Tara Brach - Cultivating Equanimity (Duck Meditation)

Episode Date: June 20, 2012

2012-06-20 - Cultivating Equanimity (Duck Meditation) - Equinimity, the mindful presence that neither grasps nor resists experience, is the grounds for unconditional love and wise action. This talk explores the conditioning that entraps us in reactivity, and two primary pathways for coming home to this natural state of balance and presence. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations make a difference!

For those of you that haven't been part of the last three classes, we're doing a four-part series on what are called the divine abodes. And that means the divine dwelling places. It's where our awakened heart-mind lives when we're really in that freedom. And the first expression, or the first abode is love. The second is compassion. The third is joy. tonight we're on to the fourth, which is equanimity.

And I notice that often when I share what these are, people are very juiced and wanting to hear the first three, and they get to equanimity, and it's like, eh, you know, it's not quite the sex appeal, you know, of love and joy. But actually, as you'll explore, it is. I will share, though, that my first introduction, to Buddhism was in 11th grade in a comparative religion class. And I remember when I heard about the middle way, when I heard about equanimity,

when I heard about not getting caught in desire, I immediately wrote off Buddhism as not for me. And of course, over the years I've discovered that the middle way and equanimity are actually the grounds for the deepest happiness possible, which of course is what will be exploring tonight. So what is equanimity? Equanimity is the freedom or balance that we experience when we're not grasping after anything and when we're not pushing away anything. It's that open-handedness that's really receiving the moment as it is.

no tinkering, just being. And there's this kind of spaciousness that opens up, and it allows for all the expressions of our natural being to arise. I thought maybe I would share a poem with you that I've always liked, that I'll kind of communicate some of this, and it's called duck meditation. Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean

100 feet beyond the surf as it cuddles and the swells. There's a big heaving in the Atlantic and he is part of it. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves because he rests in the Atlantic. He probably doesn't know how large the ocean is and neither do you. But he realizes it somewhere

and what does he do, I ask you? He sits down and it. Duck meditation. He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity, which it is. That is religion and the duck has it. How about you? Duck meditation. Do you like that? Yeah. Yeah. So, Duck Dharma. I mean, there are, there's some really deep teachings in this one. And And at the core, it's that life is really these changing currents, just like the ocean, you know, continuous moving waves of experience. And either we can fight it, try to manipulate it, try to manage it, or we can sit down in it. We can experience the life. You know, rather than controlling it,

we can live it. So the practices of equanimity are learning to sit down in the immediate as if it's the infinite, which it is, and sense that as the whole, sense the Atlantic, sense our wholeness, our belonging. Now, as with love and as with compassion and as with joy, this open state that's not reality, not grasping, not resisting, actually is our natural state. It's who we are when we're at rest. It's a capacity that every one of us has. We each have this capacity for this kind of freedom, this non-reactive freedom.

It's part of our nervous system. It's what happens when instead of fight or flight, we're in that parasympathetic nervous system that's actually replenishing. that rest is replenishing. And there's brainwave states that correlate rather than the fight-flight narrow focus, you know, beta activity, it's more moving towards alpha.

And our biochemistry is part of this too where there's really a sense of belonging, of connection, there's a kind of biochemical cocktail that goes with it. So it's part of our capacity and yet as we know, our conditioning is, often to be revved up and not resting.

So the conditioning when it kind of settles down and that resting in what is gives the space for our natural expressions of heart to really be there. We can connect with our world. But I want to, before I continue, address what I think are the misunderstand. understandings about equanimity because it's not just me in high school. I mean, I have a number of very good friends that are incredibly bright and really love a lot about Buddhism and about meditation, but they get tense with talks on equanimity. And one of them, it's almost like every time she asks the same question, which is, yeah, but if we're in that equanimous, non-reactive place, how are we ever going to solve the problem? of this world. I mean, what are we going to do about this environment that is, that

greed and delusion is destroying our own earth? And what are we going to do about these places where the cycles of war are just not ending? Are we going to sit back? Are we going to sit back and let people that are brothers and sisters

be oppressed because of their sexual preference or their color? In other words, we're not. words is this is like what about activism and I think it's a really important question because equanimity is not about being resigned it's not about being dead it's not about disengaging I remember one little story of a coach is saying to one of his players that's been having a rough time what is it with you is it indifference or apathy response I don't know and I don't care

It's not that, okay? It's not indifference. I'm thinking right now, somebody sent me a beautiful picture of Ansung Suu Kyi with the Dalai Lama. She had just arrived in London and met with him for the first time. And she had received the Nobel Peace Prize that she was awarded over 20 years ago. Now, she is a beautiful model of someone who has a profound wisdom. of equanimity, she's not reacting to situations. She has that kind of presence that's responding from her intelligence, from her care, not from hatred, not from fear. There are other such models, I think, of Nelson Mandala, who, you know, he's known for 27 years being imprisoned and that he

actually, rather than getting into that reactivity, of hating his jailers, creating an enemy. At one point in his life, he asked himself, you know, he was in a depression. He said, he realized he didn't have anyone to love because he'd been in so long in prison. And he said, who can I love? And he realized he could love his jailers.

And he started the very person that was humiliating him and torturing him in different ways. He started, he opened his heart to. They had to replace that jailer because he couldn't do his job. Then another came in. He did the same thing. Now, this is the power of equanimity in the world, this presence that lets us respond with intelligence and love rather than continuing the cycles of fear and hatred.

So we begin to look and sense, well, how do we come home to that? because we have it, we're in a predicament, like all living creatures, which is our wiring is not to be a quantumist in many situations. I mean, we are wired to react to unpleasantness by pushing it away. We're wired to react to pleasantness by wanting to hold on to it, wanting it to continue. And if we watch ourselves through the day, it's amazing how much we are in a continuous trance of trying to control our experience. It's a huge swaths of the day. I mean, you can consider today for a moment.

And I like to do this. I like to pause and say, okay, how about today? And you might sense, well, what was it like? And how many moments was there that kind of presence that's not trying to manage anything, just receptive, open. As the Buddha said, like a fast sky, where there's room for the experiences to come and go. So we begin to sense that, well, we don't have that many moments where we actually come out of that trance.

It's like the reptilian and mammalian parts of our brain that are urgently trying to manage everything and protect ourselves and get safe and make sure that we get what we need on some. levels of our being are much quicker than the cerebral cortex, like way quicker. So we don't even notice how much we are in constant reactivity. And the more wounds from our early life, the more deprivation, the less healthy, positive attachment, love attachments, the more we're in that trance and the less access we have to equanimity. So that's kind of a given. This is our predicament. So then the inquiry really is how in the midst of that trance do we wake up, do we sense that we're getting pulled around, and do we come back home? Okay, so that's,

that's what we're just going to begin to look at, because it's only when we're at home, do we have access to that very unconditional loving that we long for? It's only when we come home, do we really find that inner sanctuary of peace. So when I, I consider the pathway home, there are two main kind of gateways I'd like to talk about. And one of them is the start exactly where you are this moment approach. It is, okay, I got tossed around for the last, you know, few hours with this, but this is as good a moment to start arriving again as any moment in the world. Doesn't matter when we catch ourselves, that's our moment.

we are, that's the entry. Okay, so that's one of the pathways. And then the second pathway, our gateway, is to remind ourselves of the Atlantic, of the ocean that we belong to. And that's also very powerful. Okay, so pathway number one, the start where you are. Our practice here gives some of the basic components, which are, in the moment that we're called, we're caught, just start naming what's going on. Afraid, nervous, anxious, wanting things different. Name it. Just start naming. And then the next step is, after we name it, is open to how that experience feels right here in the body, open to the felt sense. So that's the entry back into equanimity. Seems really simple. Just name what's going on and then

open to how it feels. But what happens when we try to do that? What happens when we notice, oh, I've been caught, anxious, worrying about this? Then we say, okay, feel it. And then what happens? We just get pulled off again, right? I mean, more thoughts, more activity.

We don't stay there. It's very hard to stay. It's hard to stay because we are rigged to want to control the experience, not feel what's there. So this is what I call trance, that one wave, let's say we have a wave of grasping, of wanting something, of having craving for food, one wave will then lead to, okay, feel that craving, and then, oh, I'm a bad person for really wanting to eat so much. And then we go into a whole thing of how I set up this diet, but I can't quite keep it, and well, maybe then we start bargaining, and we're often running in trance again. Very hard to just stay with wanting. Often, and what we're talking about now is in Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, the word is Papancha. And it's one of my favorite words just because it feels good to say, Papancha. Papancha is that proliferation that we realize we're not a quantumist.

We realize we're often a reactive chain, right? And then we say, okay, come home. And we try to come home, but then some other way. wave carries us away. Usually the papansha is fueled by self-judgment. So if you want to find your way home to equanimity, you have to be very alert to that second arrow of self-judgment. You might find yourself anxious or find that there's craving or find that you're in some way angry or irritated. And instead of just feeling it, the mind will go on to say, I shouldn't be feeling it. something's wrong with me

and then that creates a whole other level of reactivity or entranch so our practice is to begin to recognize these thoughts that carries the way over and over

and I've shared with you that often when I'm just going to know I'm going to be speaking on one of these subjects a part of me knows that something's going to come up that's going to force me to walk my talk. I mean, it always, always happens. It's why I put off dying in death for so long as a Tarima theme. But, um, so I had plenty of, you know, experiences this week where I found

myself tugged around. And one of the most powerful practices I use, and this is, I think, of a bit of an advanced practice, but I'll share it with you anyway, is to just notice the quality of pleasantness or unpleasantness that's right. at the root of being pulled away. So you start getting more and more of that filter that notices, okay, this is unpleasant. And you cut right to the root, because then it's clearer.

You're not so caught in all the wrappings of trance. It's unpleasant. Oh, this is pleasant. That's, there's wanting, but there's some pleasant there. I'm just pleasant, just name it. Today it didn't work, though, because what happened was I spent, about 45 minutes to an hour.

I was writing a document that was kind of a plan for a workshop. I'll be doing at Omega next year on True Refuge. So I was writing out all the copy, and I'd come up with my titles and a copy and what this was about, and worded it just as carefully as I could. And then, you know, I got that thing where it just disappeared, and it said, word is, you know, has encountered a problem. Do you want to send a message? You know, but, you know, I save every two minutes.

So I went, all right. So, and then it reappears, and the form reappeared, but it was empty. And so I called up my live-in tech guy, Jonathan, who is my husband, and he takes care of everything, and he's a magician. And I still wasn't so worried, because I figured he's going to figure it out. And he didn't. You know, it was gone, gone, gone, gone. So then this, you probably know the feeling.

It's a very unpleasant kind of sour, really yucky feeling, sort of setting in. And, you know, I was trying to sense, well, why does this, what makes this feel so bad? And it's like you've lost a chunk of life, you know, wasted time, it's like a chunk of life. Plus, you have to do it again, and it's more life. And so I said, okay, here it is.

This is equanimity practice. and I started breathing into that kind of sour, yucky feeling. And my mind just started spinning on how much else I had to do and how this was such a drag. I said, wait, when I come back, unpleasant, not a prayer. It was just this, it just kept generating these ideas of how I was going to do things, what kind of sequence I was going to do, how is I going to recreate what I did. Did I have time right now?

Should I go back? you know so I got lost and finally you know I left my room and it's very very helpful to leave we get we get into state dependent experience which means everything that we're seeing is an association back to what's going on so I just walked out of the room which was a brilliant strategy and just started breathing into that place and when I did it was really unpleasant but it was amazing because after 30 seconds of that unpleasant, just the presence with turned into presence. And then the sense of what was happening,

this victim of lost information, it was like, yes, information was lost, but it wasn't happening to me. It wasn't a sense of my identity being so oppressed. It was like the me was just this awareness that was noticing what was going on. this shift in identity is at the heart of equanimity

the reason the duck can move with the swells of the Atlantic is because it's not taking it personally really now I'm not trying to turn a duck into a spiritual hero and so on but just but you get the idea when we take things really personally

if we sense there's this separate self here that is only going to be happy if it gets what it wants, and is going to be miserable. If something happens, then yes, we're going to be in a trance of reactivity a lot. We're going to be fighting the waves. In the moments that we notice what's happening and we agree to put aside all the wrapping of thoughts

and just say, okay, just this spelled sense, there is a presence with the immediate sensations that itself, opens us up to space and to the wisdom that it's not happening to this self one friend here we were talking about

Ram Dass and how this weekend when he was at Buda Fest he was describing having a stroke and how his realization of freedom has come from realizing that a stroke didn't happen to him it's not like he's this self that got slammed by a stroke

I mean he may have gone into the real he did go into some reactivity initially, but he found his way to that true refuge of equanimity, of realizing it's just happening. This is just happening. This is an experience of the body, mine. But the what I am is the Atlantic. It's larger. Does that make sense? Yeah. So we practice by noticing when we get tugged around. And for all of us, it's like every, single person we're with is going to evoke different things in us and put us into a little bit of a different mind state. And if there's a lot of pleasantness or unpleasantness, we're going to go into a trance. Now, I find the same thing happens to me with emails. It's amazing to me. I can have a lot

of emails and every email I open will put me into a little bit of a different state. And if I'm not aware of how it's going, it's like I'm diving into one portal of virtual reality. and then another, and my body and mind are yanked with it, and my sense of who I am gets kind of shifted around. Some of you might remember one of my favorite stories that's on these lines where a couple from the Midwest aside, they want to go to Florida for their honeymoon. And they really want to thaw out.

It's been really cold up in Michigan. And so they make their plans because of their busy schedules. He has to go a day before her. And so he arrives, he leaves on Thursday, she's going to follow him on Friday. He checks into the hotel, discovers there's a computer in his room, so he decides to send her an email, but he accidentally leaves that one letter in the address. So he sends the email now. Meanwhile, in a whole other part of the world, somewhere in Houston, I guess it is.

A woman has just returned home from her husband's funeral, and he's been a minister for many years, and he's been called home to glory, you know, as they say, following a sudden heart attack. So she's at home and friends and family have kind of been with friends and family. She decides to get her email. And the first message that she receives, she reads and faints. Here's what she read. Her son, the son notices this.

It says, to my loving wife, subject, I've arrived. Date, May 20th, 2013. I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you're allowed to send emails to your left ones. I just arrived and been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow.

Looking forward to seeing you then, I hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was. P.S. It sure is hot down here. So one of the reasons I share this is because even though this is an extreme and Selly, we believe our thoughts. You know, we believe the thoughts that are going on in our minds, and our whole bodies express our thoughts in our biochemistry.

So when we're thinking about scary things in the future that might happen, you know, our whole body goes into fight-flight just because our thought we're believing our thoughts. So one of the teachings, I think, is most powerful when we want to come back into presence, when we want to find that sanctuary of equanimity is to remember that what we're thinking and feeling is real but not true.

This is a phrase Sokne Rimpichet shared when he taught here and I think it's really, really helpful that what's going on is real, meaning it exists. We're really actually having an experience. For me, I was really feeling that sour feeling and I was really having thoughts that this was interfering with my life. It's real, but it's not true in the sense that what I was believing is not truth itself. You know, it's not like my life is going down the tubes because of some lost information.

So just to say, okay, it's real but not true. And then honor the real feeling in our body begins to give us some freedom. So the training is it's like the duck in the waves. just to stay. You know, rather than going off into the judgment or into the thoughts, just stay. Don't fight. Just stay with what's here. So share an equanimity story of someone who learned this lesson.

And she had been assigned by, she'd been having difficulty with her walking meditation. We teach it a lot at retreats how to just stay awake and in our bodies when we're walking. beautiful meditation. Just take about 15 paces and just have a beginning point and end point and you just walk from point A to point B, turn around and then walk back to point A. And you quickly realize you're not trying to get anywhere. Rather, you're just finding a certain kind of presence with what is. So she didn't like it. She was having a real difficulty with it and she was assigned by one teacher to just stop sitting and do a whole day of walking. meditation. So of course she moaned and then they negotiated and they agreed on a half. So this is what

happened. She wrote a letter, a note saying here's what happened. Long walking meditation all morning assignment completed. Thank you. Now I can meditate while moving. I thought I might discover why I've been so resistant to it but no, circumstances taught me something else instead. I chose to walk in the annex walking room because it's small, beautiful, unusually quiet. Today, however, it was noisy as hell. There was some guy in there walking as the little engine that could wearing noisy boots. Well, I thought, surely he'll be gone when the walking period ends. No such luck. This madman pounded his way through an hour and a half, except when he paused to drink or remove a noisy layer of clothing. I tried Meta. Surely he must have a lot of pain to be so driven. Then I realized

that I wanted to kill the SOB. I stood there noting, hate, hate. Later I stood in the middle of the room and wept, tears, tears. Then I got to the point that I realized that whatever problem he had was his, not mine. After that, I got quiet and he was just sound. And so I walked and breathed, and he paced and pounded. And pretty soon it was all the same to me, his noise, my breath, the movement of my body. After an hour and a half he left and it was incredibly quiet, which was different, but not as much better as I had expected,

mostly just different. Thank you. That's the note. So there's a kind of wisdom that comes with equanimity where we're just being with what's happening and we start realizing it's just happening.

It's not happening to me or because of me. And there's a little space, a little less identification. and in that space and disidentification, we start realizing we don't have to have things a certain way. Now that is liberating. If we can get that our happiness is not dependent on things being a certain way, then we're free to be happy for no reason. You know, we can just open to how it is and find some peace, find some enjoyment in it.

You know, there's a saying that a truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour. I think that's a great one, you know. Because how many moments do we feel we're being in some way sidetracked or derailed from what we thought we should be doing? Are there a lot of moments like that? What if those moments counted as real life too? and that they weren't a derailment or a detour. But those moments were just as valuable because we weren't hitching our sense of

things are only good when I get these five things checked off my list and then I'm with that person in that place. You see how it opens up our life so that with equanimity we get to respond to everything that's happening any moment with a sense of either compassion if it's painful or love if it's beautiful? So this is part of the wisdom or the gift of equanimity is that when we're not hitching ourselves

to the waves being a certain way, we actually get to live with what sometimes is called a heart that's ready for everything. A heart that's ready for everything. There's that kind of openness and availability that no matter what happens in our life. and I really mean no matter what we have this capacity

to respond from a place of tenderness and inner freedom a heart that's ready for everything thinking of one of my friends right now who's been doing some kind of trauma work on his early childhood and is in an incredibly raw place and I just talked to him

a couple days ago very young feeling very vulnerable. And his practice has been, just as I described, with duck meditation, to open to it and keep sitting down in it. Because some of the way that we try to avoid rawness is we leave, and it's almost like we go up, like our energy, the center of our energy goes up into our head and we're thinking and we're in some future or other world. So he keeps saying, okay, sit down in it, be with it, feel it. And as he described it, he says, the place of feeling, where it feels most raw and painful,

is the same place of loving. When I sit down in that place, it's kind of this mojo, that you actually sit down in the place of hurt, and that very presence, it's like this alchemy where love, that's where love emerges. Equanimity is the grounds of loving.

And there's a reason the Brahma Baha'ar, is the divine abodes, include equanimity. for our love to be really unconditional, for our joy to be really vast and wide open, for our compassion to be truly visceral and tender, we need that inner space of not pushing away and not controlling, just presence. So for me, this phrase,

a heart that's ready for everything, is really a powerful possibility to reflect on. I mean, just imagine for a moment. Just if you reflect and just sense, okay, this heart, really, this space of presence that can really be with everything, that can manage whatever comes my way,

whatever losses, whatever failures, that there's a refuge of presence that's big enough. One woman, Buddhist teacher wrote this when she was dying of cancer

she said my days are short and as I grow weaker I experience so much gratitude for my meditation not only the joy and ease it brought but the hard parts for every bored and restless

sitting and every fearful fantasy and every pain and ache I sat through and every itch I didn't scratch was a training for kindness a training for the muscle for bearing witness for the trusting spirit

that carries me now as I faith my death so this training that we're doing together this training and presence and learning to be with what is no matter what creates a space

a heart space that's actually quite courageous and free. There's a tremendous kind of piece that comes from knowing we can handle what's around the corner. And then, of course, the flip, as you know, is our bodies never get to relax and enjoy if we're tensing against what we think is around the corner. So for this woman, this sense of that trusting spirit

that there is a place to rest, this oceaness of who I am, that can be with anything that's the definition of finding peace in this lifetime a heart that's ready for everything so I mentioned a second route I'm right now I've spent most of this time and I won't be spending too much longer on this

talking about start right where you are whatever it is and clearly if what is right here is traumatic we don't just wide open say okay let me feel is terror, it can be a real act of compassion and intelligence to do it gradually. We start where we are and do it gradually because it can be overwhelming. But the basic principle is what's here, this life that's here is meant to be lived and felt. And our in our unlived life will keep us small and tight. It keeps identified as a self that's in trouble. So the second, the second,

pathway is remembering the ocean. And I give you by example, you know, how do we find a larger belonging? How when we're getting tossed around by the waves, do we in some way remember, okay, there's something bigger I belong to? Because that helps us to relax into what's happening. So one example is one of the men that came back from Iraq very much struggling with, periods of rage and then numbness and was in email contact with me and what most helped him because we were trying to find a way that not to directly feel that rage and go into the underneath it a sense of powerlessness and terror which wasn't going to be useful but he first needed to in some way find something

larger a kind of resource for belonging and for him he was in a support group with other vets and for him to keep reflecting one simple thing others feel this too he just keeps saying others feel this too and it was like a life line it wasn't the end of the process it was just enough to keep him there that he could keep on in the process of you know being with what was going on others feel this too so just seeing the faces of the other vets in the circle and really listening, connect them to a larger world,

and that was absolutely critical. Again, the reactivity that keeps us in trance comes from this identity of I'm separate, I'm alone, something's missing, something's wrong. So any real contact with others is part of the pathway to equanimity. There's the research studies that show that when somebody is receiving shocks and right you know they're measuring the fear that comes from

the shocks and if they hold the hand of someone that they care about the fear response is less in other words the limbic system isn't taking over there's more presence we know that if you hug another person for 20 seconds it begins to produce oxytocin which helps the parasympathetic is kicking in, the limbic system chills out, you know, we get into again more of that space where there's less of a separate self-identity and more freedom. So for each of us, and I think this is really a part of our process, it becomes really valuable to sense, well, when I'm in trouble and I'm being tugged around, what helps me remember a larger truth? What helps me remember a larger truth? Is it thinking of somebody that you love and sensing their eyes and sensing that they

really do care about you? Is it being in nature and sensing that belonging to nature for many people the movement towards equanimity is really smooth and greased by being in the elements that larger belonging there? Is it feeling if you sense the Buddha or the energy of Buddha Buddha, nature, moving through some very enlightened or awake being, is connecting to that help you. For me, I sometimes call on Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, just a sense of the compassion and tenderness that really is in this world and is who I am but temporarily forgotten. I'll call on that.

That helps me. There's a story that I wanted to share with you. This is Sokny Rinpoche in his book. describes one of his experiences of losing equanimity, and I thought it was a really great example. And he was in Bodhaya, that's where the Buddha was enlightened, and he realized that he felt like he had gotten too comfortable. He had been in a monastery, a lot, had done a lot of practice,

but in some way he was getting kind of too laid back and comfortable and not really energized by the path. And he was reflecting on the amazing generosity of his teachers and on the potential for freedom. And he realized he wanted to deepen his commitment. He wanted to touch the space of equanimity, of unconditional love. So he sat under the Bodhi tree and he made his prayers and his dedication to work for the benefit of all sentient beings. And he felt something drop. and it touched his head and he opened his eyes

and on the ground was the leaf from the bode tree. Now, a couple of other people were nearby and they'd also seen the leaf fall and you can't take a leaf from a bode tree. I mean, you're not supposed to take it, but if it falls it's like fair game. So here he was and it would fall in kind of near him and others had seen it too.

And suddenly everybody's starting to crowd in, you know, trying to get it. He has the same urge and he grabs it, you know, just in a few seconds, and he had the sense of I won. I'm such a good practitioner that this gift from the heavens has fallen to me, and I won, it's my bodie leaf. Well, you get the feeling of what was going on here, right? And here he went from his prayers to benefit all sentient beings to grabbing a boady leaf, right? So very, very quickly, he's a bright guy. He caught on that, and felt quite guilty, you know, like what kind of bodey sought for him I, you know?

for clinging to this leaf. And he was going to shred the leaf, but what would that have been? More paponcha, right? You know, first he grasped, and then there's aversion to what he did, right? So he didn't. Instead, he had this inner voice saying,

keep it. Let it be a reminder. You know, you can be very, very sincere in your commitment. Each one of us can really, really long to wake up. And each one of us, every single day, gets caught in this human conditioning and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

It's really not. If we add the layer of shame if we add, oh, this means I'm a bad person, then we're sunk deeper in trance. So for him the leaf was there just a reminder, okay, it happens. And it happens really quickly. Before we know it, we're grabbing something.

We're trying to make ourselves comfortable. We're having our judgment about, somebody else, it just happens. And if we can be good-humored about it, it's part of the reason that I tell jokes and goof around is because if it's grim, it's not going to work, you know. Really, I mean, it meaning the whole path, you can't do duck meditation if you're grim, because then you start getting down on yourself and then you start sinking. So we each made in a way a reminder like that leaf that says, yes, they can conditionings here, that's the predicament, and in some way that can just inspire us to kind of

commit ourselves, may I notice it with humor, with kindness, and may I have the intention to come back home? Any moment that you have the intention to come back home, you already have opened the doors wide to your inner sanctuary. This is a poem by the poet Kaviri. She says the old truth made you run a thousand miles inside an arid desert. Desperate for an oasis. Sit and close your eyes. Inhale the breeze of kindness. Exhale the toxic judgments dehydrating you like a prune. Feel the pain of old patterns trapped intense muscles. it's okay to cry to taste the salt of possibility just be just breathe let waves break against the silence returning you to a new and deeper truth well in a few

moments we're gonna some have a meditation together just practice a little bit but I just wanted to say that I began to talking about some of the misunderstandings about equanimity, that if we get too open and we're not controlling, you know, are we really going to be serving transformation? And I hope you get that true transformation arises from that quality of presence. Not only transformation, but also our capacity to really relish and love and savor life. One of the teaching stories that I think in our generation has kind of gone around a lot and has so much truth to it is from Ajancha, who's a really great teacher.

He describes having this glass that he loves. It's kind of, it's been handmade or whatever, a cup. And he says, do you see this, he says, I love this glass. It holds the 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. He says, 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 this is the power of equanimity that it actually, rather than being on our way somewhere and trying to manage our lives,

it frees us to cherish our lives moment by moment. And in a most basic way, in the moments when we're not fighting, we're not judging, we're not grasping, when we're just being, we gain the deepest wisdom which is a realization of who we are because the grasping fearful self dissolves

the sense of the who I am is small and separate dissolves in the moments of equanimity we begin to sense this mystery of awareness that's our true home it's truly what we are and it's out of that presence that awareness that we can then respond to the world with that purity of love

that really is the way we want to live. So I invite you into our final meditation tonight in that spirit so we enter equanimity with a pause and just enjoy that. Just sense, okay, a moment of pausing. There's not a sense of rolling forward to anything. It's just right here.

So invite yourself here, feeling your breath, relaxing with your breath. From this place, we'll just do a very simple investigation of equanimity. And first to bring to mind some situation in your life that you know brings up reactive response, where you, some situation that gets you nervous or angry, upset, but not something that's traumatizing. just want you to have a taste of this. Maybe something brings up a lot of judgment, maybe in a relationship the way somebody's behaving or something you're judging yourself for,

something coming up you're nervous about. Just let the situation be enough right here in front of you you can sense in your body what it brings up. Maybe it's just, you know, the unpleasantness of fear or anger. But just notice it and see, if it's possible just to commit yourself to contacting what's here, to noticing it, to feeling it fully. See if you can sit down in it. So you're actually letting your awareness fully enter into your body, enter into the throat or chest or belly or wherever you feel it. It helps you

to breathe with it, breathe with it. So in some way you're just sitting down in the feelings and let the thoughts about the situation kind of recede a little so you just feel whatever comes up whatever is so bad about this situation just to feel in your body okay this is just as it is

rather than being a self that something bad is happening to just sense the awareness that's here with unpleasantness intention simply to let be wakefully kindly and notice if you feel some space around what's going on

Notice a sense of who you are when you're even moving in the direction of equanimity. Continuing this examination, bring to mind something pleasant in your life, something that you find to be fun or that you feel grateful for, that gives you gratification, something that's either beautiful or something in a relationship with somebody that you really enjoy. And just notice as you bring that to mind that you can You can bring a very close in and let yourself feel physically what it's like to appreciate this or enjoy it.

Just open to those feelings and commit yourself to contacting them, to sitting down in them. So you're saying yes to the pleasantness, sitting down in the pleasantness. Then just to add on, remind yourself of the difficult situation. to have that storyline there, and then whatever is moving through you, move through you. But both situations be in mind. And sense the ground of awareness and kindness that can include them both. And as you do, as you sense a kind of swirl or might feel like a confusion or mix of different sensations or feelings, whatever's going on right now, just let it be there.

Yes, sit down in it. And as you do, just imagine that this whole room, everyone here is experiencing this range of pleasantness and unpleasantness, perhaps calm or sleepy or numb or excited, that everyone here is experiencing this play of sensations and emotions and that others elsewhere outside of this room, people you know everywhere, everywhere in the world, there are people that are just experiencing this play, just as you are, of aliveness. And sense the space it all floats in. Just sense the space that all floats in. This whole world of sensation and aliveness. Sense who you are when you're aware of this space of awareness. And just let go into that mystery,

into that stillness and silence, into that presence that's sourced in vastness. Again, the words of Kaviri, her last name's Patel, Kaviri Patel. She says, just be, just breathe. Let waves break against the silence, returning you to a new and deeper truth. Namaste. Yeah.

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