Tara Brach - Embodying True Refuge--Serving and Savoring Life

Episode Date: February 6, 2013

2013-02-06 - Embodying True Refuge--Serving and Savoring Life - This talk traces the story of the Buddha's awakening, and reflects on four key archetypal elements that are relevant for each of us as we come home to our true nature. There is a particular emphasis on how these elements enable us to encounter challenges in relationships and find our way to openhearted presence. Includes music honoring the launch of Tara's new book, True Refuge: vocal by La Sarmiento and Kirtan band with Guru Ganesha. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

So maybe a way to start tonight would be with a favorite quote from E.B. White. And he writes that I awaken each morning torn between the desire to serve and desire to savor the world. This makes it hard for me to plan the day. May we all face that dilemma. Yeah, I think of one of the great blessings of the spiritual path and a path of true refuge really as this capacity to love our life, to serve and to savor. And tonight what I'd like to explore is what I consider four main elements

that allow us to awaken to true refuge, that really bring us home, and help to nourish that capacity, to really be in love with what's right here, moment to moment. So that's what we're doing tonight. Maybe next week we'll do the thing about planning our day. We'll see what we get to. But I wanted to mention before going much further is that in addition to those that of us are here,

we have many, many friends that are listening in and are part of this. And so that aren't on location. And for those that aren't here, just to know that a number of us have gathered, to celebrate the launching of true refuge of my book and to gather together and enjoy being with each other and that you're part of it.

I've heard from so many people saying they're here in spirit, so I want you to know that we can feel you here. The room is chock full of spirit. So in a bid in that way, I thought I'd start with one of my favorite stories about serving and savoring, about that kind of quality of heart. And some of you might remember,

it starts with an old dog that wanders into a woman's yard. And she can tell from its collar, though no tags, that it's well fed, you know, it has a home. But for whatever reason, the dog follows her into the house, down the hall, lies down on the couch, and goes to sleep. So she says her dogs didn't seem to mind, and she didn't mind, so she let them nap. After an hour, the dog got up.

left. Next day, same thing happened. Came in, slept for an hour, and left. So this went on for several weeks. She got curious. She pinned a note to the collar, and she wrote, every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap. I don't mind, but I want to make sure it's okay with you. Next day, he arrives with a different note pinned to his collar. He lives in a home with three children. He's trying to catch up on a sleep. May I come with him tomorrow? Serving and savoring. I think of kindness as really the glow of realizing who we are,

the realization of true refuge or true nature. The glow or expression of it is kindness. So when I talk about true refuge, I'm really talking about a universal path of waking up. And it's a path of waking up from a control. fused idea of a small or limited or deficient self and realizing what in different traditions have different names. We might be true nature or soul or spirit or God consciousness, but realizing the wholeness, the full potential of who we are. So I'm describing kind of a path

of that when I talk about true refuge and in some deep way coming home to the love and the formless presence, that's really essence. Now, in the story of the Buddha, and I see this in all the great myths, you can see what's archetypal about waking up. So I'm going to kind of go back and forth between the story of the Buddha and the story of what's going on for us because in that story are really some of these basic steps I talk to you about, the four elements that I want to go through of realization. To start, the Buddha was not born the Buddha. The Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama,

and he was born a prince in northern India with a body that had the same fight-flight wiring that we have. And he was born into a culture that was becoming more centralized, and it was a lot of warlike wars going on, and fights over who possessed what. Not that different from what we're into here. So he had the same conditioning we have to, in a very fundamental way, perceive himself as separate and fixate his attention, his energies on what would bring pleasure and what would avoid pain.

And of course he was very much supported in that his father who wanted him to be either a, you know, rule the kingdom or else at least be a great general. protected him from the outside world. And so Siddhartha grew up in these pleasure palaces, one for each season. You know, he had all, you know, he was very upper, upper class. So he, um, his attentions went to the pleasures of amazing food and beautiful gardens and dancing women and so on.

And for the first 29 years of his life, that's the way he lived. Now, even as, after he left, and this is the beginning of the story of transformation, he still took false refuge. Instead of pleasure, he shifted to deprivation. I'm getting ahead of myself in the story, but that was part of his story too. So what about us? We come into this world and we are designed to experience who we are as separate so that there's a self in here and a world. out there and we need stuff to feel better and we want to protect against what might hurt us.

We have that conditioning. And like the Buddha, we get addicted in our own way to substitutes for the real thing. For him the substitutes were the pleasures that his father and the culture allowed him. And then for him the substitute was, you know, denying himself as a way to improve himself. Well, we get addicted to substitutes too. And I often, I call them false refuges because they give us a temporary way of feeling better. And to the degree that we have felt unloved or not worthy, we pursue them vigorously. For instance, how many of us really shape a lot of what we do to get approval. We don't have to do a hand raise. We'll just, you know, but how many of us we know that, how many of us do things to feel

more special or more important? How many of us get hooked on food to kind of soothe us, our drugs? How many of us use judgment to kind of push up, build ourselves some, or self-judgment to try to push ourselves into being a better person. These are false refuges. We keep doing them because they work for a while. I mean, we wouldn't do them. We wouldn't do all of our striving and trying to accomplish things and check things off the list. I know for myself, every time I am able to check something off the list, I do get this, okay, that's done. And it lasts for about a minute and a half until my mind's fixated on the next thing that has to be done. But they were

in some ways. One of the stories I like, the false refuge stories I like, is about a clerk in a supermarket. He's actually the produce guy. And some man comes up to him in the produce department and asks for a half a head of lettuce. And this guy says, we don't do that. But the guy's insisting. So he goes back to where the manager is and said, there's this jerk out there who wants a half a head of lettuce. Then he looks over his shoulder and the man is standing there And he goes, and this fine gentleman is asking for the other half. So a little later in the day, his manager said, you know, son, I like the way you dealt with that. I like a guy that can think on his feet.

Where are you from? And he said, Canada. You know, what got you to move down here? He said, oh, Canada, all there are are hordes and hockey players up there. Guy said, well, my wife comes from Canada. The guy said, oh, what team did she play for? So his, you know, he was clever, he was quick. And, you know, it's fun to listen to, but how many of us are really try to use our cleverness,

our intelligence, or figuring out to prove something so that we feel better about ourselves, and then we have to keep on proving it and keep on proving it. Because the problem with false refuges is that, if we're feeling insufficient and we're using them to feel better about ourselves, it reconfirms the insufficiency. We need that. We're not okay. So we get wired more and more to be dependent on our substitute. Okay, so the Buddha caught up in his false refuges, we and ours,

living in a kind of trance where we're forgetting what really matters. and day by day I mean we might sit here and remember what matters but how many moments of the day are we caught in some sense of shoulds and expectations and trying to dig ourselves out a lot of moments

now this is what we might call the forgetting we do have a built-in sensor for remembering and what starts to wake us up is we just start getting the suffering of it that we've spent a lot of time proving ourselves and feeling like the suffering of not really feeling confident in a very deep way. Or maybe it's an addiction to substance and really getting it that it's keeping us from intimacy. But some suffering wakes us up.

That's what suffering does. And that's what happened with the Buddha. So this is the first element. The first element on a path of true refuge is recognizing the suffering of the transfer in. Just getting it. We spend a lot of moments lost in thought, a lot of moments living from a smaller sense of self than what's the truth. Getting the suffering. That's the first step. Now for the Buddha, the way that step came around was through the heavenly messengers of aging, sickness, and death. That's for most of us in some way, impermanence is the wake-up. You know, we get it.

Loss is happening. People we love, our youth, relationships go. You know, we get the suffering of that. So for the Buddha, these heavenly messengers appeared, and they kind of jarred him and let him know that his pleasure palaces were not going to protect him from the inevitability of loss. there's a psychologist on the West Coast. His name is Victor Yalom,

and he's a psychologist and a cartoonist. And one of the cartoons he has here is of a psychiatrist, and his patient is the Grim Reaper. And here's the caption, The Grim Reaper speaking, No, Doc, I'm afraid it's your time that's up. I think that's great. So for both the Buddha and for us, Something wakes us up and has us realize the way I'm living is a trance,

and there's some deeper refuge, some deeper way of paying attention, some deeper thing I can discover that has meaning that can carry me home. And for the Buddha, he realized it. He left home, and he committed himself to awakening, but he had a flip to another false refuge. And we often do this. We carry into spiritual life our kind of egoic strategies. I for sure have seen that in myself,

that my type A hard-driving personality before I moved into an ashram transferred. And so I brought the same energies in. I was going to practice hard and meditate deeply. And I had, it was very competitive with myself and others. And, you know, it was still reaffirming a self, that needed to improve. We bring our strategies with us.

So the Buddha flipped to, as I described before, a real renunciation that had to do with self-deprivation. He starved himself and wandered around without sufficient clothing and so on until he had to again meet the heavenly messengers in the form of his own dying body. He got it. self-deprivation did not spiritually liberate them. Well, we do it with self-judgment and trying to in different ways be heavy with ourselves. But he got it.

And when he got it, then he started asking the deeper questions, which is really in the face of this changing world where we know these bodies are going, we know we lose everything. How do we find a true happiness? happiness and a true peace and a full presence in the midst. What makes it possible? So this is the core question. And I'll read you a bit of this is from the Buddha.

He said, why should I, whom I'm subject to birth, old age, sickness, death, sorrow, and suffering, why should I take refuge in that which is also subject to change? Let me find that which is changeless, which is deathless, which is unborn, and that is unborn, and undying, that is a true refuge. And in fact, this is what he found. So we go from recognizing the suffering of a trance that we're living inside a very small sense of what we are, recognizing the squeeze of that,

how it separates us from ourselves and each other, to this longing, to this aspiration, may I find that which is timeless? May I touch into that which is timeless, which is always and already here, beyond this living, dying, changing world? Srinarsar Gadata is an Indian teacher no longer alive. He put it this way. He said, if everything changes, everything's changing, what then is true? So the second of the elements, the first is recognizing suffering.

The second of the elements is getting in touch with our aspiration. What is it that we really care about? You know, cutting through the assumed goals of our day and really getting it that the freedom and the peace and the love that our hearts long for, that's what we want to pay attention to. And the sign of coming home to a true aspiration

is a quality of sincerity. For me, that's the best word. when I feel sincere. There's not a been there done that. There's not like it's pre-packaged. There's a kind of tenderness, a sincerity and it's very embodied when we're in touch with aspiration. It's like our hearts are glowing with it. There's, we, it gives us the energy to devote ourselves. That's the second quality that frees us. Recognizing suffering, waking up this longing. So in the Buddha's life what happened is he had that longing and he wanted to discover

that timeless presence. So what did he do? He sat down under the Bodhi tree. And that's what we do when we pause to meditate. Every time we pause and say, I really want to reconnect, I want to come home to this heart, this moment, this being. pausing. We're discontinuing the doings that really fuel the persona and the trance. And we're saying, out of that longing, please, I really want to come home. He paused. The whole meaning

of the Bodhi tree to me, when I see the Bodhi tree, sacred pause. So this is Martha Pastaway. Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clear in the dense forest of your life. Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.

Do not try to save the world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life. So are four elements. The first, recognize the suffering of trance. The second really open to that longing for freedom. The third, pause. We need to pause. By the way, these are not four that you do the four and then it's like, okay, done, free.

This is like over and over and over again. Okay. I think you knew that though. Okay. All right, so we've paused and then the fourth is in that pause we bring the two wings of presence. We bring that attention right here. The two wings being recognizing what's happening in the moment, mindfulness. This is truth. What's here? And the other wing is holding it with compassion. So we pause and we bring that clear and kind attention right to this moment. And so this is what the Buddha did in the myth, that through the night under

the Bodhi tree, he sat as Mara, Mara's the shadow God, you know, who brought all the energies of greed and hatred and illusion and jealousy and all the stuff that keeps us caught up in trance when we get possessed by it. Well, Mara appeared, as Mara appears all the time, and and threw all this stuff at them, you know, in arrows and slings and so on. And the Buddha met with presence these attacks. And as the myth goes, brought the wings of mindfulness and compassion, and each one turned to a flower petal till by morning he had a heap of flower petals in front of them.

And in this way, by sitting through the night, by encountering whatever arises, with mindfulness and compassion, and by looking deeply into his own awareness, that inquiry, who's here, what's aware, what really is this? He came home to the realization of his own radiant awareness. This is source. This is truth. And that's when we are having that realization that more than any story we're living in about ourselves. This awake openness, this tenderness, this presence is more what we are than any of those

ideas, any of the personas that come forth. This is what's changeless. So the Buddha found that. He had that realization. I was under the Bodhi tree, but that's not the end of the story. He then spent the next 48 years of his life bringing that realization of his true refuge into action, into an engagement with the world. He lived it. He lived from it. And how did he do it? Serving, loving, teaching, holding

with compassion this world. Now one of my favorite parts of the myth, then I'm going to come back to us, is that throughout his career of what you might call embodied realization, he was awake, he was realizing the essence of what he was, and its expression was love, was engaged, service and compassion. Through those 48 years, Mara kept coming back. And that's probably the single most reassuring thing we could hear, that here the Buddha was, he had woken up. You know, that's the idea, realization, and Mara kept appearing. Mara keeps appearing. those energies are deeply conditioned they keep arising. The Buddha's response,

when Mara would appear, let's say at a gathering, the Buddha's loyal attendant Ananda would see him and go, oh my God, the evil one is here, you know, kind of like that. And the Buddha would say, no, no, no, it's okay. And he'd directly to Mara, he'd say, I see you, Mara. Come in, let's have some tea. What a beautiful way to context

the ongoing encounter we have with difficult stuff. I see you. Come on in for tea. Right away, rather than being identified, rather than being at war with ourselves, rather than taking it as self, right away we're resting in something larger in that timeless presence. So in our lives,

we might encounter suffering, we might go, yes, I really want to wake up, I really want to live true to myself. I want to live from my heart. I want to live from presence. We feel the aspiration. We pause. We begin to bring our attention to what's going on.

And each time that happens, each time we true, and it has to happen fresh, it can never be like a routine. But each time in a fresh way, we pause with that intention to bring a true. true presence and care to what's going on, we more and more discover who we really are. Our identity shifts.

And the place that it happens that's most confusing and most challenging and most powerful for most of us is with each other. Mara arises in our engagement with each other. So for the last portion of what I'm going to do, I'm tracking time because I promised myself I wouldn't go too long tonight. But the last portion is how Mara arises in our relationships with each other. And it usually takes the form of something's wrong. Something's wrong with me or something's wrong with you.

Does that sound familiar? Okay, there's a something's wrong going on. It could be the form of something's missing. I'm missing something here. Still something's wrong. We're wanting things different. And often we're wanting the other person to be different. So as I speak now I'm going to be inviting you to kind of consider where this is activated

for you. But we have often an expectation or demand or need, like unless you change I can't be happy. This relationship's not working unless you change. Some of you might remember, I think it was the Sylvia cartoon series. I don't know if it's still there. But in one she's with a fortune teller and she's saying, you know, my husband husband won't talk about his feelings. And Sylvie goes, what else is no? But anyway, she goes, no, I really, I need to see what's possible. So she goes into her fortune teller

guys and she's, you know, looking at her crystal ball and she says, in January of 2013, men will start talking about their feelings. Within moments, women across the nation will be sorry. Now, the deal is for most of us that we know is that whenever we have a demand that the other be different, no matter how right it seems, whenever there's that demand or expectation in those moments our heart's not free to love, to really love fully. It just isn't. It's like our energy is tight. There's a contraction. We're creating distance. And in the reverse, we know many of us have tasted, even if just for a short time, what it's like to be with someone who's really deeply paying attention, deeply present, and really has

no expectation. And those are the moments that we actually are free to come home to ourselves. We actually become more who we are in that nourishment and that allowing space. So then you might be questioning, well, yeah, but what if you're with someone? someone who's abusive. I mean, don't you want to expect that that person would change then? So I just want to say that acceptance doesn't mean we don't do what's intelligent to take care of ourselves, what's healthy, to create boundaries and so on. But still, our hearts, if our hearts in some way are making the demand, you be different, you're wrong, you're bad, then we're closed.

Is it possible to make the boundaries we need to make, to communicate intelligently and honestly, and have our arts still stay open in an accepting way? And I ask that because I think of Carl Rogers who said, you know, it wasn't until I accepted myself exactly as I was, that I was free to change. In other words, that space of acceptance is the prerequisite to an honest, real, deep transformation. I mean, you can strong-arm people into changing their behaviors. You can guilt them into changing their behaviors. That's not deep transformation.

So a story that I wanted to share tonight that I think illustrates this, that has inspired me many rounds, so I share it whenever I have an opportunity, was about a friend of mine from college who re-contacted me some years after we had graduated. I hadn't seen him. He had joined a meditation group,

was involved with Tibetan meditation, but he needed some support in a life situation. And it was this, that he was African-American, photojournalist, he had married a Caucasian woman, and while her father was okay with it, her mother had locked into a really hostile stance, and they would visit and she'd be rude, and she'd ignore him.

And in her mind, he was a man of a different race, and it meant trouble and unhappiness for both of them, and she just was cut off. So for him, the way Mara was appearing, was he was hurt and angry. Okay? His wife was outraged. She didn't even want to keep visiting her family.

But part of his path was, this aspiration that whatever circumstances arise may this serve the awakening of heart and mind and that was his aspiration. He didn't want to, he wanted to keep trying and part of the teaching of his path, and this is from Choggyam Trunkpa, was to never give up on anybody. So we explored together what was coming up for him. He created some space, he did the pausing, okay, so he had the aspirations. He created the clearing, contacting Amara, what was painful. And for him, it went right to some very deep childhood wounds where he felt that he could never be enough.

His father left his mother and he could never fill his shoes. He could never be enough. And he also felt not valued and so on. And so this played right into it. So he brought these two wings of presence to that. He did tongueland, which I won't go into now, but really breathing in and connecting with where the pain was, being aware of it, recognizing it, breathing out, really offering a tremendous kind of compassion to his younger self. This kind of gesture I show you often of just really offering kindness inwardly.

Till in some time, and he did some practice like this for a few weeks, he felt more intimate with his own being. He was more at home in himself and he felt like he could go. Next trip was Thanksgiving. He felt like he could do it. So, he decided to bring his camera and his camera was in a way of support in his practice to be able to stay connected with himself but pay good attention to what was around him. So they go for Thanksgiving, she's still rude, Thanksgiving dinner doesn't really acknowledge him, next night won't go out for dinner and be seen in public with them, pretty bad. While he was there, he took some pictures and he realized as he was paying attention,

that behind her way of treating him, there is this tight heart that was very afraid. He could see her fear. And he could sense that it wasn't him. It was to do with her daughter's happiness. You know, and her daughter is an extension of her. Christmas comes around. They go to Christmas gathering.

Her sister brought a child, a lot of, you know, great event. They do a gift exchange. The parents, the mother, gave him socks too big and gave him candy he's a health type of person she opens her gift that he gave her and she began everybody's sitting there and she just begins weeping when people crowded around what he had given her were two pictures he had taken one was a picture of her when she was playing with her new granddaughter with this adoring look on her face and the other when she had

kind of flopped on the couch with her husband and they were kind of in a playful moment. He had captured her goodness. She realized in that moment she had been seen. He had created a connection. Now this was not some magic unfreezing right away. It took a long time. But this is the beginning of the thaw. And what had happened?

He had, instead of continuing in the trance of reactivity, heard, angry, you know, playing it out, he had that aspiration that comes out of suffering to really come home to himself. He paused, he brought the attention to his own experience in a way that he was more compassionate and with himself. He was able to see her. He saw her vulnerability and he saw her goodness. He could see more truly. So this is the blessing we're talking about tonight of coming home to our true nature to true refuge, is that the more that we're living in that presence,

the more we're able to serve and savor, the more we can be in love with life. We can see the bigger picture. We can see if we know who we are, if we're not caught in a sense of ourselves as egoic, as diminished, as superior, whatever the storyline is, Now, if we see behind our own mass to who's here, we can look at each other and see who's

looking through those eyes. We can see who's living in that heart. So I think of this as the hope. You know, we look at the suffering in the world and see the oppression of minorities. We see the cycles of violence and we see the overconsumption and the way our earth is being destroyed. And it can bring a despair because we really get that it's coming out of trance, it's this reactivity playing out, playing out, a collective not knowing who we are, not seeing the other.

But the hope, and this is kind of in an evolutionary context, is that we have this capacity to wake up. We have this capacity to, this longing to come home. home. It's in us. We have some intuition of what home is, that there's something timeless. There's something loving and present in us to come home to. And we have the capacity to train our attention, to deliberately train our attention that wakes us up. So that's the hope. I mean, I think of Stephen Pinker and as book Better Angels of our nature and how it talks about the reduction of violence. It's been going.

on over the last decades and even, you know, if you look at the long picture, we are less violent world than we were. That's hopeful. We look at the growing number of bumper stickers saying random acts of kindness. It's hopeful, you know. More people are meditating. So I'd like to end by saying that it ripples out, that when we come home and in some way out of that homecoming, there's kindness, it ripples out. And a kind of closing story for you tonight is of that rippling. And it's a story told by Bernard Hare. In 1982, he describes something that changed his whole life. And he was an impoverished student at that time, living in London. He tells the story to troubled young people to help them deal with their lives. He says that

He called home to Leeds and found out his mother was in a hospital. She wasn't expected to survive the night, so his father told him to get home. He goes to the railroad station, finds he's missed the last train. Another train would only take him as far as Peterborough, but the connecting train he would miss by 20 minutes. So he's desperate, but he buys a ticket gets on anyway. He said, I had a screwdriver in my pocket and a bunch of skill and keys.

I was so desperate to get home, I planned to nick a car in Petersburg, hike, hitch a hike, steal some money, something, anything. I knew from my dad's tone of voice that my mother was going to die, and I was going to get home and it killed me. So he's on the train. Tickets, please.

He fumbles in his pocket, gives the guard the ticket. The guard stamps it, but just stands there. He says, he just stood there looking at me. I've been crying, had red eyes, and must have looked afright. You okay? Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be? And what's it got to do with you in any

case. Well, is there anything I can do? You could get lost to mind your own business. I said, that'd be a big help. Guy says, well, if there's a problem, I'm here to help. That's what I'm paid for. He goes, I was a big bloke in my prime. So I thought for a second about physically sending him on his way. Somehow it didn't seem appropriate. I told him my story. Look, my mom's in the hospital dying. She won't survive the night. I'm going to miss the connection to leads of Peterborough. I'm not sure I'm going to get home. It's now or never. If I don't get a chance, She'll die. Now I'd be grateful if you'd leave me alone, okay? Okay, he said finally getting up. Sorry to hear that son. I'll leave you alone.

He wanders off. I continue to look out the window at the dark. Ten minutes later he's back. Oh no, here we go again. I'm going to have to really rag him down the train. He touched my arm. Listen, when we get to Peterborough, shoot straight over to Platform 1 as quick as you like. The leads train will be there. I looked at him dumbfounded. wasn't registering. Come again, I said stupidly. What do you mean? Is it late or something? No, it's not late. I just radioed Peterborough. They're going to hold a train up for you. As soon as you get on, it goes. Everyone will be complaining, but that's about how late it is.

But let's not worry about that on this occasion. You'll get home. That's the main thing. Good luck and God bless. Then he was off down the train again. Tickets, please? Any more tickets now? I suddenly realized what a top class fully fledged oil on my wife. and chased him down the train. I wanted to give him all the money from my wallet, my driver's license, my keys, but I knew, a screwdriver, you know, I knew he'd be offended. I caught him, I caught up to him. I just wanted to, it's okay, he said, not a problem. He had a warm smile, true compassion in his eyes. He was a good man for its own sake, required nothing in return. I wish I had some way to thank you, I said, appreciate what you've done. Not a problem,

me said again, if you feel the need to thank me, the next time you see someone in trouble, you help them out. That will pay me back amply. Tell them to pay you back the same way, and soon the world will be a better place. I was at my mother's side when she died in the early hours of the morning. My meeting with the good conductor chained me from a selfish, potentially violent hedonness into a decent human being, but it took time. I've paid them back a thousand time since then. I tell the young people I work with, and I'll keep on doing so until the day I die, you owe me nothing, nothing at all. And if you think you do, I'd give you the same advice as the good conductor gave me. Pass it down the line. So on this path of homecoming, there's a

forgetting of who we are and a remembering. And in the moments of remembering, it's quite natural. In fact, it is the nature of being at home in our own heart mind to have that radiance of kindness. Just close with a quietness for a few moments, closing your eyes. Let this be another moment of making a clearing and of bringing an intimate attention just to the life right here from the radiant sutras. There's a place in the heart where everything meets Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity all are there. Are you there?

Enter the bowl of vastness that is heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon. Quiet ecstasy is there and a steady, regal sense of resting in a perfect spot. Once you know the way, the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing, I belong here, I am at home here. Namaste.

And thank you for your attention. So we are going to make a little bit of a shift. And again, we're going to invite you just to take half a minute or so to feel free to shift around, make yourself comfortable, and invite the next person who is going to be leading us in offering to us a bit of Dharma in a different form, I invite her to come up. Hi there. My name is Law.

And 14 and a half years ago, I first walked into this hall and sat with Tara. And it's been incredible to see how this community has grown over the last 14 and a half years. So I just want to offer this. in honor of her new book and in honor of my beloved teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend. A long, long time ago, I can still remember how my thoughts would make me cry. And I knew when I took a glance at Tara Brock, I'd have a chance of maybe being happy for a while. Because her compassion Makes hearts quiver

With every Dharma talk She delivers With bad news on our doorsteps How can we take one more step When it's time to heed the call And radically accept what's to befall You ain't gonna find it in some shopping mall True refuge, no need to stall.

Wait, there's more. So bye, bye, bye, false refuge, bye-bye. No more donuts or heartbreaking, ain't no place left to hide. Got Darmic skills, no need to bump up my pride. Tara's wisdom is a powerful guide. Tara's wisdom is a powerful guide Well, she wrote a book on love to trust ourselves above and beyond Can you find your breath again?

Does your body feel much more than whole has sitting Save your mortal soul? And I can teach you how to walk real slow. Because you know Mindfulness is the way To save us from our everyday So just kick off your shoes Before entering the hall dude

I was a lonely drop in the ocean wave But true refuge Save this dukegut slave I found freedom thanks to rain We can begin again and we were singing bye bye false refuge bye bye

no more donuts or heart breaking ain't no place left to hide got darmetic skills no need to bump up my pride Tara's wisdom is a powerful guide Tara's wisdom is a powerful guide and we were singing bye bye

False refuge, bye-bye. No more donuts or heartbreaking, ain't no place left to hide. Got Darmic skills, no need to bump up my pride. Tara's wisdom is a powerful guy. We're going to have that at the beginning of every podcast that goes out. Just to set the mood. Bless you and thank you, Law. So what's next?

We have some dear friends. These are friends of mine from many, many years that have some beautiful music to share with us. So Gurganesh, I'm going to let you introduce everyone else, but welcome and thank you for being here. I think we should have opened for them. They were magnificent, huh? I said we should have opened for them.

Wow. What a treat to sit and meditate with you all. And it's such a blessing for us to be here to honor our dear friend Tara and celebrate the beautiful gift of these teachings that she has been a channel for for all these years. And it's a special evening for me. I'm here with my wife, Matamunder Kar. Can you tell which one is my wife? And this is a dear friend Shana who has Shana Simon and she has a yoga center about five, ten minutes from here called Simon Says Yoga.

Nice name, huh? And this is a dear brother from many years. His name is Sakatar Singh and he's going to be playing some wonderful Indian drums for us tonight. But, you know, this

style of music that we do, some people call it Kirtin, some people call it mantra music, some people call it sacred music. My mother says, why do you keep singing the same lines over and over again? It's really

a co-formance versus a performance. So we're going to encourage you to co-forms in whatever way you're so inclined, whether that be just to sit in co-form internally or to sing along or to clap along

or to stand and move or none of the above. So there's no requirement. But I would like you to look around and find somebody, if you have somebody that you know next to you look them, lovingly in the eyes and say, you know, have I told you lately how much

I love your singing voice? I'm serious. And if there's somebody around you that you don't know, I'd like you to look them lovingly in the eyes and say, you know, I haven't heard you sing yet.

And I haven't seen you dance yet. but I know I'm going to love it. And this is just another way to kind of connect with that true refuge. Because this first mantra they're going to chant is just basically got two words in it. One of the words is ram, which means the engine of the divine. Ram, ram, ram, ram.

Ram. And then Bolo, I sing it out, I shout it out, I celebrate it. So it goes repeat after me just for if you're so inclined. Rambo. Rambo. Rambo. Rambo.

Bolo, Bolo, Ram. Rambo. Rambo. Rambo. Rambo. Rambolo. Bolo, Bolo, Ramb. I mean, basically all these mantras

mean the same thing, you know. my essence is divine my essence is kind my essence is pure my essence is light inside of each of us the light of a thousand suns you know you have Christian Das coming soon I think what is the date

March 16th wow and I was listening to you know Christian Das he's kind of the pioneer of this kind of music it's and I was listening to a radio interview and the interviewer asked them what is this kind of me? What is it about? He said, well, you know, if you can only shut the mind down

and just vibrate from the heart center, amazing things happen. And the announcer, the interviewer said, well, how do I do that? And so, well, come to the concert. tomorrow night. And just sing along. Sing along at a certain point your mind might shut down.

It's kind of pure grace when it happens. You know, I toured with Sanatum car. Are you familiar with Sanatum? For about 11 years. And she has a kind of voice that could rest tears from a stone gargoyle. And so we did a concert up in Calgary, Canada. And at the end of the concert,

You know, Calgary? It's kind of like the, it's a rodeo town. It's like the Cheyenne Wyoming of Canada. It's wonderful. At the end of the concert, this guy about my age, is kind of 60-ish, you know. And, you know, a little different head covering. He had a cowboy hat on.

And instead of a 40-year growth, he had about four days, very sandpapery, you know, he had a flannel shirt, boots, old blue jeans. He comes up to me, he grabs, takes my hand, grab my hand, and says, you broke me, man. You broke me. I said, you know, and I kind of knew what he meant, but I wanted to hear more. I said, we broke you.

What do you mean we broke you? He said, well, my wife's been dragging me to these here chant concerts now for about four years. But about halfway through tonight, I realized I was singing. I said, no, say it ain't so, man, not you. I said, well, when you realized you were singing. you stopped right away didn't you he said no man I'm embarrassed to say I sang the rest of the way that gal broke me

I love that that was about his intellect shut down all the stereotypes shut down everything went away except for the here now so we're going to do a mantra for prosperity because you know I've studied with this gentleman from India named

Yogi Budgeon for many years. He passed in 2004 or so. And he used to say, he used to encourage us to start businesses and make money. And, you know, I was a hippie in the late 60s and I had this self-limiting belief that money would corrupt me, you know.

Money was even. And he, no, he said, no, no, no, man. He says, good people should have lots of money. I said, really? I said, why? He said, because good people, if they have lots of money, will do a lot of good things. So I want to dedicate this to the success of Tara's incredible book

through that that faucet of prosperity, which has been flowing and flowing for Tara because of her incredible work. Just continue to flow, become a flood because you know the incredible work she's going to continue doing, you know. So the mantra, repeat after me, Sat Narayan. Sat Narayan. Wahhe Guru.

Wahe guru. Hari Naran. Hari Narayan. Satanam. Satanam. I'm not even going to try to explain what it means. I think you could feel what it means, but Narayan is the provider, the nurturer, the sustainer of the universe.

So we'll do a tantric style. Oh, and that's your son's name. Wow, interesting. Coincidence, huh? Perhaps serendipity, you know. And so we'll do a tantric style. So we want to invite the men to sing with Sat-Katar Singh and I. You know, sing it really rah-r-r-r-sat-n-ri.

And then we'd like to hear the goddesses sing along with Shana and Matamundarkar. And then at a certain point, we'll chakti and Shiva will join together. And we'll, you know, the 10th gate shall open. And then we'll eat cake, right, Tara? Okay. I have nothāya and Satanam Satanahir

Vahe Guru Hani Naray and satanan Satanah Wahe Guru Satanam I've done this before All right

And just in closing You know this song May the long time sunshine upon you All love Surround you and the pure light within you guide your way on.

Grab your neighbor's hand and feel your present merged with their presence. Feel that electric current that flows through all of us. Love to all. Join me. Peace to all. Life to all. Love to all. Peace to all. Life to all. Life to all. Love to all. Let's celebrate with Tata.

Shana, Matamundra Kha, Satta-Tor-San. Sung-Eid on sound and Glenn, we want to thank Glenn for all his help. Love you, Sadna. Oh, yes. And Eric reminds me that there's, you know, this incredible Budapest celebration, June 20 to June 23rd.

And my whole band, the drums, bass, the nickel harpa, are all going to be there. Saturday night, June 22nd. That's Buda Fest. Where is it going to be? I can't see that. Where? Artists fear spectrum in Arlington. A deep, deep, thank you. I just want you to know

this has been 30 years now that we would hang out in the ashram each morning and this chanting and it was kind of one of the most precious gateways into spiritual life I could have ever been blessed with and these friends have been a deep part of it. So thank you. It's such an amazing

to weave it into current life. You're wonderful. Please do come to Buda Fest and enjoy it again. This is amazing music. You'll keep on opening with it. And stay tonight. We have quite the hall of refreshments. Please stay and hang out with us. And if anybody has a book that wants signing, my hand has been exercised and I'm ready to go.