Tara Brach - Compass of Our Heart

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

Compass of Our Heart - All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it's natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from "my will" to "my heart's will" (a favorite from the archives).

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. One of the key inquiries on the spiritual path is really what is it that most will help us discover happiness and inner freedom and open-heartedness. And this was the question that was posed to six of us. that were the opening speakers at a conference in 2001. And we were each supposed to give 10 minutes on what the essence, pure essence,

Buddhist teachings were that would guide us in discovering that inner freedom. And in 2001, the lineup was such that I was the second person, I was the only woman, and I was the kind of youngest in terms of seniority as teachers, and the person that went in front of me was Roshi Baker and he was Richard Baker and he was very, very well-known. And I was kind of glad about the lineup because being second, I had enough time, his 10 minutes, to kind of gather myself, but I didn't have to wait too long and get kind of revved up and nervous.

So he went first and he got up and the question was posed and he said the key to freedom is intention and attention. And then he bowed, and that was his whole ten-minute speech. And I was on. And I have to say, honestly, I have no idea what I said. What I wanted to say was like he said, you know. I don't remember, but I do remember his words a lot. And I've been teaching now over 40 years.

It's a long time, four decades. And I watched a lot of people on the spiritual path, not only on the Buddhist meditation path, but different friends exploring chigang and yoga and Tai Chi and Sufism and going deep into Jewish spirituality or Christian mysticism. And I've watched a lot of life. lot of people kind of drop to the wayside, kind of lose their zest. I've watched a lot of people kind of get habitual and plateau and, you know, have some good tricks up their sleeve

for working with difficult situations. And then I've watched people that just keep on unfolding. You know, just keep their quality of loving and their quality of wonder and generosity. just keeps on unfolding. And the one thing that I found that accounts for that has nothing to do with the particular practice or the religious or spiritual affiliation, what it has to do with is a quality of wholeheartedness, a kind of heart passion or longing for freedom, long. longing to really be all that we can be, sometimes described as aspiration or a liberating intention. And that's been really important to me that it kind of loosens my sense of, you know,

even though we all, most of us get that it's not real wise to say, oh, this path, the path, it really isn't that way. It really has to do with a quality of urinating. in the heart for authentic freedom. The Dalai Lama, each day, he begins his day with a prayer. It's a longer prayer, but I'll just, just a few, just one line really. He says, for as long as the earth and sky endure, may I assist all living beings, may I assist until all living beings are awakened.

And this is a bodhisattva prayer, you know, the heart's yearning to be of benefit. It's a prayer of compassion. Whatever the prayer is, if there's a conscious remembrance of what matters, there's this, sometimes think of it as kind of a virtuous spiral that our longing to be loving or awake brings us into more presence so there's more loving and wakefulness which then makes us value it all the more and that longing then allows for more. So there's this kind of spiraling that comes out of intention. It's a complex word, intention. I'm going to come back to it a few times. There's many layers usually. The Buddha said that our entire life arises out of the tip

of intention. It means that every experience you have, everything that unfolds is coming out of some quality of what is important to you in that moment. There's an urge that creates an energy that manifests. And it can be on any level. A story of a man who wrote to the IRS and he said, I've been unable to sleep knowing that I've cheated on my income tax. I've understated my taxable income and have enclosed a check for $150.

If I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest. So intentioned, a lot of different levels. So what we'll do tonight in this session, in this reflection together, and there's going to be several times I ask you to reflect, is explore really, I sometimes call, and I love the language of the compass of the heart, how do we really arrive in this pure aspiration that brings us to freedom? And how do we move from the natural tendency to have egoic intention? which we all do. We all have it.

But how do we recognize that and drop deeper into a liberating aspiration? So that's our inquiry. And I like to include one of my favorite poems from Mary Oliver, just the very last couple of lines

which have now become very well known. She says, Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? You wouldn't be here tonight, or those that are listening as a podcast, you wouldn't be listening, if you didn't have a degree of conscious intention, if there wasn't something in you calling you

to wake up, to become more whole, more authentic, more loving, more free. It just wouldn't be happening. And if you think of your life, you wouldn't spend time with a loved one or you wouldn't help somebody in difficulty or spend time in nature or in some creative venture if there wasn't some yearning in you to express that inner freedom and love. And yet as we know, for huge swaths of time we're out of touch with those currents. And I often say let's just think of today. And if we're honest, and I can certainly look through the day and watch my own ins and outs,

we spend a lot of moments where we're really far from remembering what matters really to us. We get very caught up, which isn't something to add a layer of judgment to, but more, can we notice? Can we notice that? So we're going to look at the layering of intent. I often in almost every time I lead a meditation, I'll begin by saying, okay, listen to your heart for a moment and sense what is your deepest intention right now? And periodically I'll have someone after class say, you know, I did that, I have no idea what my intention is.

And I love that because it's really honest. Because we have to be a certain degree present to get in touch. And the more present we are, the more we realize we love presence. In fact, if you're fully, fully present, like fully awake, like just you are awareness itself. There's no need to even ask about liberating intent. You become your intention. You have manifested your intention. challenge, as I mention, is that we're often stressed and reactive, and in those moments,

if we say, well, what really matters, we might come up with the right words, you know, but it's not visceral, it's not heartfelt. And what's really driving us is something different. Supreme Court Chief Justice Douglas said 90% of decisions on the level of the Supreme Court come from emotions. 10% are the thoughts that rationalize the decisions. So you get the idea that this intention when it's real emotional, it's what I want, what I fear, that drives things. Carlos Costagnato put it this way.

He said, conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. So the real player through most of our lives, life moments are what we call the egoic layer of intention and just to say a little more what I mean by that, that we are largely driven by the impulses from the survival brain that's sensing what's the danger, what do I have to worry about, what's the problem to solve, how can I increase my advantage, you know, how do I get more of what I want, that's usually the level that's moving us through the day.

Cute story. An honest seven-year-old admitted calmly to her parents that Billy Brown had kissed her after class. How did that happen? Gaffed her mother. It wasn't easy, admitted the young lady, but three girls helped me catch him. So the challenge is that it becomes habitual that our intentions coming from the limbic system.

That becomes our habit. If you look at the day, it's very deeply patterned that we're in the frame of there's a problem to solve. There's something I need to figure out. How many of you have noticed that? How much you're kind of, that's an orienting. Okay. Yeah. So there's a lot of moments that it's just plain habitual. It's not that it's serving survival, our serving, our flourishing, our intentions.

habitual patterning of just seeking for something more, there's something missing, this incessant dissatisfaction or restlessness, or there's something I need to protect. And that's just the habit. One woman writes, I love to shop after a bad relationship. I don't know, I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better, it just does. Sometimes if I see a really great outfit, I'll break up with someone on purpose. Rita Redner. Okay, so

ego intent commandeers many of our moments and this is the Chinese Buddhist text that just says and this is a familiar sequence. Some of you will remember it from intention springs the deed

from the deeds springs the habits, from the habits grow the character and from the character develops the destiny. So we're very much shaped by our habits of

trying to get what we want and avoid what we fear, defending the self. And the challenge is the more we do it, I mean the more that's our intention, the more we solidify our identity, our sense of that's what I am, on this limited self that needs more of this and is afraid of that and has a problem to solve. So there's a bad news, good news thing about this. And the bad news is the phrase neurons that fire, together, wire together. Which means the more regularly you kind of unconsciously are feeling this need to get more comfortable or to get something else for you or to prove yourself or

protect yourself, the more that becomes the tendency you're playing it out. The good news is norms that fire together wire together, which means that you can consciously change the way you pay attention and create a whole new network of neuropathways, a whole new set of behaviors that profoundly change the sense of who you are. Okay, so what motivates this shift from kind of the ego level of wanting, fearing, maneuvering, to what we'll call really the heart's compass, the, the compass of the heart, really operating from a deeper level. And there's two main ways it seems to happen from what I've observed.

And one of the ways is that we have this gradual growing sense, and sometimes it's called midlife crisis the way it comes up to us, that our life isn't meaningful. That there's some disappointment that we're really not living aligned with what matters. that we're skimming the surface, we're kind of racing to the finish line. So there's a dissatisfaction that has real honesty to it, like, oh, I've been kind of playing in a trance in some way. And it's like that caterpillar in a cocoon that senses there's, that we've been in a cocoon of kind of habitual thinking and behavior, but there's something more and we intuit this

something more and we have a longing to really live in greater freedom, to live with a sense of intimacy with the others around us, to not be so self-absorbed because it's painful, not because it's bad, it's just painful. So that's one way, it's gradual, it's a sense of, wait a minute, there's more, this isn't really, this couldn't be what I am, this is a sense of being more. And then the other way is that something dramatic happens in our life. Somebody we love dies. We get a diagnosis that really shakes us up.

There's some great loss in some other way of a relationship or security. And I've seen over and over how people either will rigidify and calcify in reaction or actually it breaks open to having a form. much deeper sense of what matter come forward. I'd like to share an example of this. I was sent a commencement talk written by Alison Ballantine, who's a pediatrician and educator at a large children's hospital. I just want to read you a little bit of it.

She says, we become so accustomed to life on the hamster wheel of achievement and approval that we just forget. We scamper on and on, chasing the ephemeral promises of, someday I'll do such and such, or if only such and such, this is the way we've been conditioned. What comes next becomes more important than what is here. Growing up I learned a hard lesson about how that hamster wheel can cheat us. My father was a pediatric surgeon with tremendous enthusiasm and drive to succeed that encompassed his work, his family, his friendships. He was a huge influence in my life. He taught me the value of hard work and the satisfaction of a job done right. But on a winter day when he was driving home from the hospital where

he worked, his car slid on a patch of black ice hitting a telephone pole on the driver's side, killing him instantly. He was 48 and I was 18. That was obviously many years ago and the alchemy that occurs as we age has been good to me. Through that alchemy this loss has come to mean something more, something good. It serves as a reminder that I cannot live my life on the hamster wheel waiting for some day or if only I. She ends her talk saying what you have is in the present moment and it's unfathomably precious. It's sometimes called the wisdom of impermanence that drops us into a deeper sense of what matters to us. It's like one woman who had a young daughter got diagnosed, I think with the fourth stage of breast cancer,

and her mantra became, I have no time to rush. No time to rush. So the wisdom of impermanence, you can, you can't, You can just see if we even ask ourselves, you know, what, if it was the end of our life looking back, what would matter, it begins to let us see how much we leave ourselves, how much we get caught on the hamster wheel of intentions that are much more shallow than what matters to us. So D.H. Lawrence writes this, he says, men are not free doing just what they like or just what

they want. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest, self-likes and there's getting down to the deepest self, it takes some diving. So for the remainder of our reflection together, it's really how do we dive? How do we dive? And especially when we're caught up on a kind of that egoic-driven level, how do we drop deeper? How do we dive?

And again, I'm going to name two approaches. One of them I've already mentioned, which is the wisdom of impermanence, any reflection that reminds us of reality. And reality is, this is fleeting this life. We have no idea how long we have. We have no control over the big things in our life. There's all the reason in the world to pause and really let this moment matter.

When I say this moment, I'm not even meaning we're in a talk now and then you go home and let that moment matter. I mean like this moment. We're so in the habit of postponing, thinking it's what's possibly going to be good is around the corner or it already happened. It's very rare that we just let go of all the ideas and thoughts and have this moment matter as much as any moment in the universe, that this is it. And when we care about being fully awake, this moment starts mattering.

It's not in the future anymore. So, the approach is, one approach is remembering impermanence and the other approach is actually deepening our attention to what's happening right here. Because the very ground of practice is in this present-centered attention. In other words, if we don't have capacity to notice what's going on right here, we won't remember what we love. Let me read you a short part of a poem from Denise Levertoff. She says, she's addressing this to the Creator, to God, to the Lord.

She says, I stop to think about you in my mind at once like a minnow darts away, darts into the shadows, into gleams that fret unseasing over the river's purling and passing. for one second will my self hold still but wanders anywhere, everywhere it can turn. Not you, it is I am absent. You are the stream, the fish, the light, the pulsing shadow. You the unchanging presence in whom all moves and changes. How can I focus my flickering? perceive at the fountain's heart the sapphire I know is there.

Can you feel the yearning in that, that sense of how we're all over the place and yet there is something in us that wants to let go and open into that gem of presence, that the light and love that's here, if we can just pause and let ourselves arrive. So the beginning of diving is taking a some quality of presence and shining the light on what's my aspiration right now, what's my intention right now? And what that means is that we begin with whatever is arising on the egoic level. In other words, we start where we are.

If you want to deepen your intention, start by noticing what your more surface or superficial intention is. I'll give you an example that touched me, a story that touched me, touched me as a woman who had had a standoff for decades with her older sibling, her older sister. So this woman was the black sheep of the family. She was impulsive and non-traditional. She was the bad girl. She got in a lot of trouble. When she was younger, she would say the wrong thing and be misunderstood and felt unappreciated. So her sister had always kind of kept a distance and had kind of a disapproving attitude.

And it even got to the point that at one point they got into a really big, bitter argument, and she wasn't invited to her niece's wedding and so on. But what happened was their dad died, and now they were having to take care of their mom, and it forced them together in a way, especially at the holidays. So, one Thanksgiving, there they were, and she was a meditator, so she's going to draw on her meditative, meditation and so she wouldn't be so reactive. I know how many of us about to go to the,

be with family on the holidays and we think, okay, I'm going to get it together this time, breathe. She kind of did that, you know. And sure enough they got in a disagreement about their mother's diet where she had suggested gluten-free and her sister she said, oh, everything has to be according to your philosophy for, you know, she got into a whole big fit and left the room, you know, and then this younger sister was feeling feeling once again exactly the same thing, not seen, not respected, not appreciated, disliked. And she asked herself, you know, what's wrong with me? Why can't I make her like me? She doesn't understand me. Went into all of that. And so then she paused and began what I'm describing

as diving deeper. She said, okay, so what's my intention here? What is my intention in being in relationship with her? And she was really honest. She said, well I want her to respect me and I wanted to respect my knowledge and I want to feel seen and I want to feel valued. So these are completely reasonable intentions. It's just that they may not serve. They're the level of the ego that wants reassurance. But she named them and she had a lot of self-compassion for that young place in her that wanted to be seen and respected.

And so she did as we practice often, she felt that young, vulnerable place that wanted to be seen and offered kindness. Her sister wasn't around at that moment. And when she was there for a while with that younger part of her that kind of sourced the ego intentions, she could then say, so what is my deepest intention? What is my deepest intention? And it was in those moments that she could say, I just want there to be a loving connection between us. I want there to be understanding.

That became her prayer. And that was really sincere. It had been a lot of years, that a lot of stuff got in the way, she just wanted there to be a loving connection. So for the rest of the evening, they were more engaged, and she didn't feel the need to kind of assert her opinion or defend herself. And then months later, they got together for Hanukkah, and there was a lot more ease.

And that time they laughed together over some old family stories. And later that night, her sister confessed. She was having a really hard time with their teenage son. and at the end thanked her for being a good shoulder to lean on and someone to listen to. And she said to me, she said, Tara, I realize that it's not my will but my heart's will that I most need to be with and be living from. And my will was this demand in some way that she appreciate me, that she see me. and my heart's well was just this longing for love.

So this is an example of shifting from an ego intention to really a deep, deep aspiration. Because the reality is when we're with each other, our behavior communicates what level we're living from. Even if we don't say it in words, for this woman, she didn't have to say anything. Her sister was picking up the sense of, I want you to like me, I want you to agree with me.

That energy was there. It shifted. But the important thing to say is she couldn't dive deeper until she had brought compassion to the ego level because it's not bad. It comes from vulnerability and it needs attention. So let me invite you to do a reflection where you can explore the diving deeper for yourself and you'll have the opportunity to just pick one situation that you'd like to be more awake in. Take a moment if you'd like to adjust how you're sitting. Once you've settled and come into stillness, take some moments to bring your attention into your body. Feel your breath, feel your body breathing.

Notice if there's any places in your body that want to soften a little, relax a bit. And let yourself bring to mind a situation where you've maybe recently encountered some conflict with someone that matters to you. And I'd encourage you not to pick something where you feel it's got a lot of real major trauma, huge charge, because that might not serve you so well. But where there's some conflict, where there's some sense of you and that person getting locked into that, what we call sometimes a limbic dance where there's some separation. And when you have a situation in mind, allow yourself to go right close into it in your mind's eye So you can perhaps see the other person visually or hear their voice and sense their tone

and their message and sense what came up in you. What's going on? And be aware of what intention you are operating off of. In the moments of being caught in conflict, what was it you were wanting or fearing, trying to make happen? and what were you trying to defend or protect? You might notice how that went for you, operating off of that intention.

What was the effect? Without adding judgment, just notice. This is a chance to really witness and deepen your understanding. Noticing the, we might call the ego level of wants and fears that end up shaping our behaviors, And then ask yourself, well, what would happen if I had paused? You know the language of the sacred pause, if there was a pause, right, when things are most intense, locked in in some way? And in that pause, imagine you could just freeze and everything fades away on the sidelines,

so you're just with yourself for a little bit. And let yourself be aware of the intention that was driving you. and let yourself be aware of the vulnerability under that intention, a place in your being where you felt in some way threatened or hurt, unseen, unloved, misunderstood. So you're sensing the vulnerability, the feelings underneath that were really driving things. And as you do that, it might help to put your hand on your heart so you're accompanying yourself. You're sending a very kind attention to the place inside that was vulnerable and really

where the ego intention was coming from. And to the degree that you can consciously send inwardly real care and kindness to your own being. It's rather than any judgment towards the reactive self, there's really kindness. You wouldn't have been in reactivity if there wasn't something difficult. So just sending some kindness and seeing if you can just let it soak in to the place that is upset. And from that space of presence and compassion you might just start exploring. So what really is my deepest intention here? what most matters, noticing if it includes compassion for yourself and compassion for the other.

And let it be your heart's prayer. Let that be a sincere aspiration. I mentioned earlier not my will but my heart's will. Let it be your liberating aspiration so that you can imagine re-entering the situation with this other person and with the kind of courage and clarity and inner sense of self-intimacy with your own being that allows you to feel an integrity, that there's enough tenderness for you to be sensitive. And just notice what might be possible. It's natural to forget, it's natural that the old patterns reassert themselves.

So you might sense what it might be like in the days and weeks to come to more consciously let this be your prayer, this deep intention. So you can listen to the compass of your heart. Many find that that trance of reactivity starts diminishing as they learn to pause. Pay attention to what's going on, the current level of intention, bring kindness, and then dive deeper. Ask that question, what's the real liberating intention here? My deepest intent. Okay, so please open your eyes.

So we're going to be continuing a bit on this theme in the next class, working with anger and reactivity, but I want to just share with you a few things. I was exploring this whole domain with a group from a small group of people in Virginia. And one of the questions was, well, how do you get to liberating intent when you're just in chronic pain? I mean, when I'm in chronic pain, I don't have any grand vision except for I just want it to go away. So I thought that would be a good question to bring in here. And when we're in chronic pain or when we're in acute pain, our acute emotional pain, it's really the exact same process.

It's part of our natural, wiring of our nervous system to not like that pain. And so the first step is just to bring mindfulness to that, to notice, oh, my intention is to get rid of this pain. Now if you include that in mindfulness, oh, not liking it, aversion, in the moment that you're recognizing that level of intention, I want to get rid of it, the who you are has enlarged. You're resting more in the space of the witness than you are the self that's not liking something.

And that's all the difference in the world. It doesn't mean that the unpleasantness goes away, but there's more space, less reactivity to it. And then you can begin to sense inwardly, so what really matters here? I know for myself because I went through a number of years of both chronic pain and also the emotional pain of feeling loss in terms of my own capacities physically moving in the world. I had a lot of practice with seeing my intention being, how do I get rid of this, how do I fix it, what's going on, what's going wrong, and watching that whole layer of my egoic reaction,

which was completely natural, really forgiving it, that's just natural. but to the degree I could catch it, notice it. Then there was more space and I could say, what really matters here? And for me, what came was a similar kind of prayer to what has been described as the Bodhisattv aspiration, which is, please, may this suffering, may this pain, may this discomfort serve to awaken me in some way.

May it make my heart more compassionate. it. May it bring more wisdom. There's a real power to sensing into what most matters, even and especially when it's difficult. For many people, when they can begin to sense that deeper aspiration, it gives meaning to what's happening. Not meaning like, oh, this is meant to happen so this and such and such will happen, but more meaning like, oh, even this I can learn from and grow from and deepen from, and serve from, and live more fully from, even this. So I want to invite you to try this out, this particular way of touching into aspiration just for a moment and sense for you how it fits for you in your life.

And that means again closing your eyes, if you will, taking a few nice full breaths. I'd like to invite you to bring to mind something going on in your life that you know your habitual reaction is, I want this to go away. I wish this wasn't happening. I don't like this. And it could be physical illness, emotional pain, something going on in a relationship, something difficult in your work life, some large loss you're working with. And be aware of your habitual way of relating to it. to it, that part of you perhaps that wishes it wasn't happening and maybe judges yourself

or the world, life, in some ways trying to get rid of it, fix it, solve a problem, just notice the way your habitual way of responding is with a lot of compassion, gentleness, and then explore what it's like when you sense this difficult situation. situation and you let that prayer hold it, please may this serve to awaken wisdom and compassion, seeing what happens if that's coming from a very sincere, wholehearted place, please may this serve this path of waking up. May this wake up my heart, may this wake up wisdom. Notice what happens. When you draw on that deep intention and you might draw on it in the form of an inquiry.

How might this serve the awakening of my heart? See what you can learn. You continue to just meditate with your eyes closed and reflecting on what it really means to have a liberating intention. We kind of know what it's like when we're being driven by wants or fears. But people often ask, you know, how do I know of It's truly a deep aspiration, a liberating aspiration. So I'm just going to name a few qualities and just feel inside how they sit with you.

So one characteristic of a deep or pure aspiration is that it has to do with manifesting your innate potential. So rather than something like, well my aspiration is to hike the Appalachian Trail or create an an app, for instance, Samadhi or whatever it is on that level, it's more like my aspiration is to express creativity or to embody love or to serve from my heart. It's like the Bantu tribesman who goes around to his sleeping children and says to each whispering in their ear, be who you are. So that's one quality of a pure aspiration. really the aspiration is really to manifest what's already here.

The second quality is that it's wholehearted. It's not an idea, it's in our body, it's passionate, we care, you can feel it. And the third is that it always relates to this moment. A true aspiration has to do with what you can experience right here. St. Augustine writes, Dear Lord, please give me chastity and continence, but not yet, down the road. So, liberating intention, the compass of the heart that's really alive, it has to do with awakening our full potential, it has to do with really sincerely wholeheartedly caring about what we care about, and it has to do with this moment. And when those are there, here's the deepest tip.

It doesn't feel like it's coming from yourself. A deep aspiration, a pure aspiration, feels like it's arriving and arising from loving awareness. It's calling you home. It doesn't have a sense of a self in your mind talking to you. It's something much more formless, vast, and mysterious and true. So we'll close with a final reflection. Your eyes are still closed, just again feel yourself here. Take a moment to honestly notice whatever's going on for you, noticing the state of your heart

right now, letting life be just as it is right now. If you were in the last moments of your life and you're looking back, what would most matter? What would truly most matter about what had unfolded, what you had experienced, how you showed up for the rest of this day what most matters, what really matters to you, what matters to your heart. In this very moment, what most matters to, whatever most matters, just to let go and be that experience, be what you care about, be the love or presence or awareness or peace that's really your own essence. May we be guided by the love or presence or awareness or peace. May we be guided

by the compass of our heart. May this life emerge moment to moment aligned with the love and awareness that's our deepest nature. May all beings awaken to realize the truth of who they are. May all beings touch great and natural peace.

May all beings be free. stay and thank you. For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.