Tara Brach - A Forgiving Heart - Embracing our Inner Life

Episode Date: December 5, 2012

2012-12-05 - A Forgiving Heart - Embracing our Inner Life - Self-aggression, whether it's low key blame or deep condemnation, prevents us from intimacy with others and discovering the truth and wholeness of our Being. This talk explores how we can release self-blame, and free ourselves to access our natural warmth and creativity in responding to our world. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

I'm not sure how many of you got involved with the whole lottery mania that went on. I'm not going to do a hand raise on it, but a story that I heard from a couple of years ago, an elderly gentleman bought a ticket, and soon after he bought a ticket, this was at one of the lotteries worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Soon afterwards, he developed this heart problem. He was sent to hospital by doctor who ordered strict bed rest, and nothing that would create a lot of excitement. So you can imagine his family's reaction

when they found out he had the winning number. And so they pleaded with the doctor to tell him, and the doctor was convinced the excitement would kill him. But the doctor finally agreed that he'd go talk to the guy and talk to the patient himself, and he would approach the matter very gently, so it wouldn't shock him. So he casually said,

you know, if you ever won a lottery, and how would you feel about that? And the guy said, you know, nice, fine, but, you know, it's fine if I do, fine if I don't, but I'm an old man. You know, it doesn't matter so much if I win or not. And the doctor said, oh, come on, you know, that, you couldn't feel that. Well, you'd be excited, right? And the guy said, no, not really. He said, you know, if I won, I'd probably give half to you so you could find a way to help me feel better.

I mean, that would view what I'd want to do. And the doctor said, oh, no, no, that's very hard to believe. And the guy said, really, I would. So the doctor said, kind of half jokingly, well, why don't you write a letter saying you'd give me half? And the old guy agrees. He's sure why not? So he's feebly sits up and he's writing this letter agreeing to give half his one. And he signs it, he hands it over.

And when the doctor looked at the signed letter, he got so excited about the, you idea of getting all that money that he fell down dead on the spot. He died. This is the story. So with the moral of that story, I don't know. I have no idea what the moral was doing. The danger of getting what you want or whatever. I mean, it turned out that the guy, you know, took it all in and he enjoyed the money, but he wasn't so attached. So I shared that just because I was watching the lottery and it was so huge and there was so much energy around and you heard about these long lines of people and so on. And it really was hitting me that in this culture, winning is a really big deal. And winning the lottery is just emblematic.

In some way, there's a sense that winners are envied and admired and we want to be a winner. We want to make it. We want to achieve. We want to look good. And there's under that the sense that, you know, something is missing. We need something more for it to be really good or really okay. Something's missing. Something's wrong.

And, of course, research has shown that when we get what we thought we wanted, i.e. the lottery in this way, our happiness quotient goes up some, and then it returns to our set point. It doesn't work, the things we do. And we don't feel better about ourselves. You know, we accomplish things, and you get a little bit of a spike. And do you know how quickly it is? It's after an accomplishment that, you know, I sometimes think of it's about seven seconds that we have.

And then we then all of a sudden we're back to what else we have to do to in some way dig ourselves out of the red. So there's an undercurrent of this imperfect. and either we're chasing after things to enlarge and expand what we are or who we are enhance ourselves or it goes to the direction of more self-punishing. There's a kind of a put-down that we're involved with. So tonight what I'd like to do is explore more, and this is something I try to do fairly regularly. This very pervasive tendency we have. to sense I'm not enough or something's wrong with me and to have a critique or a

judgment or a sense of blame that sometimes subtle and sometimes creates anguish. So I want to explore that because what I'm aware of is that not being able to forgive ourselves whether it's the small stuff or the big stuff not not forgiving prevents intimacy. We can't be intimate with others, and we certainly can't be intimate and embodied and fully alive in our own being. Not forgiving gets in the way of being really fully who we are.

So the next few talks, I'm going to talk tonight about not forgiving ourselves and next week about the ways that we create separation from others, and then on the solstice, we'll explore the real flowering of loving kindness. So we're going to kind of end the year, these three classes, on what really frees our heart? You know, what is it that frees our heart?

And in the Buddhist tradition, the practices of forgiveness are the precursor to loving kindness. That our heart is not free to love in an open way if we're holding on to resentment and blame. you can look at the self-forgiving as a kind of therapeutic process. We have these tangles and we're working on that level. But what I'd really like, the frame I'd like to have us consider is that in the deepest way when we commit to forgiving,

to letting go of the story and the blame we have that we aim towards ourselves, we undo the most deep holdings that sustain a sense of separate self. That really the whole, if there's a goal to spiritual life, it's to realize who we are. It's to come home to a totality of being and a sense of connectedness that is beyond this story we live in, that's so limiting about who we are. And the lack of self-forgiveness holds that story together. It's like as long as we're judging ourselves, we stay in that tight sense of self. So it's a life process and we can explore intention and the ways that we loosen the grip.

But the first inquiry is how come we're so addicted to self-flaim? And do those words resonate? Do you feel like we're addicted to self-flaim? I'm just going to look around the room. Just not if you think, if those words can act. I don't see very well, but I saw some nodding. So first to say that if you just look at the way our bodies are designed and our nervous system and our brain and just evolution,

the activity of seeking, of having an unpleasant experience and seeking a target, looking for a cause, is part of our orienting process. I mean, all living creatures, when they feel something, things unpleasant, try to figure out the source of that unpleasantness and get rid of it. So targeting and blaming is built into our nervous system. In a way, meditation instructions like open to what's unpleasant and be with it. It's kind of a recipe for extinction, you know, in terms of our early evolutionary brain.

I mean, acceptance would not be considered adaptive, right? I mean, you accept unpleasantness. The unpleasantness is supposed to be a signal to go do something about it and change it. So, and in reality, our own errors, the things we do that are mistakes and the mistakes of others have consequences. And, you know, if we have a habit of daydreaming or being distracted and we change lanes without noticing, you know, that we've just cut off another car, or if we in some way are, you know, not taking an important medication that we're supposed to, or if we have too many drinks and we're not sensitive to our spouse, or we lose track of a, we're in a mall with a youngster and the youngster wanders off.

In other words, if we are not alert, sensitive here, it can cause trouble. And so it's wise discrimination to say, oh, I really need to watch out for that. I need to be more alert when I'm with this child. to not drink that second drink, whatever it is. That's called wise discrimination. There's a difference between wise discrimination and averse of blame. And what we find and what is pervasive in our culture is that rather than recognizing what needs attention and responding,

we have a very deep intense overreaction of averse of, of blame that we aim at ourselves or others. So if it was tens of thousands of years ago and there's unpleasantness and something comes at us, it would be a physical threat and we're supposed to feel that anger and lash out or run and fight-flight makes sense. Most of our fighting-flighting is now psychological. And not only is it just psychological, it's an overreaction. It's based on things that are associated to what's happening from the past but aren't necessarily the case right now. But we keep creating, because we react, we keep recreating our predicament. So I'm going to ground this a little bit in some examples, but the key tool we use for fighting and flighting is, you know, our storyline of what's wrong.

And we keep repeating it. We have this narrative where we keep telling ourselves, this is what's wrong with me. This is what needs to change. This is what needs to be better. And the Buddha called this the second arrow. And I talk about the second arrow a lot because the more we're aware of it, we start recognizing how many moments something will be going on. We'll feel afraid or we'll feel jealous or depressed or having a craving or will have an addictive behavior.

And we'll add on to that the second arrow of, and I'm bad for this. And if you don't see the second arrow, you cannot heal the source of the suffering. If you're locked into I'm bad because of this, I did this behavior and I'm bad. I have these feelings and I'm bad. I'm having these thoughts and I'm bad. And I'm bad just means whatever aversive experience we feel. We can't awaken the kind of attention that actually will heal the knot, the tangle, the wound that needs our attention. So to ground this, and these three weeks I'll be drawing, the themes will be drawing on this second section of my book of True Refuge, the gateway of love.

The book's divided into the gateway of truth, the gateway of love, and the gateway of awareness. And as many of you know, it's coming out January 22nd. So now is a really good time for me to start taking some of the stories and including them more actively in my talks. And so in one situation that I wanted to share, and this is a second arrow story, I mean, the main message is that true healing and transformation never comes out of shoulds. It doesn't come out of condemning ourselves. We cannot condemn ourselves into a wholesome kind of change. And so one man I was working with, he's in the business world,

and executive had a very bad temper and took it out on people, employees, and in the worst case, his family. And one particular incident really got him. That's what got him talking to me a lot, was that his wife had a biopsy, and she was supposed to get the results on a Friday. He got home on Friday evening from work. He saw a package that he had asked her to mail,

still not mailed, and he completely exploded, and he forgot to ask her about the biopsy results. which turned out the biopsy went was okay. But it was like so, that was so horrific for him, that level of insensitivity. So he really wanted to work with his anger. And he came to a meditation retreat.

And at one of, we had an interview. He said to me that, you know, he described how much he, you know, he hated himself. And he said, I hate the beast inside. me. It's ruining my life and it's hurting loved ones. So I'm a pause and a commentary here. Whenever I teach about acceptance and forgiveness, there are always people that ask that question, but wait a minute, if I am destroying my life with binge eating, isn't that wrong? Or if I'm hurting or violating somebody, isn't that bad?

You know, why should I let myself off the hook? There's a sense that there's something bad that needs to be punished. And, you know, doesn't self-forgiveness condone the shadow. So I want to just name that, that that's the objection. Some of you might remember Jack Handy saying, the first thing was I learned to forgive myself. Then I told myself, go ahead and do whatever you want. It's okay by me.

So is it, what is that? Is that what we're saying? resignation, you know, like we're afraid, well, if I forgive myself, that's like resigning to bad stuff inside me. And then we've got Yogi Berra saying, I never blame myself when I'm hitting. I just blame the bat. And if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, I know, it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting. How can I get mad at myself, you know? So that's the objection. That's the fear that if we get, that we're going to get soft on ourselves and we'll never become the person we want to be. So with this guy's name was Sam, you know, he's talking about hating the beast

inside him and I asked him, well, does hating the beast help? Has it helped you? What do you think he said? He conceded that, no, it wasn't helping. And our wisdom knows this. Even though there's something in us that says, I shouldn't let myself off the hook, we also know that, um, when we get down on ourselves, it doesn't inspire us in any way. It doesn't bring about a healing transformation. And we know that with the justice system, you know, that a punitive justice system does not then release people that are, you know, healed some and ready to enter the world of the society.

And in education, we know when kids are in some way put down, for how they're doing things. It does not motivate them to develop their brand of intelligence. There are so many. And we know in spiritual life that, you know, you can't, you can't, I mean, the Buddha tried to do it. The Buddha tried to, you know, first do all these austerities, and he was very punishing to his body. It didn't work, trying to overcome senses. In this story, there were these, a Catholic priest, a Baptist preacher, and a ralphemy. are friends and they're kind of competing to see they get together a few times a week for coffee and they get competitive about how they each do different things so they set they set up this

real competition they're all going to go out into the woods they're going to find a bear preach to it and attempt to convert it okay this is a setup here here's what comes okay so they do this and they each do their thing and they come back in seven days to share their experiences. So first we got Father Flannery. He's got his arm in a sling. He's on crutches, various bandages. He goes first. Well, I went into the woods to find me a bear. When I found him, I began to read to him from the catechism. Well, that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around. So I quickly grabbed my water, holy water, sprinkled him. And holy, Mary, Mother of God, he became gentle as a lamb. Bishops coming out next week to give him first

communion and confirmation. That's Father Flannery. Reverend Billy Bob spoke. next. He was in a wheelchair, had one arm and both legs and cast and an IV drip. He goes, well, brothers, you know that we don't sprinkle. I went out and I found me a bear and I began to read to my bear from God's Holy Word, but that bear wanted nothing to do with me. So I took hold of him and we began to wrestle.

We wrestled down one hill and up another and down another until we came to a creek. So I quickly dunked him and baptized his hairy soul. And just like you said, he became gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the day praising Jesus. Hallelujah. Okay, so that's Reverend Billy Bob.

Okay, so the priest and the Reverend both looked down at the rabbi who's lying in a hospital bed. He was in a body cast and traction with eye views and monitors running in and out of him. He was in really bad shape. Rabbi looked up and said, well, looking back on it, circumcision might not have been the best ways. So our theme here was punitive measures don't work. But if you look at what happens when we go to war against ourselves? I mean, when there's self-aggression, because it is self-aggression. And we're going to practice together in a few moments.

And I want to say that this self-aggression, it doesn't have to be the very overt kind of blaming of, you know, really getting on our cases in a heavy-handed way. Sometimes it's the light stuff where we just, on some level, are always feeling like we didn't do it quite right. It wasn't enough. Something's missing. So self-aggression, when it happens, the mind narrows. It's more closed down. Lose some access to creativity and resourcefulness. In other words, you're not aggressive towards yourself and at the same time creative and resourceful. They don't go together. And it's not just mental. There's a physical component with all stress reactivity where there's constriction in the body. It's felt in the chest area. Sometimes it's numbness. It feels.

It's not as heat or pressure, but there's tension. So when we are down on ourselves to different degrees, there's a closing down of the flow of energy. And that's a really important point because there's kind of an armoring that becomes a in the body that we move around with when we're attacking ourselves. Now the reason I'm saying that's really important is what I've come to realize in working on forgiveness is that if it's not an experience that happens in our bodies, in other words, if we can't feel the blame and feel the anger and feel the process in our bodies, it actually, it's only partial. It's not really freeing. Because if you look closely,

what is the process of releasing blame? You just kind of pay attention to it. The only way to release blame is to contact the tension that's living in the body. In other words, you have to hear the story of what's wrong, but then feel where it's living in the body. body with a mindful presence and then there's a thawing that's possible and the thawing really affects the heart so you have to contact the anger and the fear and the felt sense of badness and the shame with a mindful presence and there's this kind of relaxing mindfulness creates space and in that space energy begins to flow and the heart opens so even a small amount of mindful presence in the midst of self-blame even if some

part of you goes, okay, blaming myself, let's just be present, opens up this face so there's some alternative possibilities. Now, what happens is that, and when we decide, okay, I want to start forgiving myself, we know that we've got certain places that feel really unforgivable. And most of us have a few things that are really, really hard to let go of. And that can take repeated or coming back to again and again with that mindfulness until we really get familiar with the way it's gripping and we feel it from the inside out and we there are different strategies for loosening it but there's also the everyday blame and everyday blame is something it's kind of like each day we move through the day and there's these little ways that we hold against ourselves and

it's like accumulating this coating of gunk It's like we accumulate these layers of caked-on stuff that if we each day just run a kind of stream of at least the intention to forgive begins to clear it and free ourselves. So I do something I call a forgiveness scan, and I thought we'd start with that as the first practice, which is a lighter. It's not, you're not going to be going at the big stuff with this one, okay? so I see you already setting yourself in a seating position sit in a way that is helpful to you to be attentive and the way I like to begin the forgiveness scan

is just a first scan for tension in the body to forgive means to let go of what we're holding on to we're holding on to blame anger or hatred forgiving is to let go of the armoring So you can do a sweep through your body and just gently, a forgiveness sweep begins by just letting go of the tension. The somatic expression of mental tension by softening in the shoulders, relaxing the hands. You might breathe in and out of the heart area, just feel the heart and just sense of softening there. Feel the aliveness there.

loosening the belly. And then just sense today. Let yourself just bring your mind to today. And as if you're watching a kind of a home movie of yourself moving through the day, just notice if there were any places today where you got caught in that storyline of falling short where you started holding something against yourself in some way for some interaction with somebody, some way of behaving, maybe an addictive behavior, something about how you were at work with children, with a partner. Just notice if there's anywhere that you were logging demerits. You're down on yourself in some way. And whenever you encounter one of those, whatever you're down on yourself for

just see if you can feel where it lives in your body the feeling of something's wrong and simply this is what I mean by the waters of forgiveness just have the intention to forgive that you might simply say forgiven forgiven

because the intention is what you can bring to this right now so there's some kindness in your heart that just doesn't want to keep carrying things against yourself doesn't want to have your armoring of second arrows. So whatever

you notice from today where you might be holding against yourself for anything, just mentally whisper, forgiven, forgiven or whatever words may be accepting, maybe the word forgiveness triggers off things for you. And you might just sense

acceptance, acceptance. accepting. Yes, it's okay. There might be something going on inside you right now. Maybe you're having a hard time doing this exercise. Then you can do forgiven, forgiven to that. So you start getting that everything can fit within this heart space of forgiven, forgiven. That your intention is not to hold anything against yourself. Now, if you hit something where there's self-blame that has very deep roots, like one of your big issues. Just bow to it and just know that that's, again, your intention is to embrace your life, forgiven, forgiven. Just honor that it's difficult. And notice what happens inside you when your intention is to be kind. It's that simple.

when your purpose is kindness, what is it like? How does your relationship with yourself change? So you take a few full breaths and come on back. So you can do any day you want right before you go to bed to do a brief forgiveness scan. It helps to kind of rinse off, just like you would take a shower or something. You just rinse off what's accumulated and it's very, very freeing. And inevitably, you'll run into some of those pockets that aren't easy. to say, yeah, I can accept this or forgive that. So that's where I want to go next. And we'll come back to our

protagonist, Sam, who was on retreat and he was remembering the look on his wife's face, that encounter when he started exploding about the unmilled package, and opening to this depth of self-discuss. And so he went through this process. And, you know, it was very much a process of presence of feeling the self-discussed. And underneath that, this kind of helplessness, like that this beast in him just took over. And he found himself, and he was on his own when he was doing this process in his room, he found himself saying to his wife, I can't help it, I can't help it, forgive me, forgive me. And he remembered, he had a memory of his own father who had,

an awful temper and would throw dishes and, you know, it was very, very out of control. And he remembered, had a memory of his father pleading with his mother after one of those tantrums for forgiveness. And he could see how his father was so out of control and realized that as much as he thought he should be different, his father in those days and him now, as much as he thought should be different, he couldn't help it. And so when he told me about that, when we had our interview and he told me about what he had experienced, that helplessness, my response was it really isn't your fault. The explosion isn't your fault. It's not your fault. Now, if you can get that, if you can really get it's not my fault. It's a very powerful and deep precursor.

to healing. And it's important one to understand that the ego often cannot control the things we don't like about ourselves, whether it's the depression or the anger or the clutches of fear. I mean, this stuff arises from infinite streams of conditioning. I mean, I know so many people struggling with eating and other addictive disorders could have, it could, they could begin in the womb with a mother drinking and that then began with another you know there's causes and conditions for that our parents our cultures fears attitudes our genetics early life wounding there's so many causes we didn't sign up for our particular constellation of neurosis and the behaviors that we really don't like

we didn't sign up for them So it's not your fault. When I, you know, when I said that to Sam, he began to weep deeply. And I'll tell you more how, how, what came out of that. But just to say that it doesn't, saying it's not my fault is actually what will allow us to be able to respond. It's not like we become irresponsible. We actually, by taking out that arrow of. blame we become able to respond. Now, background, and I posted this online, some of you might

have seen the story of, if you're familiar with, that our Buddha right here, which is that another teacher from our community and I were up in New England and we were looking for a Buddha for this class. And this is the one we found right here behind me. And I, and I, and I, I, and I, I really loved it. She did too. And I remember one day after class, I was kind of standing in the back of the room, and I saw a group of people standing in front of it, and they were all kind of like this, you know, leaning over to the left. And it turns out that this Buddha is made in a cast that's not upright.

It leans to the left. Or it leans to the right, but when you're looking at it, it's to the left. I don't want to make meanings out of which way it leans. So we have a leaning Buddha here And over time For many people It became a wonderful metaphor For us that we all have

You know we didn't design our casts We all created for many different streams of conditioning And we're all leaning I mean we're all imperfect And the question is Can we learn to respond wise? to what's going on from a depth of our being beyond ego. The ego can't control it,

but there is the who we are beyond the ego that can respond in a way that's profoundly healing. That response becomes possible when the ego can realize it's not my fault, when there's not that self-blame. So with Sam, it motivated him to deepen his attention when he had there was this release like okay I don't have to hate myself for it it's not my fault so now let me deepen my attention and and it was hard because the feeling of being bad is so deep in our body it's not just a thought in the mind it's a holding in the body in the flesh so we did a

guided meditation together what we call applied mindfulness which many of you've done through these evenings here are listening to the podcast. And the guide of meditation was I had him bring up a situation with his wife when he first walked in the room. I had him rerun it. And there's the unmailed letters. And I said, okay, so what were you believing and feeling in that moment that you saw the unmailed letters? And he said, well, there's anger. And the belief is, I'm not important to her. She doesn't respect me. that you know if I was an important if she cared about me she wouldn't have forgotten to do that because that mattered to me so his complex equivalents for being worthy and important and loved were that she would have done that

and then he felt that in his body that sense of okay not important to her and how does that feel and it was the feeling of shame it was the feeling of a real core flawedness. So this is where it has to be embodied, had to really feel it, and really get the pain of that. And then I had them look through the eyes of wisdom. I said, you know, just, okay, how would someone that is understanding and kind look at you? And how would they, what would their response be? And I'd say the response would be I'm suffering and just to offer compassion in those moments. So do you see he went from anger

to hating himself from the anger initially, that was his looping, to anger and then unpack it with mindfulness, feel where it lives in the body, find the shame underneath it, the powerlessness, and then there's the possibility for compassion, which is self-forgiveness.

It's not my fault is the key here because it's my fault. keeps on fueling the armoring, we cannot come to the tenderness of our hearts. So for Sam, there were many rounds where he would feel anger or feel down on himself and have to pause and keep unwrapping it like I described in his body. His biggest supporter was his wife because the more he regarded his inner life with mindfulness and understanding, the more sensitive he became to her. But he had to see he was suffering.

So the alchemy of self-forgiveness is that we have to contact the suffering that's underneath the thing we're not forgiven. Whether it's addiction or anger, or being insensitive to other people, or being fearful or being selfish, or whatever it is we don't like ourselves for. If you've hurt somebody and you're having a hard time forgiving yourself for it, find out the, fear and confusion that lived under that hurtful behavior. Now for one woman, and this is a woman who was, and I share this in true refuge too, she was a prisoner in a maximum security prison, and she took a Buddhist meditation course taught by a friend. This is a woman that's over six feet tall, and she, large women, bright dyed red hair and tattoos all over her body and she was known in the ward as a bully

and she protected some women and relentlessly intimidated others and during the meditation classes while other participants would join in for the discussion she just sit there with her arms folded and a kind of scowl on her face so my friend had no idea like what is going on inside her because everybody else would share their you know share what was how they were feeling about the meditation Well, in the final class, there was a go-round, and the question was, well, what was this like for you? And she was the last person to speak, and she said, well, what I really liked was that poem about the pirate. Okay, so what she was referring to, the poem about the pirate is a very well-known poem written by Titna Hahn called Call Me by My True Names. So I'm just going to read you a little bit of the poem that she was.

liked. I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond, and I am also the grass snake who approaching in silence feeds itself on the frog. I am the 12-year-old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I'm the pirate my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. Please call me by my true name so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once. So I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please, call me by my true names so I can wake up. And so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion. So for this woman who ended up after that class going through quite a lot of changes in her own away. Her basic comment before leaving was, you know, I always, you know, I was thinking about this

and she says, all my life I was the bad one, the problem one. Now I know I am suffering too. That's what she got from that poem. All my life, I thought I was the bad one, the problem one. Now I know I'm suffering too, and the group was totally quiet and still. She had tears in her eyes, but most everybody was just looking at the floor, respecting her words. It's a really important breakthrough in the process of healing and spiritual awakening to get the reality that it's not my fault. There's suffering here.

There's something that needs attention. This is wise discrimination, but not aggressive. passive, aversive blame. All my life I thought I was the bad one. When we start softening like that, when there's that start doing the forgiveness scan and start getting in the habit of saying, wait a minute, just let go of that second arrow, that kindness begins this thawing that happens and it's very in our bodies, the thonging. There's a softening. And it gives us access to a lot more creativity and spontaneity and our natural intelligence, things start flowing because we're not in that constricted, you know, tight self-blame place. Self-blame is stress. Now, also I've seen

what happens is that as we begin to forgive ourselves, a very natural remorse comes up for things that have happened. And that has a real purity to it. And that has a real purity to it. And that has its own intelligence. It's not a self-averse of remorse. It's kind of a healing remorse, an energy that wants to extend in prayer or action in some healthy way. And so I want to speak to that because it's a lot of the Christian and Jewish sense of atonement is in that, that we make a kind of reconciliation with God and with ourselves and with soul with each other, whatever we want to think about it, that self-forgiveness isn't the end. It's like it's part of a process whereby we take away the second arrow and open up our hearts and then naturally want to make amends

where we can. Naturally. Not to be a good person, but just because we care. So a story, maybe my last story for tonight that I, again, that I included in True Refuge on this, comes from a reading that was from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection. Some of you might have seen it's called Offerings at the Wall. This is one reading from Offerings at the Wall. Dear Sir, for 22 years I've carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day we faced each other on the trail in Chulai, Vietnam. Why you didn't take my life I'll never know.

You stared at me so long, armed with your AK-47, and yet you didn't fire. Forgive me for taking your life. I was reacting just the way I was trained to kill VC. So many times over the years I stared at your picture and your daughter. I suspect each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters of my own now. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland. above all else I can now respect the importance life held for you I suppose that's why I'm able to be here today

it is time for me to continue the life process and release the pain and guilt forgive me sir so you can feel that the wholesomeness of that remorse that he cared he's expressing his care well I shared this um some years ago and I found out that that wasn't the end of the story. The vet's name was Luttrell, and he wrote this letter, he left it at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, along with the photograph, you know, and got into the book. But then it turns out that somebody found it and made its way back to him, so he decided he was going to go to Vietnam

and see if he could find the daughter. And so this journey, he set off on his journey, and he was able to locate the little girl in the snapshot, the daughter of the man he had killed so many years ago. And he wanted to give her back the photo of her father. So here she has a 40-year-old woman, and he's there, and through an interpreter, he introduces himself. He says, tell her, this is the photo I took from her father. father's wall at the day I shot and killed him and I'm returning it. And with a cracking voice, he then asked for her forgiveness. After an awkward moment, Lon burst into tears and fell into his

arms and there the two held each other up, sobbing and embracing. Her brother was there, and he told them that they both believed that their father's spirit lived on in this man and Richard LaTrell. And it might sound superstitious, but they said that that was the day their father's spirit came back to them. So I find that really touches me deeply

that it's such a beautiful example of, you know, he killed somebody. I mean, when we think, well, what would be unforgivable? Well, usually we think, well, in war, it's not it's forgivable because we're told to do it but still he's a human who was facing another human and if you strip away all the culture and all that you know this is what happened and yet it was conditioned it was a conditioned way of being we're all conditioned it's not our fault and if we can say

it's not our fault and have the courage to then feel what's actually going on inside us will come to a place of an awake heart that can then respond to ourselves in the world in a way that's actually healing. We can reach out. Now, every one of us carries the conditioning of our ancestors. We all have this reptilian brain and mammalian brain. We're programmed to fight and flee. We're in a culture that's speedy and greedy and beyond the lottery story. You know, it's just it's all about, you know, money. We can see how much over-consuming is going on. We're surrounded by it.

We're fed it. Genes, what happened in our childhood. So this is part of why I really like having this leaning Buddha here is, I think we need to be reminded regularly. We all are conditioned. We're all imperfect. We have our, it's part of our wiring to then turn on ourselves. And it's part of our capacity. you to see that and out of wisdom say no no more second arrow i want to embrace this life and that means

we have to start with the life that's right here in the zen tradition the phrases to for freedom to be without anxiety about imperfection can you just for a moment just imagine let me just sense so what would that be like in this moment just bring it into the moment, what would it be like to be without anxiety about imperfection? There's a radical, radiant freedom that can burst forth when we really take away the second arrows and let this life just live itself. Spirit can shine through. Okay, so we'll do our final little meditation, if you will. Some of you already have your eyes closed, but just short guided meditation and then we'll close. Closing the eyes and smiling into the eyes.

slight smile at the mouth and smiling into the heart. You might sense from the inside out a smile naturally unfolding, spreading through the chest. And to sense if within you you can feel that sincere intention to hold this life in a forgiving heart. And if there's something sticky right now, someplace where you feel caught, where you're down on yourself, to just bring that intention there so that he's, even if you can't this moment do the letting go,

that there's a sincerity that that's the path you're on. That alone, just to have the intention to forgive, opens the door and lets the light shine through. Cassia Berman writes, The mother of the universe refuses to let me worship her outside myself anymore. She's withdrawn inside me and tells me if I want to know her, I have to come inside too, which is the last place I want to be.

Although she's been telling me this for years, she's never gone to this extreme before of actually hiding inside me. If I want to love her, I can only do it by loving myself now. We close night with a simple prayer just to honor this longing within each of our hearts

to love without holding back, love this life without holding back, to have the courage, to forgive, to let go of where we habitually close down, and to open our hearts, our minds, our beings to life within us and around us, that all beings might be filled with loving kindness, held in loving kindness, that these lives may be live from loving kindness. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered.

If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is TaraBrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.