Tara Brach - Committing to Joy

Episode Date: June 13, 2012

2012-06-13 - Committing to Joy - What makes joy rare? How do we awaken this beautiful capacity to embrace life? In this talk we explore the obstacles to joy and the attitude and practices that free us to "love what is." Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations make a difference!

So last class was on the awakening heart and what we call the Brahma Vaharas. Brahma Vaharas, for those that are new, it's another word for the divine abode or the home that is within each of us and as our true nature that we experience. And there's different flavors of it. And the first flavor we explored was loving kindness or a loving presence. And the second flavor we explored was compassion. Now love is what arises when we wake up and see the goodness and the beauty,

and it's a quality of appreciation and care that comes from seeing the truth of what's here. Compassion is the quality of love that emerges when we see the suffering that's here, another part of truth, and then our hearts get really tender. tonight we are going to be exploring the third of the Brahma Vaharas which is joy and joy is really the way I understand it and it's really a quality of love for life that arises when we open to that space and includes the 10,000 joys and sorrows that which is beautiful that which is difficult it's a quality of profound openness that itself is an expression of freedom. Now I've shared that on my way to giving a talk for the week that I know

I'm giving a talk, the talk theme provides a filter. So I knew that, okay, my filter right now is joy. And I want to confess that I had a bit of wariness about it. Because right now my life has been really dense. It's, you know, very demanding and busy and stressful. And so I kind of have locked in a little bit of a kind of a grim, you know, get through the day kind of mentality. So, okay, joy. So part of what I'll be, you know, what I'll be sharing a little bit is, you know, how did this filter work out for me this week? And I will share also that I had a little helper. And our family has adopted now two new dogs, and one of them I've really gotten to know over with these last weeks.

Her name's Katie. And she's this little bundle of joie de vivre, you know. She's just like, she is absolutely enthusiastic about every part of life you can imagine. And I'll have her on the leash and she'll go bounding after a squirrel and I'll yank her back. And for about, you know, 0.02 of a second. She's a little disappointed. But then she's bounding out after the next thing. And she's just enjoying the moments.

and she's not planning things, and she's not thinking about the past. And so she's way more evolved than me in that way, in that way. It really made me think of joy as, you know, given our habitual modes, not so easily accessible for some of us. So I wanted to share a quote from Gide that I often think of, it goes like this,

know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must erase joy as a moral obligation. That's strong language, right? A moral obligation. So first, rare, you know. When I speak to people about joy,

it sounds like, well, that's the fruit of the practice when 30 years from now I've learned to really, you know, sit and quiet my mind for long periods of time. But no, it feels rare because of our habits, but it's right there and possible. So he's saying it's possible. And yet, you know, we know how locked in we get to the stress person mentality.

So rare but possible. And then moral obligation. And for me, the meaning of that is that if we intuit this possibility that we really can open in that way and feel that just that love of aliveness, then it comes to be a commitment to our wholeness. It's like if we're committed to our wholeness to really experiencing all that we are, we commit to paying attention to this. to turning towards that possibility. So obligation, I think of as possibility as this commitment. And it reminded me of a story.

A friend told me some years ago. She was co-facilitating a diversity workshop. And one of the women in the group, an African-American woman, shared her experience of having spent many years raising four children, single mother. When the economy crashed, she lost her job. Really, really rough. She went through bouts of, you know, health problems.

And she hit a point where she had locked into just what I was describing, that kind of grimness of, you know, life is about getting through the day. And then something in her snapped, and she said, wait a minute, I have a choice. And so she did an experiment where she committed herself to choosing to be open to joy, to happiness, to joy. And she described just committing herself to pay attention in that direction. It's like it cracked the door open and more and more light and fresh air came through. She started noticing things she hadn't noticed that brought her happiness, simple things. still having, still a rough life.

But having, you know, that kind of currents of, oh, yeah, I can love this anyway. So we'll come back to her at some point, but I just want to invite you to reflect for a moment because I'd like to really ground this exploration together. How do we approach that? I mean, do we sense how much joy is in our life or not? You might close your eyes and just think of this week. And just scan through the week and sense, were there moments that you were aware of joy,

of a kind of uncomplicated well-being, happiness, not wanting things different, appreciating how it is. So we're scanning without judging, just a sense, were there moments? And if so, what was it? what was going on? Where there's some simple, beautiful experiences that you just paused for and sensed, oh, yeah,

loving life. For some, you might notice how it was rare, that there weren't many moments, that you were kind of speeding through maybe, you know, on the surface level, racing past things. But just to notice that. And then ask yourself, what would it be like? what might happen if I considered deepening my commitment this is a commitment to wholeness to opening to

to this possibility of touching joy of discovering this love of life just as it is what would that be like to deepen my commitment to choosing happiness as this woman did it in this diversity group to choosing it to challenging the grimness so as you listen you might sense the possibility just giving yourself permission to kind of check it out what's possible here so we begin as I like to with a little bit touching in more deeply to what makes it so difficult because

understanding that gives us a sense of of care and not judging and my basic understanding is for me in the moments when I'm controlling things I'm trying to make things happen make my self different make somebody else different get things done and there's a tension, a torque to it. When I'm in managed life routine, then my senses are not open to the world that's here. The joy that's potentially there does not arise. Controlling and joy don't seem to go together. Does that make sense? Okay. I thought we'd be on the same page here. And most of us are like when you think about it, long stretches of time, we're on. We're on figuring out and manipulating and controlling and trying to impress and so on.

And my favorite way of describing this comes from Pema Chodron. She says, being preoccupied in these ways. It's like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers or the black hood over our heads. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs. Because we're not listening to the birds. we're listening to our thoughts about what we should be doing, right? Or what somebody else should do differently.

We see joy more in, I mean, my new dog, we see joy, but we see joy in young children. You really do. It's amazing to watch. And why? Well, they're not so habituated around doing and fixing and defending. And there's just more free space for spontaneity. Favorite story, some of you might.

remember by the illustrator Maurice Sendak, what he describes, really expresses this to me when he says, one day a boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing, and I loved it, and I answer all my children's letters, but he says, sometimes very hastily, but this one I lingered over. He said, I sent him a card, and I drew a picture of a wild thing on it. I wrote, Dear Jim, I loved your card. Then I got a letter back from his mother, and she said,

Jim loved your card so much. He ate it. And that was to me one of the highest compliments I've ever received. He didn't care it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it. He loved it. He ate it. So just a little moment to honor Maurice Sendak, who passed away recently.

But his drawings had that in it. They had joy. Wild things. So the alchemy of joy, if you have to kind of say, sense it out is a combination of openness and flow. Feel it in your body. When you feel joy, when you feel love of life, there's an openness that lets it all be as it is.

And in that openness, life can play fully. And its play is just fully vibrant dynamic, creative, spontaneous. Openness and flow. And I'm putting that out there because as we practice together, those are the two qualities. we'll be exploring in a very meditative way that open us to joy. So when we start inquiring what's between me and that, you know, like in this moment, what is between me and joy?

And we often find, well, there wasn't enough attentiveness or quietness. We might discover that. I just wasn't really open to it. We're messing the openness. or in some way what we discover is, well, what's between me and joy is I'm not just allowing the flow, defending against something that's going to happen that could be bad, or trying to hold on to some part of it to try to get more. So there's openness and flow, and what's between me and that, well, we're usually trying to manage the flow, right?

So then we look at the ways that we try to manage it, and here we get to, I think the Buddhists are very articulate, and they describe the near enemy of joy and then the full enemy of joy. And they really are talking about the shadow side. The near enemy of joy is attachment. It's like we get excited about something, you know, get excited about a person or about a course we're going to take or something we're learning or something we're going to eat or whatever it is. But rather than just opening to that life and letting it move through us,

there's some grasping, some controlling. It's like a good friend of mine who was described, her a new romantic relationship and with the aliveness and the warmth of her heart there's also this sense of always computing is he the one you know is he the one so there was that grasping it's described this way he who binds to himself a joy does the winged life destroy that he who kisses the joy as it flies by lives in eternity sunrise, right? William Blake. So the near enemy is that rather than allowing the pleasure and the enjoyment, this isn't a, you know, it's like let it happen, let it happen fully,

don't try to manage it, control it. Then the full shadow side, the full enemy of joy, is actually pushing away that aliveness. And we have certain beliefs and you can listen for what's yours, I find all of them in me somewhere, that keep on running through that make us tense against the flow. And it's very physical, by the way, that when we're tensing against the flow, it's like if you really check your body,

you can feel different chakras. The energy center is kind of tight. There aren't allowing life to move through us. So one of the beliefs is that it's just plain dangerous to relax and enjoy because when there's pleasure, it's followed by pain. There's some punishment. and that there's some personal history that for many people program that in that just when we were letting our guard down and enjoying things and playing in some way we got unexpectedly sidelined and and creamed punished you know some

unanticipated temper tantrum from a parent to us or whatever it was but so we get punished for enjoying that's that's one of the beliefs another one of the beliefs is that in those moments we should be doing something else now William James I read it he describes a ceaseless frenzy and he described this what 150 years ago was it now then there was a ceaseless frenzy too just in case you thought this is the only generation

but he said that's it that the ceaseless frenzy where everyone thinks they should be doing something else do you know that feeling It doesn't matter what you're doing, you're trying to complete it to get on to something else. How many of you know that feeling? Can I too? Okay. So that actually blocks us, that sense of leaning forward and that this isn't the moment that really counts.

The attitude that goes with joy is that this is it. This right here. I mean, like, and I'm not even speaking metaphorically like this. this moment, it's to enter into the center of now. Like really get it that we're not waiting for something. And then in that full heerness, we're not leaning forward, we're not, then the life can flow through us. We become this openness that life flows through.

Okay, so that's the second belief is that it's not now, and I should be doing something else. Now the third belief is being here is painful, that if I get here, I'm going to open to layers of vulnerability that I don't want to. It'll be too much. There's some truth to it. There's a reason that there's a kind of an avoidance of practicing meditation. It's kind of a love-hate relationship because when we get very here,

we do open to the layers we've been running from. So that's part of the process. and the deep understanding is that if we don't defend against them then we become this openness and they can continue to unfold and we become the space that aliveness happens in it's okay we can handle unpleasantness Rilke puts it this way and this is he's talking to God at first he says

embody me flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in and then he speaks to us. He says, let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. So can you sense? Joy takes a kind of courage to just let life be as it is. And that was really the theme of tonight's meditation.

You know, we can do a certain amount to get ourselves collected and quiet and we can use certain phrases and guide ourselves and coach ourselves. But ultimately with joy, we have to put down all the doings and be this openness that life just plays through. So that's the third belief that it's not safe to do that. It's not safe to open to the layers. It's dangerous. And the mood of joy is saying, yes, it's uncomfortable. And yes, sometimes because there's trauma and it can feel like too much, we have to go really, really gradually.

And we need support. It's not like we need to dive into the cold water all at once. But that's the direction. The direction is to say yes. Zorba the Greek, you might remember this one from him. He says, am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? He says, I'm a man, so I'm married.

Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe. That's part of the attitude. It's like, okay, let's. let's just live this life. That's part of the choosing. That's part of what this woman and that diversity group was saying.

It's okay, it's hard, and I'm choosing life. And in that choosing and in that openness, we discover the beauty and we rest in a kind of freedom that is exquisite. The full catastrophe. So the idea with this is that anything we're pushing away

prevents us from experiencing joy. And when we judge, and judge is one of the biggest ways we push away, when we're not forgiving, when we're holding a grudge, in those moments we have basically armored ourselves from joy. Judgment and joy don't go together. We'll shift a little and say, okay, so how do we, given our conditioning, given our habitual ways of defending against aliveness and controlling, and we all have our whole repertoire,

how do we come back home into this potential we have of openness and flow of joy? You can spend time with my puppy if you want. I mean, she really is a teacher, and I'm watching her and sensing, gosh, she just really lives it. So here's the verse that I find, most useful. This is Dorothy Hunt. She says in this choiceless never-ending flow of life, there is an infinite array of choices. One alone brings happiness. To love what is. To love what is. Now we might think love what is, it sounds like a beautiful idea, but when what is is is painful or seems

horrible in some way, how do we love that? And to say that love with the seed of loving what is is simply being present with what is. Our presence will open us to the love. It doesn't have to be like we have this expectation that whatever arises we're going to embrace it with massive amount of tenderness and courage. It's just this willingness and this is really the beginning of a joyful heart, this willingness to be with the life that's here. as much as we can. Love what is. So when I wrote radical acceptance,

I really emphasized what I've described as the yes meditation for that reason, because I found for myself that that was a really powerful joy training. And the story many of you have heard, I remember when I kind of created it for myself at a six-week retreat and I had gotten to a point

where I was feeling really sick and there's a lot of physical unpleasantness and there was window wars which meant that some of the yogies like the windows open and some like them closed and so everybody was kind of fighting over how the windows were going to be in the hall

that we were sitting in and some of the teachers were talking a lot so you sit long time listening to talks always makes me self-conscious when I say that But I was not only was it unpleasant, I mean I was, I had a lot of complaint in my brain. You know, when you go around with just a lot of complaint, well, it was a complaining brain. So, so I started doing this thing where I said to myself, okay, and this is my first like commitment to happiness.

You know, I'm just going to say yes to whatever appears. So at first it was this mechanical labeling of what came up, you know, it would be like, you know, annoyance, yes, you know, feeling heavy and sick and achy, yes, you know, judging, yes. So I'd just throw in the label, yes. And it became kind of amusing, like, just kind of plastering on the label. Well, the amusement kind of lightened me a little bit. And then I found that every time I said, yes, there was a little more space around it. So my sense of why it wasn't so much locked into the experience.

experience of not liking something, I was resting more in that presence that was just agreeing. That's the shift that starts moving us towards joy. And then through it, because when you're at a long retreat, you get a lot of time to practice with stuff, even though I'd get lost again, I'd come back to yes meditation, gradually I found that there was just more and more of inhabiting and allowing space that became very tender. and sometimes quite cheerful to my surprise. So yes. And when I say yes,

I don't mean that for you a yes meditation means you have to use the word yes. Yes, it's an attitude. It's an attitude of agreeing to the life that's already here. Awareness already accepts what's here. It's like whatever's happening, awareness has already accepted it. Awareness doesn't resist.

And what the yes meditation does is it allows us to re-inhabit the awareness, the very qualities of who we are in our natural state, not fighting, not managing, not controlling. When we do, when we become that allowing space and just aliveness is happening, pleasant, unpleasant, there is a natural quality, a kind of a bubble that kind of, it's kind of explosive and large and light-filled that we call joy. Openness and flow. So we'll just take a moment. Let's just do a little yes meditation now just to touch into it. There's a real simplicity with this one. We pause. We invite our attention into what's right here. So just kind of

I've come down into the body, just feeling the body from the inside out, whether there's pleasantness or unpleasantness. You might feel your heart from the inside out and just sense whatever the quality, mood is of the heart. Let your intention be to allow the life that's here to be just as it is. You're just noticing and letting be. And if there's anything that you see attention. tendency to resist. Just explore adding on that yes, that real intentional agreement, that

willingness to let the life that's here play itself as it is. It might be yes to a little discomfort somewhere in your back, it might be yes to a squeeze of anxiety in the heart, it might be yes to something you feel sad about, or it might be yes to a feeling of excitement. And notice what happens. The yes is actually, it's as if in a cellular way, you're absolutely agreeing to let life be as it is. Notice what happens. You might sense what mean to even deepen that yes, a surrendering presence and just become the space that this outpouring aliveness lives through. Loving what is. allowing presence with what's right here,

cherishing this life. Okay. So that is the first part of a kind of commitment to awakening joy, which is what I'm calling the yes meditation, which is a mindful presence with the life that's here, loving what is. The second piece of this intentional way

way of kind of undoing our conditioning, because that's really what we're doing. The only reason we have to be intentional about joy is because we have the conditioning to resist it, right? So the second piece is to become familiar, more intimate with the moments where we actually are feeling a sense of being enlivened, loving, appreciating. In other words, it's really sinking into them. So what that means is, and usually it's the simple thing. What that means is noticing the simple things, whether it's expression on a loved one's face, you know, your child, the look in their eyes or the sound of the rain or a fragrance or just a feeling of walking on the earth, the soft ground. Just let your attention stay with it. It's savor it.

Take a moment to savor. And it is simple. This is Nietzsche. He says, for happiness, how little suffices for happiness. the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard rustling, a breath, a whisk, an eye glance, little makeeth up the best happiness. There's also a receptivity when we're doing that appreciating. It's like letting this life happen. Rilke described it so well, you know, the beauty and the terror. This is Cahil Gabran. He says, and forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet

and the winds long to play with your hair. So you just feel this belonging and engage in it. So for me, I mentioned that, you know, I was wary about this week, so I was saying, okay, and because this is something I, when I'm remembering, I practice just to pause at those things. And so I did. And I, we have, there's, many of you might have noticed the goldfincher at their like peak brightness right now. So I'd watch the darting gold finch and say, okay, pause. And it's just

like taking in this, this play of light of gold flashing. You know, it was so amazing. Our, you know, I have a very dear friend who's at a phase of life where he's trusting himself more and I could feel him just more composed and coming from a deeper place of confidence. And that brought up this joy. Like I just said, okay, joy. It's called Mudita, this. sympathetic joy and another person's joy. My mom's about to go up to our summer place and we both loved being an open car, so we went for quite a long drive in the country

with the top down and the breeze and feeling just the companionship. And everything was going, okay, this, this, just this. Just this. And it has that quality of this is it, this moment is it. So try that pausing because it makes it's amazing to just pause and appreciate and in some way bow. And this is how one Zen master put it. He said, people often ask me how Buddhists answer the question, does God exist?

The other day I was walking along the river. I was suddenly aware of the sun shining through the bare trees. It's warmth, its brightness. All this completely free, completely gratuitous, simply there for us to enjoy. and without knowing it completely spontaneously my two hands came together and I realized I was making gushal which is a bow

and occurred to me that this is all that matters that we can bow that we can take a deep bow just this just this that's the spirit of it that we find our ways back to that sincerity and openness

that really allows this flow to move through us. And there is something beautiful about bowing. It doesn't belong to any one religion. There's something about feeling that sense of honoring and cherishing. It's kind of letting the small self just open itself to this vast mystery that we belong to. So again let's just reflect. Let's let's practice a little. Take a moment. We we practice by sensing what we love what we cherish, letting it come to mind, and in some way really appreciating it. So I'd like to invite you in this pause, this kind of training the heart to turn towards joy.

You might start with just that practice of the smile, a slight smile at the mouth, the inside of the mouth smiling. It actually lets the whole nervous system relax. into a mode that's very receptive, the eyes soft, and just feel your intention to open to this wholeness that allows what we love. And let come to mind something that you deeply appreciate. And it could be something in nature, it could be a person, music, something about the practice or the path that you're on. And you might explore as something comes to mind

just pausing with it, hanging out with it a little, just sensing your appreciation. You might even whisper, thank you, or bow. You can bow inwardly, physically bow, but in some way the spirit of appreciating. I'll just take a few moments.

Selecting one thing, you just maybe we're already meditating, with one thing now that you very much love or appreciate in your life. And sensing in a very visceral way your heart, the experience of loving or appreciating. And just sense what that's like in your heart. What's the felt sense of that when you're really appreciating what you appreciate? So just saying yes to the love itself, letting it be as big as it wants to be, noticing when you're appreciating, when you're loving, the quality of presence. that's right here, the space, how large it is, openness and flow. When we're finding true

happiness or joy, we'll notice in the background there's this profound sense of presence. There's openness, weakness. So you might explore that. It's a commitment if you choose to do it, to choose happiness, to pause a bit and savor. and sense when you do what's really allowing the joy to be there is this quality of presence in the background, this alert inner stillness, this space.

So take a few breaths and let's open your eyes and just a few more pieces to this I want to explore with you. So we're talking about different ways of loving what is. And we love what is by saying yes to what's exactly. right here. And we love what is by remembering to really take our time and get familiar with the experience of loving and savoring itself. I get to know it. You know, we have joyful moments but we speed right through them. And so we don't think of ourselves as joyful. Slow it

down. Oh, okay, this is a moment that this this fragrance right now or the look in this person's or just this feeling of the breeze. Slow it down. What's it like? And you'll find that same space of presence there when you're really enjoying. So another way of loving what is is opening to possibility.

Because part of what is in this fertile void of a light, there's this void that aliveness is springing out of is this infinite possibility. And what blocks joy is a sense of expecting things to be a certain way and usually expecting them to in some way be a limiting future

not really open to the possibility of loving without holding back not really opening to that that's possible that we could take the chance and really trust more and let our love be more full to really sense that possibility to sense the possibility of awakening of full realization that we can wake up out of the stories that are narrow and really inhabit a very lucid, very present, very tender awareness, the possibility of really serving from our hearts in a way that can be touching and healing, really giving of ourselves. Opening to possibility.

This is C.S. Lewis. He says, all joy reminds. It is never possession. He says joy intuits what is about to be, intuits what has always been, our original nature, the truth of wholeness. In other words, this is a sense of mystery and openness to possibility. And I've seen this very much personally when I've worked with people, that those that are not open to possibility are basically depressed and their life energy is held down. And it's of course a spectrum. It's not completely not open and it's not completely open. But to the degree that we're open to possibility that we sense

that tonight, tonight has this possibility not just, it's not like we're coming to the end, you're going to go to bed and then it'll be tomorrow. It's like tonight has this possibility of having a meaningful, tender, real contact with somebody, or being more at home in your or touching it as something that really matters, are stepping outside into the almost summer evening and really feeling the air and being here more. Tonight's got possibility. A lot of times I'll talk about this and I'll get a response that, yeah, but we're impermanent, we're going to die.

It's, you know, basically aging sickness and death, and so that's the possibility I'm opening to. And yeah, hey, what about that, you know? And so what I would say, So what I'd like to share is, this is a story friend told me recently, a couple that loved traveling, traveled all around the world, and he was a few years ago diagnosed with Parkinson's, and it's been pretty steady that they've been able to do less and less. But the friends talk about how they continue to be this very lively in their own way,

very engaged, very open, there's this capacity for joy, even though their lives from the outside look smaller and smaller and smaller. So one of the, they shared a bit of what was allowing them to have that. And the woman said that they make a conscientious effort to make each day as good as it can be. Now that sounds really simplistic. But if you say, well, what if my intention was to have this evening be as good as it can be? be inherent in that intention is a sense of this real possibility. It can be. That we can get sick and get old and die and in the midst of that wake up and discover a timeless love. And stuff

happens and it can be as good as we could possibly imagine if we're willing to imagine. So this is what they would do. And this was really a part of their kind of process of that intention and it brought up memories that actually were kind of things that happened in their past that let them have that attitude and she described this she said their family just moved to a new house and her mom wanted to have you know a picnic and take them to the park and really celebrate bringing in their new homes they packed up the picnic basket and the blankets and this and that and then of course as you might imagine it all started to rain here's what the mom did they went up to this empty attic and

It was unfinished. And this woman specifically called the smell of the new wood. And they laid out their blanket there. And they had their picnic in the attic and just listened to the sound of the falling rain. It was as good as it could be. This is why I was so touched by the story of this woman in this diversity group that said,

I'm just enough of the grimness, you know? I'm choosing to look towards possibility. I'm choosing happiness. not going to be oppressed by circumstance. So the given is we're all in the same predicament. Every one of us is going to lose things that are incredibly cherished and dear. Every one of us is living in uncertainty. You know, we know that.

And it's part of who we are to discover joy in the midst. There is a story I brought up Kassan Sakis before, so with Zorba. So I'll bring up another piece of a story that he describes Zorba encounters an old man who's planting an almond tree. Now almond trees, if you know anything about them, they take decades to grow. So here's this old guy, and he's planting an almond tree. And so Zorba says, what dad, at your age, planning an amortary? And the response, I live as if I should never die and also as if I were going to die any minute.

Live as if I are never going to die, should never die. And as if I are going to die any minute. And if you take the feeling tone of both of those, I should never die, has that sense of, just open it, unlimited possibility, you're sensing something eternal. you know and just opening to that and that our true nature is boundless it's kind of got a sense of the absolute just boundlessness timeless not hitch to the small cell just live it and just let go and invite just to relax and be willing to open into what's here and then as if I were going to

die any minute in this changing endlessly changing season of tides and life and death we love what's here we just absolutely wholeheartedly embrace what's here. If you knew you were going to die in just a few moments, I can speak for myself. If I knew that I was going to just be gone, what would matter right now is being really, really present and feeling the loving that is true nature,

just being in love. And there's a refuge in that. and there's a joy in that and there's a peace in that so maybe as a way of closing we'll practice again just just to say that you know as I started on purpose by sharing Geed's quote because because I realized so much this week it was very pronounced to me I really was not entering the week with a joyful mindset I truly was not I was I was tight. And it was amazing to have this intention to pause and wake it up. And I had a really interesting week. It was a big mix, but there was a current of kind of amusement and joyfulness

that got woven through that that let me feeling more whole. I wasn't as much in my story of the leagered self. So you might remember Hafiz, he says, the different. between us and the saints that are really filled with joy? He says the difference between us and the saints that are really filled with joy. He says, I'm afraid we or you think you still have a thousand serious moves. Isn't that true that we have this feeling we're on our way somewhere and we've got all this serious stuff we have to go do? That doesn't create an atmosphere for joy. So that's one of the put it, put it down things. David Bud Bell puts it this way. He says, and this is called Bugs in a Bowl, different attitude. He says, I say that's right. Up the sides and back down,

round and round over and over again, sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands, cry and moan. I look around. See your fellow bugs. Say hi. How you doing? Say, nice bowl. nice bowl okay so let's we'll practice a little and then close very very simple right now let's keep it really simple close in

sense in your own way from your own sincerity your intention to be all that you are to open to the life that's here on words to allowing the life loving the life that's here you might in a very simple way explore for your what it means in this moment to love what is.

Sensing the possibility of a heart that can hold the 10,000 joys, the 10,000 sorrows. And we'll close with a Native American planting initiation song that expresses the spirit of tonight's talk. I have made a footprint, a sacred one. Through it the blades push upward. Through it the blades radiate. Over at the blades float in the wind. Over it, I bend the stalk to pluck the ears. Over at the blossoms lie gray.

Smoke arises from my house. There's cheer in my house. I live in the light of day. Namaste and thank you. 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's site, which is IMCW.org.

Thank you very much.