person is. We're going to continue reflection on the other side of the coin, which is aversion,

but we'll just speak on it for a few moments. So this is when what's between me and loving presence is a sense of disliking or judgment. And when aversion's fixed on another person, not only are they unreal others because we're just seeing what we don't like, but we cut off from our own wholeness and fullness of being. This is a place that's really, really challenging because we get addicted to fixating blame outward. And it's very hard to come back and sense what's underneath that place of blaming.

And yet there's no possibility of healing, wounding, are coming back into wholeness unless we find out what's under de-blaming or anger or the dislike. No way. And I thought maybe, rather than speak about it more abstractly, I'd give you a pretty recent example from my own life on this one. and you might remember that a few days ago I had the quote don't push anyone including yourself out of your heart because we're not free if the door's closed so my story is last week I was

reflecting on this talk and how my sodna for probably 10, 12 years has been to catch judgment when it comes up and know that if I believe in the story of judgment unreal self, unreal other And the best place to do it is, of course, right in my close-in relationship. So you're going to get a little story that includes my dearly beloved husband tonight. One of the places for us where tension arises and for me where judgment arises, we do a kind of morning meditation about twice a week where we sit together quietly and then it's an interpersonal meditation where we check in and see how things, are with us, with our individual lives and with our relationship.

And I'm usually the one to remind us, or make sure it happens, or make sure there's enough time around. I have more sensitivity around it, more going around it. So about a week ago, I reminded Jonathan that this was our morning, and he said that he had an early meeting so we wouldn't have quite as much time. At which point I went out for a walk before we were going to sit. And during that walk, an explosion of, you know, totally, you know, I was angry. And I, and in the voice in the head was basically saying, he's shortchanging something that's important to me and doesn't matter as much to him. And then putting him down for not prioritizing it as much, he doesn't have the right values. He's, you know, in other words, should was like neon

lights. He should be different. So I was very much inside my mask, seeing just a mask, and this was unreal, unreal, okay, very obvious. So, okay, judging, judging. Hoping to my body and feeling the intensity of what was there and staying with it and saying, and a question I often ask that's really powerful is, you know, if I couldn't stay in the story of somebody else's wrong, what would I have to feel? really powerful question. What is it that I'm not willing to feel that I'd have to feel? And so under that, when I asked that question, it was hurt. And it was an old story that had nothing to do, of course, with Jonathan. It was the hurt of, you know, from early with my parents

that for whatever reason my father was too busy to really keep me company. And my mother was struggling with alcoholism, and she wasn't able to really be with in a way that was attuned in the way I was wanting. So a sense of there's nobody there to be with me and be attuned. It was a very deep sense of, it was a grieving place. So I kind of touched into that a bit, and really quickly my mind was back into, he's just not prioritizing, you know, right back into the blame. And I'm saying that because it's not like you get under the, under it and you go, oh yeah, and then all you're with it, and then all the blame's gone. Blame is like, it's much easier to blame someone else than hang out with that rawness.

Do you know what I mean? So, you do, you know, okay. The urge and blaming is this urge to get back. It's like, it's like refining our power by putting someone else down. It was very, very seductive. So I was in that again, and then there was. there is that voice in me that just says, this is not the truth of who I am. It's just knowing that this place, this blaming place is not. And then there's an aspiration that came up, which is

really this prayer, please remove the veils, you know. Let me come back and live from really who I am. It's a very sincere yearning, knowing that there's no awakening, no connection, no intimacy without coming back home right here. So the first step for me was to forgive the judging. Coming back here meant to honestly see what was going on, okay, blaming, judging, and forgive it. And in the same way, I have to forgive the wanting when I feel like my wanting is getting in the way. And if the word forgive doesn't resonate, it's a profound, tender acceptance that this is just human conditioning. It's not like I signed up for it. You know, it's just there. So forgiving the judging. And when I forgave the judging, then I was able to open to that grieving place

in a very full, embodied way. And with that comes the compassion. Soon as we truly, honestly, contact what's there and forgive it, there's become some very deep compassion, compassionate presence. And in those moments, I felt completely at home and connected. And everything I was wanting to feel in that meditation with Jonathan, I was feeling right there, which is the great irony that when we think we don't have something, we do the very stuff to drive it further away when all we needed to do was come back right here, right? here. We got together probably, you know, within

the hour and so it was possible for me to share all those layers, and I could name, you know, all the layers of judge, angry, this, and that. But because I wasn't caught in the identification with it, it didn't elicit you know, not only, it didn't elicit

defensiveness and Jonathan is, and this is such a blessing to me, very able to hold a space and not get reactive. So he was able to to respond without defense. And then we could recognize each other's patterning's my way of blaming and his way of avoiding. And, you know, we could name it in a way that each time we name it and we keep renaming it, just the way each of us has to keep coming back to our conditioning

over and over. But every time there's less identification with the separate selves owning that conditioning and more of this space of we, this, this tender presence that's bearing witness and has room. So that's the example and I want to just highlight a few pieces of it. One piece is that no one is to blame, that on this bodhisattva path no one is to blame. It doesn't matter how wrong they seem in our mind. Conditioning's playing out. There's definitely a discriminating mind that can see when somebody's causing harm and we need to protect ourselves. But averse of blame, if we believe the story of averse of blame, we cannot come home to our wholeness. One might say, well, what if the person's really acting harmfully? Still, if we can come home

first so that we're not identified with our anger, then we'll be more effective, more intelligent, more compassionate in how we deal with things. The key is that we have a longing to seek and find those barriers to loving. And knowing that the only way back is this, it's truly a commitment to self-honesty. I'd say if there's anything in the last few years that's become more and more clear to me is that the more I am gung-ho about, recognizing the stuff that I don't want to be with. The more I really, really am willing to recognize it and tenderize towards it, the more freedom comes. So what happens to me now is something I'll come up that I really don't like, feeling of pride or judgment or whatever.

And of course, my first reflex is like it always is. It's like this. I don't want to, I don't want to feel it and I'm pulling away. But much more quickly now, there's an eagerness. It's almost like there's something exhilarating about sensing where those places are and really honestly naming them. But equal measure, there has to be forgiveness. So this aspiration, in the classic version of the Bodhisattv aspiration, there's a sentiment that May whatever circumstances arise, may this serve the awakening of my heart. Whatever circumstances, whatever the conflict is, whatever the betrayal is, whatever goes on in our health, whatever it is, this is all-inclusive. May this serve the awakening of heart-mind.

So I'd like to slow down here and invite you just to try that on for a moment. moment. Remember intention and attention. What you might do is just consider one relationship, one place where it matters to you to live more fully with your heart awake, where there is some averse of reactivity, where you get caught in judgment, one relationship, and let yourself take a moment to sense the person and sense what's going on. So you're letting the story be right here and the feelings that swirl around it. So you're being honest with what comes up,

that it's got some hold, some stickiness. And then try on this aspiration. May these circumstances serve the awakening of heart and mind. you might put it as a question, how may these circumstances serve the awakening of heart and mind? Seeing how sincere the intention is to let exactly what's difficult, what arouses aversion, really serve. You might even explore a little more, what am I believing? Really, what am I believing? That somebody is wrong or bad?

sense the feeling tone of when you're in that averse of judgment. Really question, is this who I am? The pathway back home is to forgive the aversion and sense what's under it. Is it fear, hurt? Just to bring a real compassionate presence to whatever's here, this too, with the understanding that this can be a long process, sometimes require some support, but just to get the feeling for, instead of fixating

outward blame, bringing an honest, tender presence inward, so you can come out from behind your own mask and come back more into the wholeness that's here, and then begin to see the other person more truly. Okay, taking a few breaths and opening your eyes. So really, we're exploring these very close in level of the bodhisattva trainings where we begin to to really view our relationships and say well what is creating separation and notice how our conditioning is doing it and have the courage and honesty to contact that and what that does is it frees us up to begin to see pass the mask of others to the goodness that's there and the vulnerability that's there. And these are the trainings all week we've been doing in our loving kindness practices.

See the goodness it's there. Who's really there? See the sorrow. See if you can really be willing to, rather than our flinch response to pull away from where there's pain, see if we can really breathe in and let ourselves touch it. Can we really be with it? This widens out. The circles widen out.

When we are able to begin to open to what's right here and then look at another truly, we begin to, in the world, put aside some of our stereotypes and begin to get who's a real person there? What's that person feeling? What's it really like to be that person? I want to share a story with you that took place in Washington, D.C., that has always had a big impact on me. This is told by a man who worked with juvenile offenders, and most of the young people he worked with were in gangs, and most had committed homicide. So one 14-year-old boy in his program had shot and killed an innocent teenager to prove himself to his gang. And at the trial, the victim's mother sat really impassively silent until the end when the youth was convicted.

of the killing. And then after the verdict was announced, she stood up slowly and stared directly at him, and she said, I'm going to kill you. And then the youth was taken away to serve several years in a facility. So after the first half year, the mother of the slain child began to visit this boy. And he'd been living on the streets before the killing. So she was the only visitor. And when she left, she left him some money to buy some snacks and then started to visit him more regularly, bringing him food and small gifts. And near the end of his three-year sentence, she asked him what he'd be doing when he got out. And, you know, he didn't have any connections.

He was confused and uncertain, so he didn't know. And so she said, well, would you like me to set you up a job with, I have a friend who has a company and probably use somebody like you? And he said, sure. Then she asked him where he was going to be living. And again, he didn't have any family to return to, so she offered him temporary use of the spare room in her home. So for eight months he lived there, and he ate her food and worked at the job.

And then one evening she said, come on in, let's talk. And she said, you remember in the courtroom when I said, I'm going to kill you? And he said, I sure do. well I did she went on she said I did not want the boy who could kill my son for no reason to remain alive on this earth i wanted him to die so that's why i started to visit you and bring you things that's why i got you a job and let you live here in my house that's how i said about changing you and that old boy he's gone so now what i want to ask you since my son is gone and that killer is gone

is if you'll stay here. I've got room and I'd like to adopt you if you'll let me. And she became the mother of her son's killer, the mother he had never had. You know, at the beginning of talking, I mentioned the boat people. And the reason I share this story, it's not so much that we should each imagine

that if that happened, how we, that we'd respond in such a pretty astonishing way. But there is a capacity in us under all circumstances to be able to see past the mask, our own stuck place and what we're seeing in another, and to see through to where the goodness lives. That is a capacity. and for the healing of our world, we each need to practice it. We need to practice it where it's easier,

not where we've been greatly violated. But we need to practice. We have this evolutionary bias towards negativity where we don't really pause much to look deeply and sense, well, what's going on for you? We're pretty self-oriented, and when we're looking at others,

we often scan for what's wrong. So to pause and to recognize. It's that, you know, we say Namaste a lot here, and the meaning is I see the sacred, I see the divine that lives through you. And I think of really the Bodhisattva training, all of them, as a way of learning to bow to the sacred and goodness within ourselves

and each other in all beings. and to let each other know. Rachel Naomi Remen is a physician and writer, and many of you have heard of her. And the story she tells about her grandfather, she tells a lot of them, one of them. She describes how he died when she was seven, and he called her by this term, Nishimala,

which means little beloved soul. And she says, nobody had ever referred to me that way, and nobody did afterwards. That was his term for her. And she says, at first I was afraid that without him to see me and tell God who I was, I might disappear. But slowly, over time I came to understand

that in some mysterious way, I'd learned to see myself through his eyes and that once blessed, we are blessed forever. Many years later, when in her extreme old age, my mother surprisingly began to light candles and talk to God herself, I told her about these blessings and what they had meant to me. She smiled at me sadly. I have blessed you every day of your life, Rachel, she told me.

I just never had the wisdom to do it out loud. So one of the most beautiful expressions of that aspiration to awaken is to see each other's goodness, to see who's there and mirror it back, let them know. We need to let each other know. We need to express love and express what we see, the goodness we see. These are just some children's kind of bodhisattah energy coming out that I thought I'd share with you. One child says, when my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too.

That's love. These are all responses to what does love mean. Next one. When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different, you know that your name is safe in their mouth. Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen. When you tell someone something bad about yourself and you're scared, they won't love you anymore. but then you get surprised because not only do they still love you, they love you even more. Just two more.

You really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget. When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you. Okay, so we'll do our last reflection together. Take some moments to feel your breath. and feel your breath at your heart so you can sense into the state of your heart right now. Radical self-honesty, just contacting just how it is, noticing not how you think it should be,

just what is, with gentleness, with gentleness, bringing to mind somebody that is in your closer circle, attending to him or her as if it's the first time ever. See, not influenced by past knowledge or experience, whether good or bad. Just see if you can look for what you may have missed because of familiarity. Sense the goodness that's there. You can't love what you can't see fresh.

Anthony de Mello says, you cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew. So make it fresh. the goodness in this being. You might mentally whisper thank you. The appreciation for this being, letting someone else come to mind. And if I'm going too fast for you,

just go at your own pace. Again, fresh, whispering thank you. And final person, somebody, again, that your intimacy, your closeness really matters to you. the person you see pretty regularly. Seeing that goodness, discovering it right this moment, right this moment. So you can just feel as you sense this person's aliveness or humor, the way they show love. Just sense yourself touched.

And imagine letting that person know about their goodness in some way telling them, communicating it, and thanking. them, whispering thank you, sensing how that leaves that person and how it leaves you. Feel the reality of your being right now, the heart space that's here, feeling that meaning of namaste, bowing to the life that's right here, this tenderness, openness, the shared heart space with this other being, and then letting go of any idea of self or other, just taking the last few moments to feel and rest in and just be that loving presence, that presence that includes all life everywhere.

Namaste and thank you for your presence and attention. 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 and Cite Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.