Tara Brach - Desire and Spiritual Freedom

Episode Date: May 19, 2010

2010-05-19 - The Buddha taught that becoming identified with "wanting mind" obscures our true nature and binds us in suffering. This talk explores a wise attitude in relating to desire, and offers three pathways towards freedom: Mindfulness of "wanting mind," trancing back desire to its source, and radical non-clinging.

Last week I talked about perhaps most central of all the Buddhist teachings. And it's also found in all the wisdom traditions. And this is the teaching on non-clinging, that our freedom comes when we're not grasping, when we're not trying to have life be different. It comes in the moments of really letting be and letting go. And I explored how our habit is to seek happiness in ways that might give temporary hits

but don't really satisfy us in a deep way, don't really bring happiness. And so the inquiry, and I'd like to continue it tonight because it is relevant for every person I know in terms of waking up and being more free, is really how do we relate to desire to that habits that we have of taking false refuge, which we all have,

How do we relate wisely to that in a way that can really free us? They can really allow us to touch true happiness. And I'd like to begin with a story that I heard of a father who took his 14-year-old son to a Buddhist putlock dinner. As it turned out, one of the men at the dinner had a few too many beers. So on the ride home, this father had to take the opportunity to explain the Buddhist teachings on moderation to his son. to be mindful of craving and so on. And so the son said the next morning he spoke to his dad.

He said, Dad, I have a story that I just made up. And this is the story his son told him. He said, there were these two Buddhist monks who had about 13 beers each. One had to walk home quite some distance. Will you be all right to walk home? His companion asked. Of course. I will take the middle path, he replied.

I thought it was a really good story. I often reflect on my own reaction to Buddhism when I was first introduced to the path, and I was in high school taking a comparative religion course. And I know that at that point when I heard the message I thought I was hearing is that having any desire or any wanting is a source of suffering, and that this is a religion based on moderation, the middle way. And to my adolescent biochemistry, this was about the bottom of my list of a desired religion. I mean, it's like I would have taken anything almost beyond Buddhism.

And so it just didn't feel life-affirming. I mean, I was celebrating desire for fun, for sex, for drugs, for music, for adventure, for nature, whatever it was. but I was on a roll, and that didn't mean I was always happy. I was on a roller coaster, of course, which was my karma to play out, but Buddhism seemed distinctly unappealing, like very vanilla, like, okay,

so a liberated person is even, you know, who wants that? So about a decade later, I discovered that the teachings weren't about removing oneself from life or a kind of detachment, that rather they describe pretty accurately the suffering that happens when we're identified with wants,

when we have to have things a certain way. Then, of course, it started making sense because by that time, I was seeing my false refuges and getting how they caused suffering and having my desires were coming from a deeper and deeper place. It's a real misunderstanding of Buddhism to say that desire is a problem.

That is a misunderstanding. All of life desires to exist. So saying desire is a problem is like saying life is a problem. Last week I talked a bit about how if it was a mathematically perfect universe, and by that I mean physicists described, quantum physicists described that there's matter and there's antimatter, particles with opposite charge. If it was a perfectly symmetrical universe, nothing would exist

because matter and antimatter would cancel each other out. But it's not perfectly symmetrical. In fact, there's a slight bias towards matter that they suspect that the early universe, there was a little more matter to the amount of one per billion particles than antimatter, which allowed this apparent universe to take form.

I think that's really interesting that the way the universe is designed is to have this slight bias. There's some urge to manifest. So I mentioned that last week, and then this week, about three days ago in the New York Times, they actually were able to show this in a laboratory

in the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory where they create this mini-universe that corresponds to the universe right after the Big Bang. And they were able to show that in collisions, again, there's this slight bias of certain electron to its charged opposite. And physicists are ecstatic about this discovery because it actually explains existence, maybe.

And the quote I read, I thought it was good, says, this is the quote of one physicist. So I would not say that this announcement is the equivalent of seeing the face of God but it might turn out to be the toe of God. So I just think that that's really, it's really powerful to sense that the way we're familiar with desire,

our urges day by day really come out of this universal energy that wants to exist, wants to thrive, wants to survive. Srinargarata, who's a child, teacher that no longer alive that's always inspired me describes that our real problem is that desire our desires are too contracted this is what he says the problem with you is not that you have desires but that you desire so little why not desire at all why not want complete fulfillment joy and freedom it says that when you really desire at all I mean if you really open it up and say, okay, I really want to be fully alive, fully in love, fully awake,

you become like the creator of the universe, desiring to manifest. You're just at one with that vastness. So our desires, if anything, are too small. And when we start investigating, and this is depending on our culture, our personal history, we see how we hitch our happiness to the certain externals wanting certain things and not wanting others so we come into incarnation and then we each develop our particular brand of this is what my wants are and this is what my not wants are there's a cartoon I've always liked where this woman goes to see a psychic and she's complaining she says I don't have enough intimacy with my husband my husband he won't talk about his

vulnerability and so that this fortune teller looks into her crystal ball and I'll update the cartoon a bit and she says to the woman well beginning of January 2010 men will start talking about their feelings within moments women everywhere will be sorry so we have our ideas about what brings happiness and interestingly we're regularly wrong about what will bring happiness you know in 13 studies done over the last few years And many of you are familiar with this, I'm sure. They found that lottery winners are ultimately no happier than non-winners. And they found that paraplegics usually become as content as people who can walk.

I think that that's really, that says a lot. We have this happiness set point, biochemically, really. And we anticipate good things happening will make us happier than they actually do, and that bad things will make us unhappier. all our beliefs the beliefs that have us fueled through the day pursuing certain things

are based on trying to be happier in this world and we fixate on the things we think are going to do it we live with what I often call if only mind which is a little bit of contemporary Buddhist jargon

you know if only then I'd be happy and the reality is that there is no external that truly brings happiness. They certainly bring temporary hits of pleasure, our relief. I mean, we wouldn't get addicted if they didn't. But ironically, the very things we get addicted to for those temporary hits keep us from discovering the real source of happiness.

So what do we do about our tendency to pursue false refuges? The Dharma teaching really is that if we're not mindful, our narrowed wants can rule our life and keep us trapped in a small sense of self. That if we're not aware of how we are chasing after things and I mean things in a gross way

like the next helping of the third bowl of Ben and Jerry's but the more subtle level too if we're not aware that we're constantly chasing after trying to accomplish something more if we're not aware of it then that craving that push

for something more keeps us locked in a sense of a self that never has enough and we can't be here for our lives I like the metaphor of that it's like we put our ladder up against the wall and climb up only to find it was up against the wrong wall. As I said last week, we spend our life fishing only to realize it's not fish that we're after. What I like about that is we do spend our life pursuing things that don't bring happiness.

So we look at the path of liberation and I'd like to explore three, approaches to wanting mind, our approaches to freedom that actually can wake us up from this trance of thinking the next moment should contain what this moment does not. Because that's what it is. We're living as if there's something ahead that's going to do it, but now is not it. That's the essence of wanting mind. It's not right here, which is the biggest delusion we live under. That what we want to somewhere else down the road in a more changed self or when somebody else happens to change and cooperate with our ideas about how they should be right so three areas that we'll cover the first area is direct mindful presence with wanting mind to become aware of it the second is what

I call tracing back desire how to take whatever's presenting as wanting mind and trace back to what is it we're really wanting. And the third is radical non-clinging. Absolutely cutting through to what's right here with open hands. So mindfulness of wanting mind, and as I do often, I'll ask you to reflect some in the midst. In Thailand, when Ajun Cha, who's no longer alive, was the abbot of a very major, monastery he'd sometimes walk around and he'd see a monk looking disturbed or attached or suffering and his basic comment to them would be ah must be very

attached that whenever he encountered somebody struggling on some level he would help them to investigate what they were holding on to and when we look at stress and then if you just take it for a few moments and you sense you know, if you recognize what are your compelling places of wanting? And you begin to say, okay, well, I'm definitely wanting something to change in this relationship or want something different at work. For some people, it's wanting a change in this body, some more health, the different weight, different appearance.

When we start to examine our domains of wanting, the more intense the wanting is, the more suffering is there. So there's different ways it comes up. That whenever there's strong wanting, the mind contracts, the body tenses, and there's either excitement or agitation.

And then wanting comes hand in hand with the fear of not getting. In fact, because this world keeps changing and because there's an ongoing flow of pleasant and unpleasant, often is the thing is we don't get what we want. And so then wanting comes with this reaction, a subversion. I have this cartoon I've had for a very, very long time

that has two dogs in bed and there's a poodle and this pretty sorry-looking morose hound dog. And the poodle's just kind of wagging her finger at him saying, bad sex, bad, bad sex. Anybody that wants to see it, it's here up in the altar. we get let down and it's cute but how many people want a partner or child or their sibling to be different than they are i mean how many of us really we live with a wanting for things to be a certain way and that creates suffering any moment you want somebody that's close to you to be

different to the degree that is an intense want they're suffering and it doesn't feel good to them either. But it's suffering. We want ourselves to be different. We want to eat a certain way and exercise a certain way and exhibit a certain confidence and confidence and we want our bodies to feel a certain way and we want our mood to be a certain way. How many moments are we completely satisfied with how we are? Not that often. We're usually in wanting mind. We usually want things different. So this is what the Buddha called the suffering of clinging. That to the degree that we're identified,

that we want life to be different, to that degree, we're not living fully here and we cannot touch happiness. So there's different ways that it comes forth. And one major way is that wanting takes us away from the present moment. And that in pursuing wants, it's as if if we're bicycling away from what's right here.

And the faster we pedal trying to get somewhere, the actually more distance we are from the one place where there can be satisfaction. The Tibetans have a wonderful metaphor. And I'll see if I can read a piece of it. There's a small mammal in Tibet. It's a predator that eats mice and other rodents. And when it wants to catch a mouse,

it sits at the entrance to the mouse, as if it's meditating and waits. Then, when a mouse sticks out of its head, the bigger creature grabs it. They're called marmots. So it grabs the little mouse, and then it thinks to itself, hmm, there must be more in there.

Rather than eat this one now, I'll save it and catch some more. So it sticks the victim under its butt, sits on it, and goes on waiting. When the remaining mice don't come out quickly, it leans forward to look in the hole, and the one wedged under its butt sneaks off and escapes.

another mouse comes and he grabs it and sits on it he manages to catch 10 mice one after the other but they all escape and he ends up having nothing to eat why because he keeps repairing for what he'll eat later and ignores the press and he keeps and he ends up going to bed hungry well I think that's a really great story because in a way we're living as if we're trying to accumulate something or check things off the list or accomplish or whatever

for the sake of, you know, next month or next year, and we can take a vacation. It's like, you know, we're working really hard to at the very end of our life, we'll have a day off so we can enjoy things or something. But there is this, it's part of this wanting mind that if you physicalize, it's as if we're leaning forward and there's a tension and there's kind of a tightness

in a related way, in addition to leaving this moment for the sake of something in the future. We focus, as I mentioned before, on objects that can't fulfill us. It's like the two goldfish that are swimming in the ocean, and one says to the other, so what is it your heart really desires? The other response, oh, I'd love to have the fishbowl, you know,

the colored gravel, the plastic plants, the little castle, you know, the whole deal, you know. It's kind of sad, you know. So in a way, this is the illusion underneath all addiction. And we're all addicted in some ways. We fixate. Rather than opening to the changing flow of what's here, there's some sense that we need to hold on to things

to control them to make it work out. There's some basic clinging to stay in control. And we cling to what we think is going to help us. and, you know, addiction is just when there's a substance or something that we think is going to help us and we keep going back to it and it keeps making us more and more need another fix. So we're drinking the salt water

and getting thirstier and thirstier. I came across this reading, and it has to do with a conference that was held at MIT, group of scientists and addiction, researchers, but one of the people who attended was William Moyers, son of the well-known Moyers, who himself is a recovery advocate, 12 years after he had began recovery from crack and alcohol. So he was invited to speak at this MIT conference. So here's what he said.

I have an illness with origins in the brain, but I also suffered with other components of this illness. I was born with what I like to call a hole in my soul, a pain that came from the reality that I just wasn't good enough, that I wasn't deserving enough, that you weren't paying attention to me all the time, that maybe you didn't like me enough. At this point, the conference room was as quiet as it had been all day. For us addicts, he continued, recovery is more than just taking a pill or maybe getting a shot. Recovery is also about the speech. Recovery is also about the spirit about dealing with that whole in the soul. In a way, I feel like that sums up the Dharma in a very powerful set of words, which is that there is a deep sense that something's missing,

a deep disconnection from wholeness, from spirit, from beingness. And in a way, it's part of our condition nature, that we incarnate and part of taking form is that we forget our source. We forget the awareness and love and belonging that's really our essence. And that's something that we all struggle with. And the more we forget, the more pain of separation we experience, the more we grasp onto things to try to fill up that hole. So addiction is a process of trying to fill that hole, trying to find connection, find belonging, reconnect with spirit. And the sad thing is that the more that we're addicted, whether it's to achieving or being dependent on another person or to a substance, whatever our fixation. It could be addicted to compulsive thinking. Whatever our false

refuge is, rather than filling our soul, it keeps us from the one place where soul retrieval, we're reconnecting with spirit as possible. Does that make sense? Our false refuges keep us from true refuge. So this is the process of addiction and the healing, and this is really the essence of the Dharma teachings, the healing is become aware of what's happening, become aware of wanting, become aware of grasping, become aware of the false refuges, and become aware of the suffering of those false refuges. Because if we start realizing how the way we grasp onto a person or try to control a person actually creates a distance with that person. If we can really feel that, we start loosening the grip some. Seeing is free. The first step, though, if we're to

begin to investigate wanting mind, which there's no way around it if you want to be free. If you want to be free, you need to watch and see where the fixation is. But in order to do it, there has to be a quality of profound forgiveness in the mind. If we watch wanting mind and then add the second arrow, blaming ourselves for being an addict, or blaming ourselves for craving or fixating, that's another form of clinging. So the trick is to be mindful of wanting

and be truly accepting and forgiving. One friend in the Sanga here just sent me an email today about how much she in the last days had been wanting her little daughter to be different because her daughter's going through a real needy phase and how she wanted herself to be different in different ways and felt oh I'm bad, I'm flawed, I'm not enough. And then she had that wake-up moment

and this is what she wrote. She said, I was not at all allowing the feelings but suffering completely by thinking I was wrong in having them, wrong in wanting things, wrong in aversion. So then she says, such a beautiful and simple thing to forgive myself, allow and move on. The step of forgiving, of seeing wanting mind, even if it's the most violent or addictive kind of a process, of seeing it

with kindness is the beginning of being able to release it. So forgiveness is the first step, and then we begin to investigate what's really like. And you might just for a moment, we'll just dip in and then I invite you to explore this more over the weeks to come, you might right now let this be a pause and just explore one area where you feel you get caught in wanting mine. So just to take a moment now and maybe scan today or this week, last few weeks, and notice where it is that you can get reactive, where it really matter, where it really matters, to you that things are a certain way. And it might be that you get reactive

and something to do with work. Feeling that a project's working outright or you're getting recognition or making the money you need to be making. Maybe it's that you, in the recession, you lost employment and the wanting is to have a job. Or maybe the intensity, that the grasping or wanting is around a relationship,

something you want to change in a relationship, how you want someone else to be different? Maybe you're wanting something for someone. Maybe you're desperately wanting something to work out for someone. Maybe you're really wanting yourself to be different in some way. What comes forward in your psyche is where you really are very attached to something. And as you begin to examine,

an area of wanting mine, let your intention be to be truly forgiving. It's our most fundamental conditioning to want things a certain way. And depending on our family and our wounds, it can become a deep condition kind of clutching. So forgive. For some, the wanting that you'll notice is really around a substance. Still, to examine. Forgive and examine. See if you can, as if you're watching a movie, bring the film right to where you're most caught in wanting. Sense the situation. And if someone else is involved, what's going on with that person, see their face, maybe hear the words exchanged, see the setting. And as a way to help you get in touch, just exaggerated a bit, the sense of, well, what's it like when I'm really wanting?

You might let your posture change, so you actually sit in a way that represents wanting and feel it in your face, sense what happens to your hands. Sense when you're wanting what your relationships like with others around you. Is there a sense of connection or intimacy? How are you liking yourself when you're in wanting mind?

What does your body feel like? Your heart. what's the space of mind like? What would it be like if you were very chronically in a state of intense wanting in the days and weeks to come? What would be your sense of intimacy with yourself and your world?

So this is meant to be a continued inquiry for you to identify when there's strong wanting and with curiosity and with forgiveness to investigate, to notice, and notice the suffering. Notice work keeps you from really being at ease and at home. Again, take a few full breaths, come back. There's a teaching that seeing is freeing,

but the seeing needs to be a very committed, full presence with, not a glancing presence. So to the degree that you have an interest in freeing yourself, to really examine this is very powerful. One friend of mine had a very powerful experience of wanting mind and finding a shift that I wanted to share with you because it really touched me. For this woman, like many of us,

she had a deep want over the past few years when the different states came forward to vote on gay marriage that they affirm it. especially when Marilyn voted against it, she went into a very deep rage. She was really, really riveted on that state and was enraged when Marilyn voted against. And then it became urgently important to her for her straight loved ones to understand how important marriage equality was to her. And what she found out was that maybe they intellectually understood, but they didn't quite get why it was such that big a deal to her. and she found that there was a wedge that was coming between her and others

because she really wanted them to understand how much this mattered and they didn't. So first she wanted the vote to go a certain way and then she wanted others to understand how much it mattered. And she was really, really struggling. She then went to a workshop that IMCW sponsored, we brought in the guest teacher Ruth King, some of you might have been there. And Ruth at one point said that, She said, we continue to give away our power to others when we need others to get us in order for us to be okay, to be free. I want to repeat that.

We continue to give away our power to others when we need others to get us in order for us to be okay, to be free. So this was like a flash, and all of a sudden she saw, okay, I was grasping onto, I needed them and wanted to, wanted them to understand and in any moment that I needed them to understand me to be okay, I was giving away my power. I was unable to be free. To rely on things being a certain way to be okay makes us unfree. So that was like a very big wake up for her to see how much she was trapping herself and suffering by wanting and demanding that others in life be different. She still, care deeply about marriage equality and about others understanding, but it was without the same tight fist. So when D.C. voted yes, this woman and her partner, who are leaders in our

Affinity Sangas, this is Wendy Taylor and Los Armento. Well, this is Wendy's story. When they voted yes, they were the 48th in line to get their marriage certificate, and then they were married this weekend and it was with an amazingly joyful heart because she had let go of this fist that had to have things be a certain way. I think for those of, and she shared this story at her at the wedding this weekend, and for those that were there, it was an amazing Dharma teaching about how any time we are fixated on having to have things be a certain way in those moments. were set up to suffer. A really good teaching for us.

So you might consider in your own life how important it is that others understand you or your needs or your hurts or that they agree with you. We get very fixated that others agree with us. It's part of being aware of wanting mind. It's to see the suffering and separation that comes when we want others are life to be different.

So this is one of the ways of beginning to free ourselves, to bring presence to wanting mind, a forgiving presence. The second way that I wanted to mention, I call tracing back desire. Again, if you think of that hole in the soul, it's really an unfulfilled longing to realize oneness, to realize belonging, to come home to who we are. And the way William Morris put it,

he was really living in a false sense of self, that he wasn't enough, that he was flawed. And so it took spirits to feel better. So tracing back desire is sensing, okay, I want something to feel better, and then sensing, what is it I'm really wanting to feel? And to asking over and over again, what is it that's really the desire here?

What is it I really long for? Until we get in touch with what's underneath the urge that has been driving, us. The Tibetans put it this way. What is considered the poison is a medicine. That the craving, which seems like poison, when we trace it back to the longing inside it, becomes a medicine. But we have to get down to the longing. So example of this is that a man that came to retreat some years ago came, and he was very much in pain about being in his 40s. and single, and he had just ended a relationship.

She had left, and he came to retreat basically saying, it was my last chance for love. You know, that was, and I don't know if any of you have ever had that thought in your, after the ending of a relationship, but, you know, his if only mind were if only she would have tried a little bit harder, we could have gotten over that hump,

and then my life would have been happy and blessed and free. So we did a bit of, tracing back as I've been describing where he started with this kind of urgency and anxiety and grasping like the the anxiety was underneath it was this fear of them and always be alone and the grasping is I really want to be with someone I really want to be with someone so we got in touch with the I really want to be with someone feeling and and asked him if you were what would that allow you to feel. And he said special, you know, accompanied, good. And so he's beginning to trace back and what would it, what would it really be. And then he said, if I was with someone, life would be

more full because I'd be sharing it with someone. I said, okay, feel that. Feel that longing to have life be more full. And then he started to, you know, sense that aliveness that he was longing for. And then he said, if I could feel that, I would love life. I would just love life. And I said, okay, keep getting in touch with your longing to love life. And as he got in touch with the longing to love life, and I hope you're sensing, this is Sri Nor Sargadatta's message, it was getting bigger and bigger. He just felt that he opened into this luminous, loving presence. He went from, if only her, to loving life and then being that love.

This is tracing back desire. He said to me, at the end of the retreat, Tara, I keep finding that what I'm really wanting is here. But then I forget, and I have to go through re-remembering again. But that's the path. We trace back desire. We get to the fact that we're longing for love. And then that longing, if we really open to it, is love itself. It's love wanting to love.

Does that make sense? And then we just let go into that, and there's just love. And we're there. We know it. Okay, I've just traced back and everything I'm longing for. It's not out there. It's just an opening to this. And then a little while later, our minds start having thoughts. And we're back to, oh, it's that person and that experience again. That's okay. Forgive the habit of wanting mind. It will represent itself over and over and over again. But what's possible in these first two steps, the freedom go together is if you begin to sense the suffering of it. You begin to suffer that the moments that you're leaning forward and chasing after something are not moments of true intimacy, not moments of real happiness. Then there becomes this intentionality to trace it back. Okay, what am I really longing for?

Tracing it back. Feeling, I really want to feel a lot. I really want to feel accompanied. I want to feel connected. What would that be like? And then you start finding, oh, it's here. The more I sense what it would be like, the more I realize in that presence, it's here.

There's a question I find so useful, which is, isn't it true that everything you really, really want is already here? Isn't it true that what you really long for, peace, love, aliveness, creativity, realization. It's only possible here, and it's already here. And the only way to realize that is to come here.

And if you come here fully enough, you find that what you're longing for is in the moment. This poem, Ellen Tinen, who was at our spring retreat, wrote this as kind of an inspiration from the retreat. and it's called come home. And it has everything to do with finding what we thought we were looking for out there right here. She writes,

Come home now, my dear. Come home and rest. Yes, yes, sweet one, I've seen your brave questing into the future, your tireless forays into the past, but hush now. You can stop your restless searching, for love is right here.

Fall into its sweet heaviness, like the honey drunk bee surrenders under the weight of its sun, dust of pollen, into the deep cup of the rose. Let go. Be buoyed in the flow of the warm wave salt home. You never truly left. Be still. Be at peace. Just rest now. Love is here. When you listen, can you hear in these words the kindness? come home now my dear come home and rest yes yes sweet one i've seen your brave questing into the future your tireless forays into the past there's a kindness to it if we can regard our wanting mind our craving even the addictions that cause us so much suffering if we can sense they're coming from a sense of a whole in the soul there's a restlessness to our beings if we're It's not our fault.

That very quality of forgiveness helps us to come back home and find the love that's always in our ready right here. So the first approach, mindfulness, forgiving mindfulness to wanting mind. The second, tracing back the desire, sensing what's behind and behind and behind. And the third, what I describe as radical non-clinging. In many of the Tibetan imagery, you see the Vodra sword of clarity that kind of cuts right through.

And radical non-clinging is something in us that says stop. It doesn't say it meanly, but it just says stop. Stop moving. Stop grasping. Stop trying to go somewhere. Stop resisting. Just D, right here, right now. The deepest illusion that there's this self on its way somewhere else.

So truly pausing, if right now you say just stop, just stop, and all at once being completely still right in the midst of your present state, then grace presents itself. freedom love realization so this is the the sword of discrimination

that just cuts through all that doing self and it's the deepest compassion in us it says stop really stop one teacher says

that we're learning to drop the barrier we constantly erect with the pursuit can you sense that that in pursuing there's this barrier that keeps us from this timeless presence that's the source of what we long for. Just stop.

This is a quote from a book called Perfect Brilliant Stillness. If there can be a simple turning it around, a coming at it the other way and opting out of the desire pleasure cycle, with a simple knowing that this is perfect now here the way things are and nothing has to be any different. If there can be more than just saying that,

more than just believing it but truly knowing it in the heart, then simply there is happiness. There can be that knowing it in the heart that this is perfect, now here, the way things are, that nothing has to be anything. different then simply there is happiness nothing has to be changed this here now is perfect and how many times when someone's really happy they declare in some way oh this is perfect this is as good as it gets right well the

interesting thing is it's not about it it's not about this as good as it gets the happiness is coming because of the quality of presence, of heerness. It's nothing to do with the object. It's the space that we're resting in. It's that still, open, loving presence. Sometimes people, when they hear me talking about, oh, it's perfect as it is, says,

if I believe that, I wouldn't fight for justice. I wouldn't, you know, care about what just happened, the oil spill in the Gulf. I wouldn't care about that every day people are dying in Afghanistan, misguided attempt again to try to bring peace by aggression. I wouldn't care. Saying that this moment is perfect actually opens us to a presence, allows us to respond to this world with intelligence and compassion.

It doesn't mean that we don't care and that we won't respond. It means we don't care. the capacity to source ourselves right here. We have the capacity to come home to the vastness, to the beauty, and to the love that's here. And it's from that presence, so we actually act in ways that truly are transformative. Transformation never happens when people seeking social justice are clinging and grasping and resisting and flailing their fists in the air, as Wendy found out. It didn't help what she most believed in to be outraged and enraged and distancing herself. We can work for healing, but it has to come from a real place of non-clinging.

There's a story of Tetsugan, a devoted Zen practitioner and a teacher in Japan who lived in the 1600s, and he decided to publish the sutras, those are the discourses of the Buddha, which at that time, were available only in Chinese so the books were to be printed in Japanese and it would take the construction of 60,000 wood blocks to accomplish this so Tetsugan began by traveling and collecting donations bit by bit he collected the significant sum of money needed a few sympathizers would give him a hundred pieces of gold but most of the time he received only small coins he thanked each donor with equal gratitude after ten years Tetsugan had enough money to be

begin his task. But it happened that at that time the UG River overflowed and crops were ruined. Famine followed. Tetsugin took the funds he collected for the books and spent them to save others from starvation. Then he began again his work of collecting. Several years afterward, an epidemic spread over the country. Tetsugin again gave away what he had collected. For a third time he started his work, and after 20 years his wish was fulfilled, the printing blocks which produced the first edition of the sutras can be seen today in Obaku monastery in Kyoto. The Japanese tell their children that Tetsugan made three sets of sutras and that the first two invisible sets surpass even the last. Tetsugan is celebrated January 1st of each year.

I share that with you because there's a teaching that to be kind, one must swerve regularly from their path. And what that really means, it's really about non-clinging, that we sense our aspiration, we sense what's important, we sense, we kind of aim ourselves, but then we respond in presence to what's really needed in the moment. And that might mean we have to let go of what we thought we wanted to do or say or be or whatever, but it's in that open-handedness that we have our sense of what matters, but we keep our hands open, we keep fluid, that we truly serve, that we truly heal. So tonight in a way

it's been exploring freedom from the trance of clinging. And the three ways, presence with wanting mind, tracing back desire, really arriving at our deepest aspiration. And then this radical non-clinging presence, which allows us to respond to the world with true compassion, and realize in the deepest way who we are. The gift is that as we bring this into the world, we actually become an expression of loving presence. So let's just close with a brief moment of pausing. And in this pause, you might sense what it means

to have this moment be enough, that relaxed presence where nothing needs to be different. to sense who you are when there's truly a letting be. The Zen poet talks about the kind of clinging desire. He says, without this, without that kind of desire, everything is sufficient. With seeking, myriad things are impoverished. Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.

A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body. Alone I hike with a deer. Cheerfully I sing with village children. The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears. The pine on the mountaintop fits my heart. Thank you for your presence and attention. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington

to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www. www.imcw.org.