Tara Brach - Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 1) (2020-10-14)

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

Change, Loss and Timeless Love (Part 1) (2020-10-14) - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely intertwined with how we relate to change and loss. These two talks are an invitation to look honestly, and without judgment, at the ways we resist facing our fears and grieving our losses. We then explore how to bring mindfulness and compassion to processing what we've resisted, and opening to the timeless love that is our true nature.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome my friends. Really glad to have you with us. I was recently perusing two different articles. The first title was, is aging the secret to happiness? And the second was, want to be happier? all you have to do is get older. So same theme and they both draw on research that seems to

confirm this correlation that the older we get, the happier we are. Now, I know that seems counterintuitive given the challenges we face, that we lose people we love and we lose our youth and our health and our memory. I saw a cartoon with this very old couple. and they were both on rockers on the porch. And he's responding to her. He says, now you want an open relationship? Billy Crystal put it this way. He said, by the time a man is wise enough to watch his step,

he's too old to go anywhere. Okay, so there's this evidence that correlates aging with happiness. And the understanding that resonates for me is that through our lifetime, We have the capacity to learn and adapt and spiritually evolve. And with the passing of time, there can be a growing acceptance of the inevitability of change and loss, a growing acceptance of change and loss. And while clearly this doesn't happen to everyone, for those that do deepen in that acceptance,

enables living and appreciating the moments and loving more fully. So the title of this talk and the one that follows is change, loss, and timeless love. And the theme arises from a central teaching on the spiritual path and that is that our capacity to live and love fully is totally intertwined. with how we relate to change and loss. So this will be an invitation for you to look in your own life at how you're relating to change and to loss. It feels really relevant right now to explore this given how many people around the globe are experiencing such rapid change and real loss due to the global pandemic and deepening social divides and climate change, the devastation

to this earth. And while it may feel like change is speeding up in permanence, what really makes us clutch is really the nature of all that takes form. And we know it on the largest sweeps, if you think of the history of the universe, the big bang and stardust forming, and planets and earth elements combining to create this amazing variety of life forms and then homo sapiens evolving tools and art and science and war and slavery and plagues and collaboration and innovation the whole thing you know empires coming and going greeks the romans the ottoman empire portuguese the british the american you know rising to domic and then passing. We always think things are for good, but it all passes. And here we are

on the brink of destroying Earth, our home, seeing species come and species become extinct, galaxies of stars collapsing into black holes, it's all impermanent. And then we can sense it on the most minute level. You know, if right this moment you take the time to perhaps close your eyes and bring your attention inward and hold still, really still, you can sense that the body, everything inside is moving. If you feel your hands, is anything holding still? It might seem that way if you're very, very tense, but if you even begin to relax a little, you can sense the hands, the feet, and the face, the heart. Everything's moving. Nothing holds still. There's this ever-changing flow of sensations, feelings,

sounds come and go. Your body's replacing cells millions per second. Within those cells there's non-stop motion. Molecules, atoms, subatomic particles swirling around. And if we look back at our individual life, I mean, could you have predicted the unfolding of relationships, career, health, loss, and gain? A short reading, man marries woman, expect she will not change. She does. Woman marries man. expects him to change. He doesn't, the way she hopes. And of course it's huge gender stereotypes and we know we want life a certain way and that the reality of change means there's going to be ongoing tension and inevitably deep loss. So this temporary patterning we call self

comes and goes like every formation in creation. I invite you to listen to this poem. I think it's quite powerful. It's called Living in the Body by Sufyn. Body is something you need in order to stay on this planet and you only get one. And no matter which one you get, it will not be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful enough. It will not be fast enough. It will not keep on for days at time, but will pull you down into a sleepy swamp and demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake. Body is a thing you have to carry from one day into the next, always the same eyebrows over the same eyes and the same skin when you look in the mirror,

and the same creaky knee when you get up from the floor, and the same wrist under the watch band. The changes you can make are small and costly, better to leave it as it is. Body is a thing you have to leave eventually. You know that because you've seen others do it. Others who are once like you, living inside their pile of bones and flesh, smiling at you, loving you, leaning in the doorway, talking to you for hours and then one day they're gone. No forwarding a dress.

What we're really exploring together in the Pali script, it's called Anitja. It's impermanence. It's the nature of existence. And Buddhist psychology is quite eloquent in describing how we suffer when we reflexively resist what's unfolding, when we try to grasp onto security or get away from pain. And there's freedom, there's happiness when we allow the changing, flow. So, learning to accept change is right at the center of the spiritual path. I think of mystic and Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello. He has a great phrase. He said, enlightenment is

absolute cooperation with the inevitable. Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable. So, it's far from passivity. Opening and accepting change means we're cultivating this quality of presence that then allows us to respond to events with real intelligence and care. And it allows us to engage fully with the life that's right here. There is a story about Ajun Shah, a Thai forest monk, and Buddhist teacher. He would hold up his favorite glass and he'd say, you know, hold it up and he'd say, this is not my favorite glass, but you get the idea. He'd say, I love this glass. It holds water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind

knocks it over, my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, of course. But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious. So how do we do this? And really the first step is to look at the challenge of sensing it's all changing and being open to that flow. And the challenge is that humans are uniquely aware of the inevitability of death. You know, our nervous system perceives the uncertainty of our life, of fragility. So from the perspective of the separate self, the egoic self, change means inevitably there will be bad news. So we live with this looming sense of loss around the corner and anxiety about that loss.

And for us humans, there are different kinds of losses beyond just physical death that feel like real death. I think of the loss in connection with others, loss of respect, loss of life due to addiction, of cherished capacities like mobility or sight or hearing, loss of a cherished dream. The anticipation of loss, that insecurity, that it's around the corner shows up in a daily way, is that unpleasant, anxious feeling that something bad is going to happen in any moment. Sometimes it has a real sharpness of dread as we first wake up and face the day, that there's going be something more than what we can handle. Deep down it's that we'll lose what we love. But

there's also that sense when there's a near-miss illness or an accident, we dodged a bullet. That's a good thing, but we're waiting for the other shoe to drop, forgive the metaphors, but I think you understand. So we live fearfully anticipating loss and of course our resistance to loss intensifies when it's very very very. imminent, are we're actually in the midst of it. Many of you are familiar with the stages of grief and that is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance. We tend to fight reality, you know, avoiding the raw vulnerability of loss and insecurity

until resistance finally gives way and then we honestly grieve. what's passed or passing. But it's the last thing we're willing to do. So what I'd like to do right now is review our major strategies to avoid the feelings of loss and insecurity and grief. And they'll include the classic stages. And as you listen, and this is really a part of the reflection, a sense where you may be facing loss right now, where you're feeling that kind of insecurity and how you might be resisting or trying to control things. It's the same idea so that you don't have to get plunged into the vulnerability that's here. So most of us will, as we know, avoid consciously facing and acknowledging loss in the, it's the form of

denial when we really don't turn our attention towards it for as long as we can get away with it. And it can include denying that we're seriously sick or that, let's say, our adult child is addicted to a substance, or that we really feel wounded by a rejection, or it might be more on the collective level denying that we're all conditioned by racism, part of a racist society, or that the earth is suffering, that it's being destroyed. So that's the denial phase. And then when that falls away, often the way we resist vulnerability is anger and I'm going to use the more broad term of aggression, where we try to take control and to kind of cover over our insecurity and it can show up, and these are the flags with blaming, judging,

dominating, bullying, violating others. Aggression can also be more subtle and I want to bring that up because for many of us it is more subtle. It's a daily ways that when we feel anxious we try to hold on to a sense of power or agency by controlling others. We might use guilt, our manipulation, deceit. You know, if we can make them behave as we want, then we feel a little more in control and a little less. There's a little more buffer from the vulnerability. A woman, this story, sauteing vegetables when her partner bursts into the room, careful he cries, you're cooking them too long, keep stirring them. Now we need more oil. They're going to stick. Hurry up.

Are you crazy? Don't forget to salt them. You always forget to salt them. Use the salt. Use the salt. And his partner turns and says, what is wrong with you? Then he very calmly replies, I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving. So forms of aggression, there are ways we manage our insecurity. And notably, and this is important, our aggression, our anger turns inward. So that's when we are really caught in the harsh inner critic that's trying to control us and make us different so we can prevent failure and loss. Now another major control strategy is grasping where we're trying to hold on to how things were. Okay. And this is where classic bargaining can come in that we try to hold on by

bargaining saying, I'll up my game, I'll be who you want me to be. You know, if only I can have it the way it was. I'll stop eating sugar or I'll never drink or I won't cheat again or I'll work really extra hard. So we're trying to grasp on to the past by improving ourselves to get something back. There's a Mullah Nazar Dean story. He's the Sufi, wise man, fool and he, at some point he lost his wife's bracelet and he's panicking. He says, dear God, help me find it. And I'll double my tithing. That's the donation to the

temple. I'll double it each week. Then all of a sudden, he sees it glimmering behind a pillow and goes, oh, never mind God, it's okay, I got it. So we bargain. We're trying to grasp onto having things the way we want, not losing. Now, for many of us, the way of buffering the fear of loss, the grasping is in the form of addictive behavior where we'll overconsume food or substance or get addicted to obsessive thinking or a dependent relationship. The last way I'll mention and consider these kind of vulnerability control strategies is that we'll try to avoid feeling the rawness of insecurity and loss by depressing it and we become depressed.

Now, this isn't a conscious strategy. You know, I don't want to feel grief, so I'm going to depress myself. But that's the actual mechanism. We might withdraw or numb ourselves in some way. And it helps just to think of each of these strategies, whether it's denying or anger, aggression, or bargaining or grasping or depressing, they're all forms of life contracting away from the flow, trying to resist reality and we get imprisoned in that resistance.

You know, when we block out the pain that we think is around the corner, we block life. So, while they're universal and natural stages and expressions of resistance, they're not the end of the story. We have the capacity to deepen attention, to see these flags and really discover who we are beyond the resisting self. It's a discovery that it's sometimes called the sure heart's release, that we get released into the fullness of who we are and our heart is free to express itself. So we're going to pause here for a little bit of a... more conscious reflection. And you might, in this pause, take a moment to close your eyes and

take a few full breaths. And if you haven't already, bring to mind one very real change or loss in your life, something that's happening or that you're facing that brings insecurity, something that feels challenging that's going on, that there's some anxiety or fear about what's going to unfold. And it might be to do with your personal life or might be to do with the wider society. With a witnessing and interested, non-judging kind of perspective, just notice how are you reacting to this change? What vulnerability management strategies might be going on? Usually we have a combo. Again, just not to judge. Just notice. Because we all have them.

Is there aggression, anger? You're finding yourself over-controlling of others or yourself? Is there grasping, what kind of addictive behaviors? Do you feel depressing? You're depressing in some way, you're numbing yourself, distracting? and with whatever strategy you notice when you're playing it out, what's the impact on your body? What's your body like when you're grasping or angry or distracting yourself or numbing yourself with routine, losing yourself and obsessing? What's your body like? And what's your mind like?

going on in the sense of the space of your mind and your heart. When you're trying to control what's going on, when you're resisting change, what's the effect on your relationship with others, with yourself? The scan and observe how when we're resisting change it creates a kind of prison of the separate self, how we're cut off from a sense of connectedness, from our full heart. and awareness. And just to know that the path of homecoming is to pause and acknowledge without judging the resistance and then deepen attention with curiosity, with kindness. If you'd like to open your eyes, please feel free. I want to name that I never think of resistance

as some bad thing. It's really our natural protection against vulnerability. We all resist. We'd be utterly free if we didn't resist, we all do. And if we want to continue evolving, to bring a curiosity and a gentleness to that resistance. Oh, okay, resistance, what's going on here? What's under this? It's the kind of questions, like my favorite question, what am I unwilling to feel? And you might just sense that, you know, what am I unwilling to feel? You just pause for a few moments right now. Just listen inwardly. What is it I'm running from?

See if you can simply honor the life that's asking for your attention, that's asking for your acceptance. In exploring change and loss, we're often encouraged to open to our vulnerability, open to the pain of grieving. And it's important to sense why we bother. Why we're willing to do that. And what happens is when we cover over the feelings of loss, the sorrow, the grief, the despair, we're also covering over our capacity for full aliveness and love. And it's not theoretical. Maybe I'll just share a couple of examples of the suffering when we don't face loss.

And one was a man a few years ago not acknowledging the pain and shame of losing his job and he wasn't able to find another within the next year or two. And he felt painfully isolated and really embarrassed and down on himself. And his partner would try to connect with him but he couldn't because he felt too humiliated and he wasn't able to be with that or share what was going on in a way that could keep them connected so the relationship crumbled. He blocked her out. Another example that comes to mind which is really tragic is a couple, their oldest daughter was killed in a car accident and there was so much denial around it. It was so unprocessed that even

of their other two children really suffered greatly. They weren't really able to show up as parents for them. And I've seen it again and again when we don't grieve the divorce or a child who with a lot of neglect or abuse or when we don't grieve the loss of our health. It blocks continued evolving. It blocks us from really discovering who we are beyond that loss. loss. I've shared in my talks and in my writing this was in True Refuge how this occurred for me personally in a way that taught me a huge amount. For a couple of, it was about a couple of years after I got together with my partner Jonathan, like two years and I spiraled into a sickness that lasted six years. So I had met him as kind of a healthy

woman and then I just went on this downward spiral. And for the first year or so, my inner controller was in total denial of how sick I was and I ended up in a hospital for about a week. But even at the hospital, I remember my mind was, I guess I advanced a bargaining because my mind was bargaining away, okay, I'll do this, I'll take care of myself this way so that I can resume teaching, which I didn't want to, you know, drop out of my life. And it was so vivid one night. I was feeling a lot of fear and hopelessness was starting to take over because I was beginning to get this sense of the seriousness. And the words of a Tibetan teacher came to my mind that you need to meet your edge and soften. Well, that became my point. Well, that became my

practice and the edge was fear, fear of losing, fear of loss. And so I would, you know, feel that fear and I'd breathe with it and I'd turn to open to it. And it felt like I was going to die of fear because the loss felt so big. And I kept softening and softening. And finally, the fear broke open and what was under it was a sobbing and a raw, raw grief. And it was it, really was this core, it was a death, I was losing this precious life. And so again it was, that was the edge to soften and allow it and I sob for a long time and I so remember settling after that, you know, after I became more peaceful and the huge amount of tenderness that was suffusing and surrounding my grieving heart. It was this field

of loving that felt like the deepest refuge for this whole living, dying world. And just to put in perspective over the next year, two years, I had to do many rounds of that. It was not a one-shot grieving. But it taught me the pathway of going from tensing against what I don't want to meeting my edge and softening. And each time I would do it, I would come home to this timeless love and tenderness that had room for what was going on. The poet David White speaks to this. He says, those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning down through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which

we drink, the secret water, cold and clear. nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. I find those words so powerful, you know, we'll never know the source from which we drink. If we're not willing to go into that darkness, we can't find the source which is so life-given, the sure heart's release. So this pathway of opening through the vulnerability of fear and despair and grief to this awake heart is necessary for handling our fears of personal loss and also our loss in the larger

world. Many of you know I do a weekly open inquiry session called satsung on Saturdays and at one of them one woman was asking how to deal with... the sense of powerlessness and hopelessness she was having, she was an activist of sorts. And she was just living in this distress at the heartlessness, the seeming heartlessness of leaders in our society that were. There was just such seeming unabashed cruelty towards those who are most vulnerable, people of color, immigrants, those who have lost their jobs, and was feeling a despair, a hopelessness.

and she was asking me how to get rid of the despair, get beyond the despair, and as you might imagine, you know, I invited her into the well, you know, I said, feel it. Don't fight the despair. Don't fight it. Don't make it wrong and see what happens. And in the silence, in the moments of just really, it's again meet your edge and soften, and what opened underneath that despair was a very pure grieving. She kept saying, I'm grieving, I'm grieving. And it's in the honesty and acceptance of loss that what happens

and she put it also, I care so much. I just care so much. You might be relating that we need to feel, we need to come down to that caring but sometimes we need to just open to despair. Often it's not just sitting in one meditation session, it's over and over again just saying let it be there. And then when we touch into the caring, then let the caring be as big as it is. So we come into this pure and tender sorrow. It's a sorrow that's suffused with love. The Tibetan teacher Chogium Trunfah describes us as an expression of the awakened heart.

this sorrow suffused with love, an expression of our true nature. And I'll read a little bit. This is one of my, what I find, one of the most powerful teachings. If you search for the awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there's nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft. And if you open your eyes the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn't come from being mistreated. You don't feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There's no skin or tissue covering it. It's pure raw meat. Even

even if the tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal. The sure heart's release, this pathway to the awakened heart is through opening to the realness of suffering and loss. That's when we come home to this tender openness. It's really important to remember that when our grief is for our world, we need to to grieve together. We need to grieve together for our earth and for those who are most vulnerable and then discover in that shared caring our belonging to others. We forget. We forget that

we're not alone in our grief about our world and our caring. And it's so powerful to remember how many beings around this earth are caring. And then we can, when we remember, we remember, We feel empowered to act from love, to act from that collective belonging. And this is similar when grief is more personal. It might be the loss of a dear one. The portal of grieving allows us to connect with a timeless love that allows us to then go on living. Zen master Tiknaan expresses this wisdom in a way that's touched me deeply and I try to share it whenever it's the right timing. He experienced his mother's death as one of those great misfortunes in life, in his life, and he had grieved her for more than a year when she appeared to him

in a dream. And when he woke up afterwards, he had the distinct impression that he had never lost his mother. She was alive in him. So he stepped out of the monastery, HUD, and began walking among the tea plants, he still felt her presence by his side. And as he says so beautifully, she was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often very tender, very sweet. And continuing to walk, he sensed his body was a living continuation of all his ancestors and that together he and his mother were leaving footprints in the damp soil. In my understanding, his year of grieving, of experience this great human loss directly, allowed him to find refuge in timeless loving. And this same pathways available to each of us, facing and opening to

the pain of loss and discovering that which is eternal, that which can never be taken away from us. As Ticknod Han put it, he said, all I had to do was look at the point of the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time. So, my friends, we'll continue exploring in part two of this, the shift from trying to control experience to discovering this sure heart's release, this timeless wakeful loving. We'll close with a brief reflection right now. This brief reflection is called finding refuge in the face of change and loss. If you haven't already, you might close your eyes, take a few full breaths, sensing whatever

current changes or pass or current losses are really difficult for you. They don't feel processed. What's going on in your life now or what has been concerned? carried in from the past that's difficult around loss. It takes some moments to sense how your body and heart and mind is reacting when you bring this to mind, how you might be resisting, how you might have been trying to manage vulnerability, and sense that you can deepen your attention, that you can choose to deepen your attention and ask, what is really calling for acceptance, for inclusion?

And in these moments, simply offer a kind presence, letting whatever is hidden express, sensing those words meet your edge and soften, just letting yourself touch what's here, sense that you can let it be held in an open heart space, a tender awareness from one Tibetan master. If everything changes, then what is true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious and loving in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Take some moments to sense the

timeless heart space that holds changing feelings. that are right here, perhaps fear or sorrow, or maybe some calm or ease. You can trust this heart space to be your refuge, your home as you're ready to open your eyes. And I want to thank you for your presence. I know it takes some willingness and courage to be in this domain and yet it's so precious to explore together. And if you're drawn to share in a discussion group, the link is again Tarabrock.com backslash class, and I look forward to being with you again next week. Thank you, friends. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.