Tara Brach - Embodied Spirit

Episode Date: April 28, 2010

2010-04-28 - The Buddha taught that mindfulness of the body is a direct path to the realization of truth, to peace and freedom. This talk explores how we leave a present-centered awareness of our body, and the pathways of homecoming.

Last week, I spoke some about the phrase planting ourselves in the universe, which I happen to like. It's from Lady Chattelagh's lover, D.H. Lawrence. And I think it's a really beautiful way to consider meditation practice that we're planting ourselves right here in this moment, in this earth, in this body that's right here, in this awareness. And I'd like to continue in that theme. One of the early Theravada meditation texts,

which in Taravada Buddhism is kind of the ground from which Vaphasana, the practice we do here springs, one of them reads this way. It says that we are learning to touch enlightenment with the body. And this teaching is really a way of saying, well, what is enlightenment? Enlightenment is really the realization of our fullness, of this awareness and love that's here. And this phrase is basically saying, the gateway to this realization is this presence in this alive, in body being that we are.

And it's very apt because one of the big misunderstandings of meditation has been that in some way we're exiting the body, relieving the body and hovering somewhere else, you know, some transcendent place that is kind of detached from this earthly realm. And it's not so. In fact, the most profound and full presence can only be experienced if we're awake right here in this body. So we'll be exploring what I sometimes call embodied spirit,

but how to feel, a quality of sacred presence that comes when without any resistance, without any grasping, we really plant ourselves in the universe, in this body, in this being right here. This is one teacher, Ajum Buda Dasa,

opened a 10-day retreat with this instruction. She said, do not do anything that takes you out of your body. and I thought that was wow what kind of an instruction just imagine if through the day or through a week

on some level you knew that your intention was and it's not a kind of a finger wagging do not but it's like what if your intention was not to leave just not to leave all sorts of interesting things happen when you have that intention

this is John O'Donohue who if you've been here, you know that I love quoting from it. He's a wonderful poet and teacher who is no longer alive. He says, we need to come home to the temple of our senses. We need to come home to the temple of our senses. Our bodies know that they belong to life, to spirit. Our bodies know it is our minds that make our lives so homeless.

Isn't that powerful that our bodies know? But our minds, our minds which can be, if they're a servant, incredibly creative and essential for survival and part of communication, but our minds also take us down tracks that make us homeless, separate us, not only from ourselves, but from any sense of belonging with each other. We need to come home to the temple of our senses. So a lot of the practice that we do here is a training in how to wake up out of what I often call the trance of thinking. And again, it's not a diatribe against thinking, thinking we couldn't survive, but we get lost. And if we're honest with ourselves, if we look back at today and just say, well, where was I?

huge swaths of the day we know what we were planning or kind of cycling through our familiar cocoon of thoughts a small percentage absolutely essential and necessary a large percentage kind of numbing

distancing a trance again John O'Donohue he says we rush through our days in such stress and intensity as if we were here to stay and the serious project of the world depended on us. I think that's pretty good too.

There's two illusions that he refers to there and it's really critical if we want to be free that we recognize these illusions. The first one, the illusion of permanence. Now if I ask for a hand-raise, how many of you believe you're going to die? We'd all go, yeah, right? we believe it but in terms of our actual visceral reality of you know we have some kind of a

trance that it's just going to go on and on and on we live as if it's going on and on and on one friend of mine said you know what if we really knew that we had only a certain handful of beautiful sunsets that we were going to be there for now we might have a lot of beautiful sunsets we see but therefore that we really were going to pause and open to the wonder? Or what if we were with a child or a friend and we really got it that we don't have endless time, that this moment matters as much as any moment in the world? See, usually we think this moment is on its way to some other moments. We don't let this moment really count. We're rushing through it. We're toppling into the next.

So there's the illusion of permanence that we've got this future stretching out, that we're going to be there for it, and that we don't really sense the preciousness. That's one of the illusions that John O'Donoghue talks about. The second one, which is equally strong, is at the center of this world that we're tumbling through is this self that's quite important and quite special. special and that we need to control things and manage things and protect and enhance.

And again, there's nothing wrong with taking care of ourselves. In fact, part of being alive and living with compassion and care is taking care of these bodies and minds and families and lives. But we are fixated and preoccupied in this story that stars, moi, and that's always navigating to see what's going to enhance or what's going to threaten. It's a fixation that blocks us from being there for the person that we might not have around that long or that blocks us from really seeing the blossoms in springtime that blocks us from presence. So these are these two illusions that keep us thinking. We're on our way to a future and we're busy planning around.

his self and it makes us homeless we have in those moments we're not feeling aliveness we're not embodied we leave home so the first phase of this talk is really this recognition of we leave home a lot and it's and we're in a culture that's very conducive to it to not really being in the body one classroom First day of teacher describes interviewing children about the importance of the body and their response to what is it. Its importance is to carry around the brain. You know, like this vehicle. Another classroom, first day of school, kindergarten teacher says,

if anyone has to go to the bathroom, hold up two fingers. Little voice from the back says, how will that help? So our conditioning to constantly manage our experience and not be so right here. I could feel it in myself just then. I was trying to get on with the talk and realize, you know, I'm dehydrated here. And it took me a while to be able to say, wait, the talks about being here in this body. And I invite you to listen tonight and not be worried about the content. But notice if you can right now feel your body.

your body as you're listening. Did you leave for a while? Anybody's been kind of staying with the body, with the breath? As soon as we start listening or thinking, we tend to disconnect. So see if you can sit back down in your body and as much as possible, you can trust that anything that's worth really taking in is already within you and you'll really attune more by being in your body. I sometimes use the metaphor of our life as like this room that we're constantly preoccupied

with kind of getting the heat just right and getting the air conditioning right when it's hot out and when do we open the windows and when do we open the door and let people in and what kind of music do we want on We're always managing the controls, kind of just to get our experience of the moment just right. And the main way we do it is through moving our mind, kind of planning and rehearsing and figuring. And so those moments of trying to manage the condition of the room are moments that we will not be feeling our body, not being embodied.

The more uncomfortable we are, the more it's our heart. habit to leave our body. But even when it's pleasant, even when the experience is pleasant, we tend to leave anyway. There's one story of a woman who describes that when she's on this date and things start getting romantic, she gets pulled between really being into the romanticness and going and making a phone call and calling her friend and telling her friend about what's happening. Between the two. And you know how to do you. James Joyce put it in one of his books he said Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body you know we're just somewhat apart so take a moment we'll just keep coming back and just reflect

and sense for yourself you might just close your eyes and you might just sense for yourself if there's anything right now between me and being at home in my body just sense so often we find if we begin to come home to the body, we find some physical discomfort that we really didn't want to feel or some restlessness or anxiety, our distractedness. But mostly it's a habit of just not sitting down into the moment, not planting ourselves right here in this body. This is a teacher Hamid. He says, sincerely explore for yourself. Are you here or not? Are you in your body or oblivious are only aware of parts of it. When I say are you in your body, I mean, are you completely filling your body? Just check that out. Are you completely filling your body? I want to know

whether you are in your feet or just have feet. Do you live in them or are they just things you use when you walk? Are you in your belly or do you just know vaguely that you have a belly? or is it just for food? Are you really in your hands or do you move them from a distance? Are you present in your cells inhabiting and filling your body? If you aren't in your body,

what significance is there in your experience this moment? Are you preparing so that you can be here in the future? Are you setting up conditions by saying to yourself, well, when such and such happens, I'll have time, and then I'll be here.

If you're not here, what are you saving yourself for? So we leave. And just to say it's not our fault, it's very much in our culture. We're in a culture that is more about dominating and controlling nature than belonging to the seasons,

belonging to the natural rhythms. We're in a very direct way. We take pain as a problem that we have to try to get rid of as quickly as possible. We put grief on a timetable. Aging and death are kind of embarrassing almost. We have kind of an embarrassment about it. And we anesthetized births.

We interfere with the dying process. So we're kind of a manipulative, trying to overcome or dominate or control our naturalness. that life is this problem to be solved, not this mystery to inhabit and feel and live from the inside out. We mistrust the body. And it takes its toll on our children

because the more technology, the more video games, the less in the body, less in nature, we can sense that there's this kind of disjunct. Somebody sent me this a long time ago. A three-year-old went to his dad to see with his dad to see a litter of kittens. On returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother

that there were two boy kittens and two girl kittens. How did you know his mother asked? Oh, well, daddy picked them up and looked underneath, he replied, I think it's printed on the bottom. So there's this kind of cultural conditioning that splits body and mind. There's a mistrust of pleasure and in most religions, and this includes Buddhism. There is, in some schools, there's awareness of the body, of the seduction of the senses. So it's almost like, well, to be enlightened, you've got to watch out and not get too caught up in the body. To be spiritual means to rise above the body.

Again, another story. Little boy opens a big and old family Bible with fascination. He looked at the old pages as he turned them. Then something fell out of the Bible, and he picked it up and looked at it closely. It was an old leaf from a tree that had been pressed between pages. Mama, look what I found, the boy called out. What have you got there, dear?

As mother asked. And with astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, it's Adam's suit. Oh, that was cute. So there's the cultural play, but one of the most basic reasons we leave home, and this we've talked about here before, is that to the degree we have emotional wounding,

the rawness in the body is difficult to be with. And rather than sit down and feel the twist of angst or of sorrows and grief or even the heat of anger, we act out or we go off into our minds and think. We want to get away from the natural energies that feel strong. The more emotional wounding, the more dissociation from the body. Does that make sense? So we try to get away from pain, and the point is not that we should avoid that which comforts.

The point is not that we shouldn't take Advil or that there's some machismo thing we should be doing to endure. One of my favorite of George Carlin's mottoes is he says, what I like is no pain, no pain. So he also wrote this. He said, they show you how detergents take out bloods, stains. I think if you've got a t-shirt with blood stains all over it, maybe your laundry isn't your biggest problem. Anyway, the truth is that we organize ourselves around not feeling pain.

We leave. And so there's kind of two core principles that we start paying attention to in exploring how to come back home. And one, and this has become kind of spread widely in the in the Buddhist communities is that pain is inevitable. There's there's nothing we can do about that, but the suffering is optional. We don't have to leave. The other which is related is leaving makes it worse. Leaving actually causes the suffering and there's a really valuable equation I found which is pain times resistance equals suffering. Okay so This is the hub of what we're really going to be exploring tonight. What stops us from coming home is that we're resisting discomfort most of the time.

We're in some way thinking we'll be happier, better off if we stay busy, if we try to fix things or figure things out. We want to do anything but sit down and feel the restlessness that's going on are just what's unfamiliar. We're just not that willing to be at home. That resistance causes suffering. It takes us away. Think about this.

What happens if there's energy in our body that we're pulling away from, that we're walling off, that we're keeping at arm's length? What happens? If we've gone through emotional wounding and we try not to feel it or if there's physical pain and we're trying to get away, what happens? one thing that happens is that we get tired it takes energy to dissociate to push away what we don't want to feel so I know many people that are caught in kind of a chronic cycle of fatigue and on some level it's because they're running away all the time from something so I'm just putting that out there this is one of the ways when I say pain times resistance equal suffering when we resist what's here we get tired physically emotionally spiritually tired a second thing that happens is that the more we push away energy

that's inside us the more actual physical unpleasantness can arise and the classic example is in labor that women are taught when in labor that the one thing not to do is to contract against the contraction right that if we can learn not to resist the unpleasantness it actually moves through it actually supports the process we get through so that's the second way in which we cause more suffering by resisting for most of us the resistance creates just a kind of a chronic armor of knots in our body. Third way, when there's something there but we're running away from it, we're left with chronic apprehension. We can never really relax. In other words, as long as we somewhere know that there's some raw energy, some pain that we're running from,

that keeps a certain kind of hum of anxiety in our system. The fourth is the most deep Dharma teaching, which is that any time we're pulling away, we get identified with the self that's trying to pull away. It solidifies a sense of self. Sometimes it's called selfing. The more we're trying to get away from

something, the more we feel solid and small and that we're on the run. Our identity contracts. You might think of it, this is a metaphor I sometimes use, that you're going to a party, and there's someone that you want to avoid. And it might seem like your moves are free

that you're kind of doing it according to your party objectives. But how much of your movement around the room or what you do or what you say is defined by wanting to avoid contact with that person? It's always in the background of your psyche. How free-flowing and present really are your moments? How much can you feel open-heartedness and joy and playfulness and special?

spontaneity when that person's there. You know, it's the same thing when you're running away from some pain, emotional pain in the body. The person at the party is the unpleasant part of our inner experience. So when we're resisting, when we're not wanting what is here, the activity of pulling away creates a kind of dividedness. We don't feel home. We don't feel free. We don't feel happy. In fact, you cannot feel happy if you're running away from something.

So I've called it many times the unlived life. I've described it that way. And it's literally the parts of life that we've resisted. And Eckertoli calls it the pain body. Other psychological types call it the shadow. It's been called demons in the Tibetan tradition. It's just unlived life. So one reflection in any moment that's useful is,

what am I running from? In fact, if you just close your eyes for a moment and just sense, you know, what's asking for attention that I've been pulling away from? And then just listen into your body. What is it that's here that I've been in some way pulling away from,

not wanting to feel? The suffering is from the unseen, unfeld parts of our experience, from the pulling away itself. This is really another definition of how karma, difficult, painful karma is created by resisting, by reacting, by leaving presence. So the challenge, we're going to come around now to, okay, so how do we come home? The challenge is rather than whatever our strategy is of leaving, which is usually obsessive thinking,

we begin to choose to be here a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And what would make us want to do that, why we'd bother meditating, why we'd bother coming home when there's that uneasiness often that we have to sit down with, is that there's a wise part of us that intuits that that's the pathway to freedom. You know, the Tibetans have a wonderful way of visualizing this through the mandalay's of, you know, that any sacred space, the entry to sacred space, and this is true in temples and in the classic tankas, the great drawings or weavings.

The entrance to sacred space, to the hub, is through these wild deities. And they're the rageful deities and the wrathful deities and jealous deities. And it's like there's stuff we have to feel. And that's kind of the gateway

into sacred space. if we're willing to say, okay, come home into the moment, feel what's here. In that willingness and in that presence, we start discovering a kind of a space and a freedom and a joy. This is not just drudgery and a joy that lets us know why we bothered. Because otherwise, why would we want to pause and come into the body if there is that kind of layers of difficulty? And it's because in not resisting, in opening to what's here, we discover an open-heartedness, we discover a freedom that is really precious. That's why we choose to touch and lightenement through our body.

The story I like to share to describe this usually as my own because this has been such a kind of a dramatic gateway of practice for me. We all have our own versions comically of where the wounds or difficulties are and in the last eight years for me it's been a lot of physical challenges and I've shared with some of you here that for most of the decades of my life I was a bit of a jock you know I was a you know very I was very into pretty much every kind of athletic and I kind of was a I had some vanity about it you know the feeling of being in shape and fit and athletic and it all came crashing down and it has and it won't come back in the old way it came crashing down all sorts of joint stuff and basically challenge moving without injuring myself so I've had to find ways to move without injuring myself about five years ago I think it was about five years ago I think it was about five years ago. I went to a retreat. It was a six-week retreat, and that was kind of when it became

very obvious to me. I couldn't bike anymore. I couldn't play tennis, you know, all the things I, you know, like doing. And I was at the retreat and very physically uncomfortable and felt how all the ways I was resisting it. I was first of all just not wanting to be in my body just because it was I'm comfortable, but I was also addicted to trying to figure out what was wrong and how to make it better. So I was leaving that way, completely addicted to it. I was also judging myself. It was my main story was, how did I manage to hurt myself so much? Like, what did I do wrong to be sick?

It's really, this is the second arrow I talk about. We have stuff happen, and then we blame ourselves for it happening, make it worse. So I was leaving. I was leaving with all the figuring out. I was leaving with all the judgment. And at one point it became clear that my body had become the enemy. This is pain times resistance equals suffering.

I was really at war with my own body. And so it became my practice, as I've taught here a lot with this wheel of awareness, to say to myself, come back. and I had to say it in an increasingly soft and gentle and kind way. Like, it didn't matter

how many times I left, there was something in the me that just said, okay, just come back, just come back until the very kindness and the invitation let me kind of gentle into being there. And then there was just this kind of changing

constellation of sometimes heat or burning or tightness, but sometimes flow and sometimes tingling. It was just the mix, sometimes unpleasant, but not always. In fact, it was a lot more unpleasant when I was tensing against it, judging and trying to figure out. Then I began, because I was living more inside out, I had six weeks on this retreat, I began to explore how I could move really slowly and really carefully and find some sense of just continuity of paying attention so I didn't hurt myself.

Big discovery. The more I was in my mind, the more easy it was to hurt myself. If I was listening to my body, intimate attention with my body, I didn't hurt myself. So I began to find this very intimate presence where my body just became this field of aliveness,

sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, but by not resisting I was resting in this open kind of awareness that felt tremendously present and tremendously free let me read to you if I brought it with me oh yeah this is Anne Morrill Lindberg she writes this she says go with the pain

let it take you open your palms and your body to the pain It comes in waves like a tide, and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then retreating, leaving you empty and clear. With a deep breath, it has to be as deep as the pain. One reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain, as though the pain were not yours but your bodies. The spirit lays the body on the altar. Now I'm talking about homecoming and emphasizing a bit of that what keeps us away often is pain, but it's not just pain.

It's the habit of not being familiar. Like right this moment, what happens when you invite yourself back into your body? Because we do leave. We're not familiar with inhabiting our body. We're not familiar with this kind of deep allowing where we just rest in awareness. and receive the sensations and awareness. So this is part of the alchemy of transformation. The Buddha described this as the first foundation of mindfulness,

this realm of sensations, of vibration, of aliveness. And he said that in this fathom long body, that this first foundation, if we learn to be present here, can be the gateway to every level of spiritual freedom. and it starts with this simple willingness to come back. So take a moment again. Let's just keep checking in. You might close your eyes and just very gently

without any judgment or rigidity. Just invite yourself to come back right here. You might breathe with whatever you're experiencing in your body just to acknowledge what might be difficult, to relax with what might be difficult. What we can find is that by bringing a courageous and mindful presence to bodily sensations, our energies that were tangled or tight or pushed away

begin to untangle and flow. Rather than a self that's thinking or resisting, if you're fully opening to sensations, it's hard to find a self. There's just a liveliness. See if you can let go even more fully into this changing dance of sensation. Breathing with it, opening to it.

And notice if there's a sense of self that's here. For many, what is recognized is it takes having the mind go into thoughts to reconstruct a sense of self. In any moment, that you begin to control things, including with your thinking,

you'll pull away from this living flow of energy. So come back again, even this moment, a kind of surrendering presence into the actual this moment experience of aliveness. Stop trying to control and direct and guide things. You'll discover

that life has been unfolding itself. It's just happening. And not only that, there is a deep sense of ease in sensing how life flows. It can become almost magical. You never know where it'll take you. There is simply a creative aliveness unfolding itself. And I take a few full breaths and open your eyes. What we're exploring tonight, I began with planting ourselves in the universe.

And it felt like it's springtime. and it was earth weak. And really, there's no way that we'll take care of the earth if we don't feel the aliveness of the earth and the entry is right with these bodies here. That doesn't mean that all of us can just open to the life of the body

just like that. As I said, the more emotional wounding, the harder it is to feel what's here. And I feel like we need to really respect that. Like if you find that as you begin to try to gentle into your body, you feel a real grip of fear. If it feels like too much to handle, respect that as a message and go slowly. You might find that it's really in your work with the therapist, that there's enough of a safe container that you gradually ease into your body. It can be slow.

In fact, for some people trying too quickly to... to open to the aliveness of the body, including the wounded places, actually is retramatizing. And I try to say this as often as I can because I really respect that it needs to be gradual. And I spoke about that room of our life that we're always controlling things. Eventually, if we want to be free, we need to open the windows and the doors and just let the winds of this universe blow through us. It's the only way we'll be free to love and free to play. And it's the only way we'll be here enough because when we're busy managing, we're not here

to see truth in the moment. Anytime we're not in our body and we're busy figuring things out, we're actually removed from the living present, the one place that we can see reality as it is. The body is the gateway to seeing truth. The body is also the key. gateway to loving. You know, we can think about love. We can think about people we love. We can

plan on things that will have to do with love. We can remember love. But living love, you have to be in your body. You have to be able to feel in a visceral way this heart, this tenderness, this openness. John Seuss writes, to be of the earth is to know the restlessness of being a seed the darkness of being planted the struggle toward the light the pain of growth into the light the joy of bursting and bearing fruit the love of being food for someone

the scattering of your seeds the decay of the seasons the mystery of death and the miracle of birth so it's one of the core trainings this coming out of our thoughts and being of the earth of this clay body as John O'Donohue puts it so beautifully

and we again can use that image of the wheel of awareness and know that we're just inviting ourselves back to this hub of presence and let this body, the senses, be our gateway over and over again. Don't worry about how many times you come back.

Just think of it like every time you come back, Every time you notice, oh, been off in a trance, I've been judging, remembering planning, come back, you're in a way deepening this pathway, this neuro pathway of homecoming. You're deepening it. So we practice, and it takes patience because we have a huge amount of conditioning to leave these bodies. I remember I began practice at the Insight Meditation Society, IMS, and one of the early letters to the society was addressed to the instant meditation society.

Isn't that our culture, you know? So again, this instruction of, you know, don't do anything that takes you out of your body. Of course, think, and of course plan and do the things you need to do. But know that your life, your aliveness, your heart thrives from planting yourself over and over again right here. And as the 11th century, Tibetan teacher Talopa put it, he said, do nothing with the body but relax. In other words, when you come to your body,

you don't have to do anything with it. It's a relaxed attentiveness, feeling from the inside out what's here. So let's practice again. Let's just take a few moments to feel what's here. With this wheel of awareness, you can sense the habit pattern. the thoughts, the way we circle around,

and sense the possibility in this moment of gently inviting yourself to the hub, to the hub of presence. Let your senses be awake. I might start with listening again, just letting the sounds wash through you and with the same receptivity as listening, receive the sensations of the body.

this aliveness that's right here. It helps to soften the hands, relax the shoulders, soften the belly. Just as sounds washed through, let this life live through you. This whole play, you might notice if there's anything between you

and being at home in your body, any slight way that you're pulling away from something difficult or unpleasant, just to notice that with, judgment. Very gentle, very kind attention. Breathing with what's difficult, there's some physical pain, ache, tension, tightness, or perhaps tiredness, in some way energetically saying yes to the life of the body. Just letting it be as it is. The poet Wu Men says 10,000 flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow and winter.

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. Stepping out of the trance of thoughts and again and again coming home to this alive. to this presence. It's right here. May you continue to have an embodied evening. 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.imcw.org.