Tara Brach - 2015-04-15 - True Happiness - Realizing Well Being

Episode Date: April 17, 2015

2015-04-15 - True Happiness - Realizing Well Being - Well being is the deep contentment that arises from a relaxed, wakeful presence. This talk explores the beliefs and habits that contract us away form presence, and several key ways we can nourish our natural capacity for happiness. Your support will enable us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time. Visit: www.tarabrach.com. With thanks and love, Tara

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. Namaste and welcome. When I was in high school, 11th grade, I took a world religion course. We were introduced to most of the major religions. And when we got to Buddhism, it was really quick that I realized that this was probably the religion that was at the bottom of my list of what I would ever be, be part of. How sad is the beginning for a talk? It's focus. It was okay. It's all about suffering and it's all about getting rid of desire. And in my mind, what made life worth living was pursuing

what I desired. I was kind of a sensationalist and I was, you know, seeking thrills in kind of a hedonistic way in whatever relationships, nature, drugs, adventures, whatever it was. And So the idea of getting rid of desires just didn't sit so well because I wanted to be happy. And I still do, and we all do. I just had some misunderstandings about it. So it took a few years, plus some more suffering, until I started getting a deeper understanding of what it really meant to be happy,

true happiness. So in a nutshell, Buddhism does not say get rid of desires. it really is saying see if it's possible to let go of the grasping because it hurts, it causes suffering. In fact, the grasping actually gets in the way of experiencing what we really desire. It's kind of like that.

And very central to the teachings and practices of Buddhism are ways to come into presence so that we actually can experience the most profound quality of well-being. that's possible. So that's the promise and that's the invitation, that it's our natural capacity to experience. And the word happy has a lot of different flavors,

but real well-being, a sense of contentment, appreciation, sometimes joy. It can be during moments that are sad, but there's still a sense of a profound okayness in the midst. of it. So this is what I'd like to explore together and reflect on in this class is what are the blocks or the beliefs we have that get in the way of well-being? And I like that word because it's really when we're in that beingness, when we've opened

out of that narrow selfness, and we're in that beingness that there's this capacity to feel intrinsically well. What are the blocks? What are the beliefs that get in the way? And then what are the ways of paying attention that can really nourish and awaken true happiness? So that's our area of exploration. I thought maybe just to begin with, just to have you close your eyes and do a brief reflection, if you will. And what we'll do through this is keep checking in in a certain way. And this reflection is to offer yourself the simple wish, may I be happy and offer it again

with as much sincerity as you can and perhaps even again. You can keep repeating the phrase if you'd like and as you do also witness what your experience is, may I be happy, may I be happy. What's it like to offer yourself that wish? like you can open your eyes or you can continue with your eyes closed. For many people, this is part of a loving kindness practice, this offering of a wish, there can be a sense of real unfamiliarity that to even offer that it's actually an act of kindness and we're not that used to being kind.

So sometimes it just all of a sudden you realize, wow, that's a kind thing to do for myself. Did some of you notice that, just that way of being with ourselves? Can I see by hands? How many of you sense that kindness that comes with the offer? Yeah. For some, it's really unfamiliar because happiness isn't on our menu. We don't even think that much of, oh, I could be happy. I'm not going to ask for a hand-raise this time.

Sometimes it feels really awkward and strange because we're really down on ourselves. You don't feel deserving, and we're in a whole different mind state. So it feels like it's either a... it's kind of an affected gesture or just strange to do. But in a deep way, it's really beautiful because that simple wish,

first of all, it reminds us that happiness is a possibility. The Buddha said, I wouldn't teach about happiness and freedom if it were not possible. It's an innate potential. So just offering that wish to ourselves in some way is like this reminder, like, oh, that's even possible. And one of the findings about people that are happy is there's a sense of happiness is something that matters and it's possible. Okay? So that's one of the things that's beautiful about it, that it's kind of an invitation for something that we might

might be forgetting. It reminds us that it's available. And also the very act of self-kindness opens the door to well-being. So there's another reflection that can come on the heels of that, which you might check out, which is, well, what this moment is between me and feeling a sense of well-being? And if you'd like to check in on that, please feel free. You know, what is between me and feeling happy, feeling well-being? Now, that can be an inquiry that you keep asking and checking as we reflect together in this class. What we find is there's some form of a contraction. When we're not living in well-being, there's some contraction.

And on a most existential level, when we're not happy, it's because we're contracting against reality. There's some resistance in our system to how life is. And that contraction has a sense of a self that's separate from a reality out there or a world. That's the core level. We're usually not conscious of it. It's usually, if you ask yourself the question, well, what's between me and happiness? You're not going to usually come up with, well, there's this core contraction of separate selfness. That just isn't how we do it.

But if you investigate, you can start feeling into that. Then the contraction, if we keep paying attention to it, usually has the flavor of either fear, like this reality is unsafe and something's going to go wrong, are the contraction has a feeling of something's missing, I want something. A lot of the rest of our exploration is going to be around those two expressions

of contraction, wanting and fearing, something's wrong, something's missing, that any moment you really examine, how come there's not well-being, there's some of that, something's wrong, something missing experience going on. Then I'm going to invite you not to take my word for it, just to check that out. But we're going to look a little more at this kind of assumption in any given moment that something's wrong or something's missing. And what we find is that it doesn't quite take that shape either.

If you look inside, you're not going to go, yeah, that something's wrong feeling. It's more there'll be a fixation on a particular thing going on. Okay? There's a particular thing going on in my life right now that I don't like in this relationship or how my body's feeling.

something like that. Or you might notice in the something's missing, there's a particular want for something that's not here, whether it's food or attention, whatever it is. It fixates. Now, here's the challenge, is that the way our contraction fixates, there's this assumption that if only I get what's missing,

then I'll be happy. Or if only I get rid of what's wrong, If only that thing in my life was different, then I'll be happy. And that drives our day. The notion of what's going to make us happy and what we need to get rid of drives us through the day. And the problem is that it's not real. It's not true. It's misguided.

So let me say a little more about that. That there's been a lot of research on the relationship between the wants we're pursuing and how happy we are. Thirteen studies of lottery winners showed that ultimately the winners were no happier than the non-winners. Similarly, what we fear doesn't actually end up detracting from being happy. Parapologics usually become as content as people who can walk. We anticipate good things happening will make us happier than we actually get, and bad

things will make us more miserable. So how come each one of us has a biological set point for happiness? We get off of it for a while. Something good happens and you shoot up a bit, but within five months you're back at the same level. Something bad happens, you crash, but you come back up again. We're very consistent in that. As long as we're moving through the day operating off of something's wrong and something's missing, that biological set point holds. So let's look a little closer because it's really valuable. If we're in this trance, these energies are driving us through the day of what we think we want that'll work or what we think we don't want, and that's having a big effect of how we navigate. If we can see that,

we can choose to step out of it. Okay, so something's wrong. that feeling. I'll give you an example. A friend in this community who's now at a work study up at a meditation retreat center has a real chronic and acute experience of shoulder pain. And he's on to himself, but he says from the perspective of his delusional mind, this is the one block to progressing spiritually. I mean, he feels like his meditation, everything would be cruising if it weren't for this chronic acute pain. And he's onto himself, but for most of us we have something going on that is stressful, that feels bad and it feels like it's blocking us.

Sometimes it can be subtle. Like I have one friend who said that it wasn't before she could, she had to finish her taxes before she was really going to be able to enjoy spring. And then she went for an extension. Yeah, you get the idea. there goes the summer, you know. You know, there's a saying that I want to tie up all the loose ends so the last day of my life I'll be free to enjoy it.

It's that kind of idea, right? So sometimes it's really overt. I mean, at one workshop I taught, I think it was up at Krupaulu, one person was in a very painful custody battle and filled a lot of anger and a lot of hurt. And she said, I just don't, I can't move forward spiritually as long as I'm in this conflict. or our child's in difficulty, or we're sick,

or we feel like we cannot really be happy until we lose a certain amount of weight, or until somebody else changes, you know, that kind of thing. So this is a hook. A lot of us have it, that there's something in our landscape about our life that we're kind of waiting for it to be different, trying to get rid of it, and hitching our potential well-being to having it change. Now there's a question that I often get which is that

people say well don't we need to realize something's wrong in order to act right? That's a question we get so it's a lot of us have that question if I'm not alert to what's wrong you know something very bad could happen I won't have the energy to act so I want to say here that there's a real difference between wise discrimination that detects where there's harm going on where there's patterns of harm that either we're causing or others are causing.

And from a place of presence and compassion responds. And that's really different than there's something wrong, bad, shouldn't be happening, flinch reaction out of that anger to try to make it different. That will just perpetuate whatever's going on, that energy. So we learn the difference between responding and reacting. So we start looking at our lives and sense how much of my day has an undercurrent, a kind of complaint. It should be different. I love the way the poet Hafei puts it.

He has a poem, and in the poem he really says, what's the difference between you and a saint? And he describes a saint as letting go and laughing and just really opening to how the universe is. And he says, whereas you, my dear, think you have a thing. thousand serious moves. And isn't it so that we have some notion that in order to get where we're going, we have all these serious moves. So let's check in. Let's check in for a moment, okay? Just take a pause and close your eyes. Scan with interest your life right now. What's happening, the people in your life, activities, and scan for where there's a real stressor. Something that your habit is to frame as bad or wrong, the problem, the block to

feeling good. It might be something about you. It may be that the something wrong block is a way that you're operating, something to do with your body, your health. It might be something going on work, something in a relationship, something that you're just in the habit of this is flagged with not good, wrong, shouldn't be this way, needs to change. See if you can right now in the kind of stance of the witness, just bring some curiosity and investigate it a little. What are the kind of thoughts that typically come up around this? What are the emotions?

What are the behaviors? Can you witness that sense of contractedness, that contracted self when you're in the frame of something's wrong? See if you can sense the kind of egoic self, the contracted egoic self that gets solidified when there's that sense of something's wrong. And just bear witness without judging. We'll come back. Take a few full breaths. Okay. Really, flip side of the coin is that we also move through the day and through our life

with a sense of there's something incomplete, there's something missing. I'm trying to get something, something more. And it's the sense that the next moment contains what this moment does not. Then somewhere we're going for something. There's a wonderful quote from Kashmir Shivayism, which is like this. It says, first is the suffering of separation, then the suffering of not enough, then the urge to have to do something to be complete. Let's say that again. First is the suffering of separation, then the suffering of not enough,

then that urge to have to do something to be complete. Okay, so if only mind. This is if only mind. Something's missing. If only I had such and such. It's, if only I had a certain food or alcohol right now or an accomplishment or a certain possession or a certain person treating me the way I want to be treated, the right partner, the right body. That's if only mind. You can begin to sense it in your life. It's not hard to find. I ran across a cartoon and had a bear making an order at a very elegant restaurant. He's got this real fancy waiter, and the bear is saying, I shouldn't, but I'm going to have the garbage. So we get fixated on this will do it. And we have those fixations, and there's substitute gratifications.

We know it. There's something about inner peace, finding our way to happiness and inner peace. The way to achieve, it's to finish all the things you've started. So I looked around to see all the things I'd start and hadn't finished. So today I finished one bottle of gin, a bottle of red wine. my Prozac, a large box of chocolate, Beninger's, pistachios, six...

You have no idea how good I feel. But you get the idea. So it happens in relationships in a way that, as we know, causes a lot of pain, that sense of having an agenda and that rather than appreciating somebody in our lives, we get fixated on wanting them to be more different in a way. way so that they can meet our needs in a better way. I remember Ram Dass describing that he and his father had gone through decades and decades of wanting to change each other, feeling something's

missing with the way you are, you should be different. And then at the very end of his father's life, just a few months from the end or whatever, they accepted each other as they were, and they became friends. So there's something poignant about it's not always really dramatic, but some sense that another person should be more or different in the way they are. It's moving through life with an agenda in any moment that we have an agenda with someone, any moment that we're trying to get something from them, whether it's their attention or getting them to give us something, whatever it is, we can't really be in that field of loving. In India, they say, when a pickpocket sees a saint, he or she only sees the saint's pocket. We can't see each

other if we have an agenda. Classic story I heard a few years ago as of an older woman in Miami sitting on a park bench and a very disheveled man in tattered clothing sits down next to her. And so she asks him, so how are you doing? What's up? And he says, oh, I'm just out of prison. 25 years. Oh, what were you in for? I said, oh, I murdered my wife.

So, you're single. I always love that one. So here's the suffering of something's missing. Just as when there's something wrong, we're tensing against reality. When there's something missing, again, it's a kind of contract. William James put it this way. He says it's as if we're in this endless frenzy, always thinking we should be doing something else. Always thinking we should be experiencing something more. Can you relate to that? So when we're wanting

something more or pushing away, we are contracted and not able to inhabit the one place where well-being is possible. which is the present moment right here. We're contracted away from it. So let's just do a brief reflection on if only mine, just so you get to kind of check and see where it's alive for you. So again, you're scanning, just to scan your life, and notice if there's something you're waiting for to change,

something you're linking future happiness to, something that feels missing or incomplete that you're wanting, It might be for a specific person to change, it might be something financial or work-related, a state of health. Somewhere there's a sense of, well, if this happens, then I can relax, be happy, be content. See if you can find the one that has the most pull for you. And if it's hard right now, if I'm not giving you enough time, this exercise, try on your own. But sense the if only where the want is the strong thing. and sit inside it, sense how much it's really in your body.

And you might even experiment and let as your eyes are closed and just let your body posture in some way express if only mind. Maybe you'll be leaning forward a little, maybe you'll feel some tension in the hands or clutching. Fuel goes on in your heart and your body. When there's a sense of something's missing, I really want this, if only I could have it, What's it like inside? Sense who you are when you're caught in if only mind. So you're witnessing that kind of solidifying of that wanting self. This is how our identity shrinks.

To begin to witness that contraction of if only mine, I want this, I don't want that, something's missing, something's wrong, is to witness this reactive ride of ego, the grasping and resisting, that keeps us separate, that keeps us dissatisfied. It reinforces our set point biologically. It keeps it where it is. Again, if you feel like opening your eyes, please do. The witnessing is actually the first step of being able to have more choices. Part of the evolution of consciousness is is we have the wiring, the kind of neurocircuitary in the more recently evolved part of our brain, to, instead of being caught in the grasping, I want this, and the resisting,

to actually bear witness to it, mindfully, not reacting, and also have compassion or empathy. So in other words, we actually have the parts of our brain that have developed the core, correlate with a quality of real beingness rather than egoic solidity. So the question is really how to nourish that. Because you can see it, you know, many people report it, that the more I practice meditation, the less caught I am in wanting this and fearing that, and the more presence there is. But you can also see it in brain MRIs.

When there's a meditative state, when we're actually mindful, of what's going on. The parts of the brain that light up are the parts that correlate with positive emotion, with happiness. There's not a sense of something's missing, something's wrong. So a story, there's a CEO of a large company who was really admired for his energy and his drive, very well-liked, but he suffered from one embarrassing problem, which is that each time he went for their monthly meeting with the president and the president's office, he

he'd wet his pants. So this is the problem. This was a sense of something's really wrong. And the kindly president advised him to see a urologist at the company's expense. But when he appeared for the next meeting, the same thing happened. He wet his pants. So the president said, what happened? Didn't you go to see the doctor? And he said, well, I couldn't get an appointment. So I started doing meditation classes. And now I no longer feel embarrassed, you know. I don't know if that's motivation or not for you to make peace with what's going on. So, so again, it's our evolutionary potential to step out of this trap of always feeling like something's wrong or something's missing. And it takes training and attention.

But again, I love the way the Buddha put it, that I would not teach this. to you. If genuine happiness and freedom, we're not possible. Well-being is possible. So the last portion of this class will be really exploring. So how do we nourish it? What will nourish the parts of our brain and heart and psyche that actually free us from that way of trying to control our life so we can experience well-being? And the first piece to mention is a basic attitude or understanding. understanding that many of us have but we don't always connect into. And that is that whatever is arising in our life, the stuff we call the most biggest hassle problem, something's wrong,

whatever it is can actually serve our awakening and our freedom that it can serve. That's the understanding. And I can ask you this question. How many of you have noticed that something that was an incredibly difficult or painful season in your life, in some way landed you up with more of a sense of who you are, more resourcefulness, more compassion, more wisdom? How many of you found that you've grown through difficulty? Okay, so most of us have had that experience. We know it. It's kind of the diamond, you know, the coal that gets all the intensity of the elements and the weather systems and we grow through it. Well, one of the really interesting ways of, I think, of looking at is that when we're stressed, the habit is to think when it's

unpleasant that something's wrong, but we can actually shift how we're framing it. And there's been some really interesting research on stress. I like the way Kelly Maganical describes some of the research. I'll give you one example. Actually, I'll give you two examples. There's one study that tracked 30,000 people for eight years that were stressed. And one of the questions was, how much stress did you have last year? Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health? and then they looked at who died. Okay, 30,000 people. So here's what they got from this.

Of those that experienced a lot of stress in the prior year, 43% had more risk of dying. But that was only true for those who believed that stress was bad for their health. The lowest risk of anyone in the study were those with high stress but that didn't believe it was bad. Do you want to hear that again or did that?

You got that? You do want to hear it again. Okay, so 43% of those with a lot of stress the prior year, 43% more risk of dying. That's only true for those that believe that stress was bad for them, that the lowest risk of death was those with high stress but that did not think it was bad for them. That's interesting.

I mean, that's the power of awareness, how we're holding something. Let me give you one more pretty cool study. This is at Harvard. So they did before a stress test, they taught people to consider stress. The stress response is helpful. Okay? So that pounding heart is readying you for action. Breathing faster, more oxygen to the brain.

Now, with typical stress, there's vascular contraction, too, when there's the chemistry of anxiety. But they were framing it like, here are these symptoms. symptoms here mean it's helpful for you. So they did a study, the heart rate went up, breathing, and so on with everybody in train, but there was no vascular constriction. And that's related to cardio problems. It actually, the stress symptoms, the pounding heart, etc., had the same profile as joy. It was highly energized aliveness, but it was framed as helpful. Therefore, they didn't have a fear reaction that turned it into constriction. Now, I'm sharing this with you because,

if you'll remember, if we roll it back, what gets in the way of us and will-being, that being-ness quality is contraction. Something's wrong. Something's missing. Stress is inevitable. That's just part of being, that's part of the organism being alive. But how do we respond? Do we frame it is this is bad, if we can have stress be an invitation to deepen attention to be more present, it actually serves us. So this brings us to how you can use this directly. In the Buddhist tradition, there's a, the bodhisattva path, path of awakening beings. There's a prayer that says, may whatever arises serve the awakening of heart and mind. I also ran into a quote that said,

everything you are going through is preparing you for what you prayed for. Isn't that cool? I want to say that one again. Everything you're going through is preparing you for what you prayed for. So how do we bring this into our day when stress arises? Brief story from the last few days. for me is that I was taking a spring walk and I love, I mean, the wildflowers on the river and so on, had a great time and I thought, I think I'm going to talk about happiness this week

and I should have known because that was a great walk. But the next day I was on the same walk and in the middle of it I got a back spasm, bad enough that I had to get off the trail to the road and have Jonathan come pick me up. And then as I was lying out with a back spasm, I started feeling sick in 10,000 ways, and I developed a cold sore, and my mind started contracting, and I thought, give a talk on happiness? So I went, all right, hang in there, because, you know, the talk gets deeper when you realize that sometimes they're stressors. And for me, you know, a back spasm could mean I miss a lot of spring walks, and I'm very attached, and a cold sore means I have to be in front of groups, a lot of groups and I'm sitting here with a cold sore.

You know, I could say, oh, it's just appearances, but, you know, I still, they matter. So there was a lot of contraction. So that's when I said, okay, may this serve awakening. And you can add to that, how might this serve awakening? And the how brings you into presence, because that's always, always. a wisdom in us that knows that whatever's going on if we deepen presence, it'll serve awakening. So for me it was being present with, okay, physical discomfort. It was pretty bad for a while, but just for a few hours, I iced and I was okay. And then the emotions

that went around it, okay, it might be a few days, it might be whatever it is. I don't know that I can't walk. And then feeling that, you know, the throbbing of a cold, so it all just became sensation and feelings and I brought a lot of kindness to it. I just breathed with it and felt it. And there was an increasing sense of not fighting reality, but resting and becoming reality, just beingness, a kind of quality of kind beingness. And then I realized I wasn't happy as in, hey, yay, cheerful, happy, happy. I was contented happy. It was okay. Now, this story of taking stress and bringing presence might sound like the problems of the worried well, and it is. I mean, there are much greater stressors, and it works with dying and loss and

everything. There is a capacity to presence ourselves into beingness where there's room for whatever is here, and to be able to hold that with a quality of ease. So I'll give you a different example of that, that in my story, that how might this serve led me to bring present with the actual moment-to-moment sensations, sometimes how might this serve is that it catapults us into much more relationship with others? here's your story. It took place in Seattle, Washington. A 52-year-old Tibetan refugee named Tenzin was diagnosed with lymphoma. Admitted to a hospital, received chemo, but then he became extremely agitated, angry and upset. He pulled the IV out of his arm and refused to cooperate.

Turns out that he had been a political prisoner by the Chinese for 17 years, and they killed his first wife and tortured and brutalized him through his imprisonment. And the, that something about the hospital rules and the chemotherapy was triggering flashbacks. So what happened was, this is the quote, I know you mean to help him, his wife said, but he feels tortured by your treatments. They're causing him to feel hatred inside, just like he felt towards the Chinese. He needs to be able to pray and cleanse his heart. So they discharged him, and they sent him home, and they gave him a hospice team to work with.

So now the story is coming through the hospice person, who first, looked for some ideas and how to work with him, and she was told from Amnesty International to just help talk it through. This person's lost his trust in humanity. If you're able to help him, you have to give him some hope that he can connect. So she encouraged Tengen to talk about his experiences,

and he held up his hand and stopped her. He said, I must learn to love again if I am to heal my heart. Your job is not to ask me questions. Your job is to teach me to love again. It's quite an assignment for a hospice worker. I took a deep breath. So how can I help you love again?

Tensin replied immediately. Sit down and drink my tea and eat my cookies. Now, just so you know, Tibetan tea is black tea laced with yak butter. But she did it and salt. But that's what you did. For several weeks, they sat together and drank tea. And then she said we also worked with his doctors to find ways to treat his physical pain, but it was a spiritual pain that seemed to be lessening.

Each time I arrived, Tengen was sitting cross-legged on his bed, reciting prayers from his books. As time went on, he and his wife hung more and more colorful Tankas. That's Buddhist Tibetan banners. On the walls, the room was fast becoming a beautiful religious shrine. When the spring came, I asked Tensan, what do Tibetans do when they're ill in the spring? He smiled brightly. He said, we sit downwind from flowers. I thought he must be speaking poetically, but Tensin's words were quite literal.

He told me to bed and sit downwind so they can be dusted with the new blossoms of pollen that flowed on the spring breeze. They feel this new pollen is strong medicine. At first, finding enough blossoms seemed a bit daunting. Then one of my friends suggested that Tensin visit some of the local flower nurseries. I called the manager of one of the nurseries

and explained the situation. The manager's initial response was, you want to do what? But when I explained the request, he agreed. And so the next afternoon I picked up Tens and his wife with their provisions, black tea, butter, salt, cups, cookies, prayer beads, and prayer books. I dropped them off at a nursery and assured them I'd return at five. The following week, Tenzin and his wife visited another nursery.

The third weekend, they went to yet another. The fourth week, I began to get calls from the nurseries inviting Tenzin and his wife to come again. One of the managers said, we've got a new shipment of Nicosia coming in and some wonderful fuses. and, ah, yes, some great Daphne, I know they'll love the scent of that Daphne. And I almost forgot we have some new lawn furniture that Tensen and his wife might enjoy. Later that day, I got a call from a second nursery

saying they had colorful wind socks that would help Tensan predict where the wind was blowing. Pretty soon, nurseries were competing for Tensin's visits. People began to know and care about the Tibetan couple. The nursery employees started setting out lawn furniture in the direction of the wind. Others would bring out fresh hot water for their tea. Some of the regular customers would leave their wagons of flowers near the two of them.

It seemed that a community was growing around Tenzin and his wife. At the end of the summer, Tenzin returned to his doctor for another CT scan to determine the extent of the spread of the cancer. But the doctor could find no evidence of cancer at all. He was dumbfounded. He told Tenzin he just couldn't explain it. Tenzin smiled back and said, I know why the cancer's gone away. It could no longer live in a body that was so filled with love.

When I began to feel all the compassion from the hospice people, from the nursery employees, all those people who wanted to know about me, I started to change inside. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to heal in this way. Doctor, please remember your medicine is not the only cure. Sometimes love can heal. as well. The message of the story is not that when we bring deep attention to our connectedness, that the cancer will necessarily go away. It's that it brings us home to a deep sense of well-being. A well-being that can hold us as we're dying and hold others. A well-being that's

bigger than the comings and goings of this life. So I've named two different pathways of presence. One is that presence with the moment-to-moment experience. The other is the presence where what's going on, the intensity of what's going on, has us turned towards our connection with each other. The underlying principle is this, that when well-being is blocked,

it's because we're feeling separate. It's because we're feeling something's missing or something's wrong. and in the moments we start coming into presence with the life that's right here and with each other, we discover a larger sense of belonging. We wake up out of that separate self that's wanting and fearing and we're actually resting in a larger sense of being.

That's where the well-being comes from. And, you know, I think about it and there's many cultures that really know that this is what we need when we get caught, that we need this presence with a larger belonging. And a friend sent this recently that different cultures have different ways of describing it. And I'm going to say a few and totally slaughter the language here because I don't know how to pronounce things. But the Norwegians Freleufslev, which is free air life, which means outside is good for human beings, mind, and spirit, that we need to be in nature,

to remember a larger sense of belonging, to rest in well-being. Give you a few more. The Japanese have Shinran Yoku, which is called forest bathing, which is preventative medicine. It's considered healing. Just be in the forest because the self-sense starts dissolving because you realize you're part of the elements. In Denmark, which is one of the happiest countries in the world, there is a word H-Y-G-G-E. What is, how do you pronounce it? Haig? Hedge. Huga?

Huga. I knew I'd say it wrong. And it has the meaning of togetherness and coziness. Isn't that a cool one? That if we want, if those elements are there, we start dissolving our separateness and become part of what's around us. Germany, Gimut-Likait, which has the same thing of

togetherness and coziness that helps us to remember a larger belonging. I only share all of this because this isn't particular to a certain religion or path. We each have an innate wisdom that can sense that when we're caught, when we're blocked, when we're not, our hearts aren't feeling open and content, it's because there's some sense of separation. that we're not connected with our own being and with the world around us. So in this class we've really been exploring the beliefs that get in the way, and we'll close with just sensing into how it's not something we have to wait for. It's right here and now, this possibility of relaxing back into being

and really sensing an open-heartedness. So you might close your eyes, and we'll do a very final short sit together. First, the words of Lama Gendin Rimpichet, Happiness cannot be found through great effort and wellpower, but it's already here in relaxation and letting go. Don't strain yourself, there's nothing to do. Let the game happen on its own, springing up and falling back without changing anything.

Waiting to grasp the ungraspable, you exhaust yourself in vain. As soon as you relax this grasping, space is there, open, inviting, and comfortable. Nothing to do, nothing to force, nothing to want. Everything happens by itself. We started with that simple prayer, may I be happy. I'd like to invite you to offer that to your own heart. once again. And then just sense the possibility, is it not true, that the well-being we long for is already here? And you intuit and feel into that, that the well-being we long for,

that well-being, that being-ness, is always and already here. Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but is already here in relaxation and letting go. So we close in a simple way offering our prayers and blessings to all beings. May all beings everywhere discover the true happiness that's their innate potential. May all beings rest in that well-beingness, and may from that presence, may there be peace, love and freedom. May all beings awaken. May all beings everywhere be free.

Namaste. 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 Please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.