Tara Brach - Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World - Part 2

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World  - Part 2 - Last week, I began a two-part series inspired by Pema Chödron's newest offering, How We Live is How We Die. It's a powerful book that I highly recommend!  One of our deepest inquiries is how to find happiness and peace in an inherently insecure world. In these talks, we'll explore the ways we habitually try to control our lives, and the practices of presence that allow us to cherish this living world and find freedom in the midst of change and loss.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, my friends. So we're here for part two. This is a two-part teaching on finding true refuge in this living, dying world. And I did an interview for a webinar a few weeks ago, and the question went something like this. It was, Tara, you're turning 70 soon. What are you learning about the process of aging? What are the challenges, you know?

So, you know, I shared that a few days earlier I was going to take a power nap and went into the bathroom to take out my hearing aids and put them in their little container. and I went and slept for 20 minutes and I went back to put my hearing aids back in, but I found that in that container were my earrings and my hearing aids were right here still in my ears. And I've done worse. I mean, sometime back I was in the shower and I was reflecting on a taco is going to be giving soon on presents.

And I was washing my hair and I realized that I was using shaving cream. Jonathan told me that it was a good thing. thing I didn't start shaving. So there's the everyday ditsy stuff and I'm definitely losing recall of nouns and more and this bothers me. I'll read something and I can't remember the content of what I read or listen to something. And then physically I'm often, it's very awkward I'll be with trying to open a package and I can't get it open or you know those lift open tabs on supplements and vitamins on the small little bottles. They're so frustrating. I mean, how are you supposed to hold on to them and pull them open? So I'll sometimes find myself with a knife

violently stabbing open, the protective covering, all sorts of stuff. And of course, there's, you know, physical appearance. Zoom makes it a little bit easier because, you know, you can disguise some. You know those settings for the webcam where you can soften things, but there's still the increasing wrinkling and sagging and so on. But the real deal is my energy is less. You know, I rarely teach in evenings because 8.30 is, you know, my drop dead bedtime and I'm really bleary. So it's happening on all fronts. And as I shared, last week in the talk and death is also happening to people close to me. So last Friday I sat with my friend Lisa and I was talking to her and being quiet and feeding

her little pieces of watermelon and then there was silence and I just stroking her head and feeling our love. You know we've known each other since we were 16. and I looked at her face and watched her, she was going in and out of pain. And it wasn't who she was, this cancer-filled, pain-filled body. There was a kind of transparency, and I could feel her spirit. I could feel something timeless. And she wanted to do a guided meditation, so we did that. And mostly it was just, you know, let go.

Let go into love, let go into light, let go into the love and light that's surrounding you and filling you that is what you are. Hemet Children describes this letting go as a child returning home. I love that phrase, a child returning home to true nature, to who we are. I heard the next morning that Lisa, her form was gone. And this is so fresh, I'll be referring back to Lisa, to this loss. In a sense, I feel a dedication, dedicating this talk to her because the sorrow is so present in me. So what am I learning about aging? And part of it is that loss and this human heart that grieves, the heartbreak is real.

And that the more we let our hearts break open and accept loss and aging and dying of this body and mind, the more we see that we're something more, we see a sense of that, and experience that ineffable spirit, that timeless love. So friends, realizing this something more, the what we are beyond the ego self, is the true refuge that I speak of. It is true refuge in this living, dying world. It's a realizing our belonging to a loving field of awareness, belonging to that. which is sacred and it brings a peace beyond all understanding. I mean it really is that child returning home. I sometimes reflect and you might do this, you know, I kind of ask myself,

well if it's my last conscious moment in form what would most matter. And what I always come back to is a sense of being able to let go into love, and trust, this being into loving awareness, just realizing that loving awareness as home. And my sense is that we all have a longing for this, to feel held, to feel a sense of merging, of dissolving into something larger, into a larger loving presence. And the realization of that loving presence gets blocked. if we think all we are is a separate entity, and if we think that something bad is happening, then death becomes the enemy. And it's an enemy rather than that really a natural part of

life that happens to every form that's ever existed, you know, every human, every fish, every tree, every insect. It's just an inevitable part of existence. There's a story that comes to mind. It's a story written by Edith Wharton. And just to share it with you, the way it goes is that one day the sultan's in his palace at Damascus and a beautiful youth who's his favorite rushes into his presence and he cries out in great agitation that he must fly at once to Baghdad and plures leave to borrow his majesty's swiftest horse. And so the sultan asked him, why he's in such haste to get to Baghdad? And the youth responds, well, because as I pass through the garden palace right now, death was standing there. And when he saw me, he stretched out his arms as

as if to threaten me, and I must lose no time in escaping from him. So the young man was given leave to take the Sultan's horse and fly off. And when he was gone, the Sultan went indignantly into the garden. He found death still there. How dare you make threatening gestures at my favorite, he cried. But death astonished, answered, I assure your majesty, I did not threaten him. I only threw up my arms and surprised at seeing him here because I have a trist with him tonight in Baghdad. It's just part of living, this dying.

So do we have to frame death as bad? You know, this is something my friend Lisa's son brought up when we were talking the day before she passed. You know, does death have to be considered bad or is the enemy? Very wise and awake young man and also very dear to my heart. And as it happened, you know, if I hadn't been accepting that Lisa's body and mind were going, that it was heart-breakingly sad yet natural, I wouldn't have touched into that sacred sense of the light and spirit

of who she really was that was shining through and is still here. You know, her son felt this also. He wrote, and I want to read his words, he said, as she left her physical form, the words, thank you, just kept flowing out of my mouth. the sun cleared from a rainy day, the wind was gusting, and my mom transcended into the spirit realm. For most people, the perception is, here I am, I'm a separate self and death is the enemy. And here's the thing. When that's the case, much of our life energy, our creativity, our attention,

instead gets kind of contracted and dedicated to trying to control things and avoid things. We don't take risks. We don't live our fullness. And it's not explicitly through this thought of, oh, I'm going to die, I'm going to lose you someday. You know, it's more of the sense that something bads around the corner, that there's something too much to handle right around the corner. and so our thoughts just become fear-based and fixate on daily worries. And this incessant inner dialogue is the primary way we stay imprisoned in a sense of a separate self,

cut off from something larger. We spend our time in our thoughts. And, you know, the brain is a predicting machine. It's seeking certainty and it has a negativity bias. So we spend our time and thoughts that are slanted to the negative. And it's like a TV that goes from station to station seemingly randomly. There's some patterns. But they say that we have 80,000 thoughts a day and 98% of them we had yesterday.

So it's not like it's discovery channel. It's like more chronic worry and planning and seeking more security and trying to control. It's interesting. Scan your own most familiar thoughts. It's revealing. So, our basic meditation training is to become aware of thinking so that thoughts don't define and limit and block reality. So thoughts don't keep us caught in this sense of a separate self

that needs to control what's happening because around the corner something bad's going to happen, which is ultimately death, and live our life in that kind of controlling fearful way. Now, I want to pause here and say, we're not trying to get rid of thoughts. It's helpful, I think, to imagine you're in an airplane and you're flying and what it's like when you're inside a cloud. It's like the whole world feels like it's cloud. And that's the way it is when we're in a thought. It's like the whole world's kind of defined by the thought.

But when we keep flying and get outside the cloud, the clouds are still there, but they're not defining our universe as a wide openness to awareness. It's helpful to see our thoughts. It's helpful to see the mental patterns of the clouds in the mind. the ones that keep us trapped? What are the ones that trigger fear? What are the ones that make us feel separate from others? What are the ones that have us chronically feeling like we're falling short? It's useful to see that. It's helpful to sense the storyline in important parts of our life where there's a lot of charge because that becomes a portal to the emotions in our body.

and we need to solve problems with thoughts. I'm trying to make the point that we're not trying to get rid of them. We need to figure things out. We need to know what's causing difficulty, what will bring more ease and connection. I saw a cartoon. It was a guy, he's in a chair with a newspaper, and he's looking over at the door

because there's a note that's been slipped under it. And the caption is, Jim receives a note under the door and is intrigued, especially because it's the closet door. I love it. You know, we need to make sense of our world. So we think it's part of survival. We need a map to navigate. We need mental understanding. There's a little story of a boy who asked his father, well, where does the wind come from? And the father says, I don't know. Well, why do dogs bark? I don't know. Why is the earth round? I don't know.

Dad, are you bothered that I'm asking you so many questions? Oh, no, not at all, son, please ask. Otherwise, you'll never learn anything. Okay, so thoughts can be a good servant, and they just aren't a good master. And when we're trapped in that inner dialogue, there's a sense of a separate self. when we're trapped in that planning and worrying and trying to avoid what's going to go wrong around the corner, we get blocked really from reality, from a deeper sense of who we are. And it happens in two ways.

One is when we're caught in virtual, in the thoughts that are going on, we miss the life that's right here. You know, we miss the sound of the rain and those gusts of wind and feelings of loneliness and sadness and creativity and excitement. You know, we miss the magic of the changing season, the light in a child's eyes, the hurts that a dear one might be struggling with. So we miss the 10,000 joys and sorrows. We forget to say thank you.

And there's something else. We also miss the awareness that's holding all of this. We miss the quality of openness, of vastness, boundarylessness, stillness. And we miss how that awareness really expresses as love, our peace, our compassion. We miss true refuge. John O'Donoghue, poet, writer, wise man. He says it's strange being on earth. No one really recovers from the surprise.

We manage our lives so powerfully externally as to forget the incredible mystery we are involved in. So we're talking about how to find refuge in this living, dying world. and the invitation on the spiritual path is to stop managing so much and instead to open directly into the mystery that's here, open directly. And it doesn't just mean when we or someone's dying. You know, the Tibetan teachings are that this mystery, that birth and death is in every moment, every moment. So the challenge is to stop managing through our day and really learn to relax with groundlessness. And that includes staying with really uncomfortable feelings. Last week, we explored

how we can practice doing this by arousing the mindfulness and compassion of rain. And what I really want to communicate friends is that, that learning to let go of managing, learning to meet the changing flow of life with presence, it's a superpower. It serves in all living and dying, learning to stay with what's here. This is a quote from Pema Chodren that I love. Life is a good teacher and a good friend. are always in transition. If we could only realize it, the off-center in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don't get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It's a very tender, non-aggressive, open-ended state of affairs to stay with

that shakiness, to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach. with a feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge, that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, this is the spiritual path. So, I'd like to continue now exploring how in daily life we can learn to relax with groundlessness. It's really training to die in the moment, letting go, letting go of what we're holding on to, and just rest with what's here. And it's training to die when our bodies are ready to pass on, to let go into that groundlessness. So, practicing dying daily means letting go in the midst of the whole range of experience

of uncertainty. It's, you know, as Pemotroden described, it's those off-balance moments, those in-between moments, the rumbling stomach, I love that, you know, really sticks. I mean, how many moments are there kind of indigestion or tiredness or worry and we have this idea we're on our way someplace else? This isn't life. And there's no remembrance of presence. There's no letting go into the groundlessness that's right here.

So it also means letting go into those situations where the rug is really pulled, where life's not unfolding as predicted as we wanted, letting go. Most of you have probably experienced that kind of groundlessness, what I think of as the rug being pulled where there's no orientation. Like it can happen with a divorce or someone's death, or your own cancer diagnosis, or or a frightening illness. Maybe if you're about to graduate and there's no plans. Or if your youngest child just left and it's an empty nest. Or if you've lost a job. There's so many different ways, the rug gets pulled in big ways, but part of the training is the small day-to-day in-day

in-between moments, as Pema describes. And the key is stop managing. Stop the kind of incessant inner dialogue and open from the virtual world right into this living reality. A few weeks ago, I'm going to share an example of my having to open to groundlessness. A few weeks ago was entering a day that was chockful with plans. I was preparing a talk for an upcoming event and had Zoom meetings and errands. A very clear map in my mind. of where I was in the day and where I was going to go and what I needed to do. And the first thing was just to tidy the kitchen. I was putting away large pot and I squatted down and I got the mother of a back spasm. I mean, it was really a violent one. And in a flash, my world changed.

And you know how it is. It's like all of a sudden it's entirely different. Groundlessness. Well, first, that became a new management project, getting the ice packs and the ibuprofen and finding the most tolerable position to lie in and canceling the meetings. You get the idea. But then I started watching my mind do the excessive managing. You know, oh my gosh, this is a bad one, trying to predict how long it would take before I could start moving. Could I get back to my computer?

or when will I be able to do X, Y, and Z, you know, you know the narrative, but just trying to manage and staying away from that groundlessness of I don't know and just being with. So that became my practice, you know, for, and it was a couple of days of it again and again coming out of the virtual world of thoughts into that groundlessness and just noticing what's happening in those in-between moments of discomfort and grumpiness and tiredness and getting amused by things is over and over just relax, relax with what's right here. Maybe we'll pause for a moment and explore together. What is it to really relax with groundlessness? And we can do that simply wherever you are, whatever's going on, let's just be in silence together and the intention

just to stop and to notice thoughts and they're just opening like that plane flying beyond the thoughts and just aware of what's here, what's happening right here, sounds, sensations, feeling, things, rest with what's here. Notice how it's all changing. Is anything holding still? What's it like to relax with the changing flow? Just rest in it. The pleasantness and the unpleasantness, sounds, sensations, feelings, letting be the entire stream of experience, tender, open, non-judging. And you can continue. You can continue as much as you'd like. I'll keep speaking. The gift of relaxing with groundlessness is that we are able to begin to realize both the changing flow, whether we call them the clouds or the thoughts, the emotions, the emotional winds moving

through sensations, this life experience, and begin to also sense the larger space, the sky, the awareness that it's happening in. You might remember from last week, this is a favorite inquiry from Tibetan teaching, which is if everything changes, then what really is true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious, innately loving, in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something in fact that offers refuge beyond what we call death? Our true refuge is who we are, what we are. This is what we come home to, this essence behind the changing dance. It's the light that shines through the gap between thoughts, that background of formless, loving awareness. Realizing that is like being a child

coming home. And so we're talking about the daily training, the kind of formal practice that helps us wake up from thoughts and open into the changing flow and sense that larger space of what we are. And we can also practice informally through the day. I think of it sometimes as random pausing and just conscious intentional pausing where we just, as we did earlier, just open out of the thoughts and sense what's happening. Relax with it. And you can do it when you're outside walking. It's really powerful. I love doing this where I'll kind of randomly stop, just stop moving and drop thoughts and just be aware of everything that's happening. Relax with that.

Or you can do it just step away from your computer at times and just be still for a few moments. Or when you first sit down at your desk or during a shower. We don't realize how much the incessant dialogue is covering over a vivid, magical flow of aliveness. And behind that, this open space, this awakeness. Srinar Sargadatta says that we see the real world through a net of desires and thoughts and judgments. He says, to see the world as it is, you must step beyond the net. And he says, it's not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes. There's a gap between thoughts, shines through. So we're looking at how in daily life we can wake up to that. We can relax

with changing experience and realize a larger belonging, realize refuge. And you might be thinking, well, I get how you can open out of thoughts and get in touch with your senses, but I really don't get that background of awareness, the child returning home. So I just want to spend a little time with that. We have strong conditioning and one of the ways I think of it, one teacher many years ago had a big piece of white poster paper and he drew a V on it and he asked his students, well, what is this? And everybody kind of said, well, it's a bird. And his response is, no, it's the sky with a bird flying through it. You understand?

You know, we fixate on the object, which could be the sound or the sensation or the thought, but we don't notice the space, which is another way of saying the sky of awareness. And yet we have this capacity to recognize this background of awareness and it deepens with active investigation. If you get interested, because it takes intention. So we're going to do a short reflection that will give you a taste. And you might begin by just feeling yourself in whatever position you are and feeling what's here. And you might notice as part of that that you're paying attention to sounds to my voice and what I'm saying. and then just take some moments to attend to your own mind, whatever thoughts are here.

You can stop as we did before and sense in the quietness what else is here. So you're coming into that changing groundlessness, sensing sensations, sounds, feelings. Now here's the inquiry. Where is the sense of self-located that's experiencing all of this? Where do you feel most a central sense of self that's experiencing the sounds, the sensations? Is it in your head? Is it kind of behind your forehead? Or is the self more located around the heart?

or what's the sense of where you're physically aware of a self being located. Now start noticing what's witnessing that self. Notice the witness, the awareness of the self. There's a witnessing going on. Where's the witness located? as the witness may be up and around the head or in some way seeming outside. Now what's aware of the witness? You sense the light of awareness that's everywhere.

Interior, through you, everywhere. As you watch your mind, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stand motionless only watching, you discover yourself. yourself as the light behind the watcher. Light, interior, through everywhere. The child coming home from a sense of a separate fixed self to this larger belonging. You might take a few full breaths and this is a way you can just explore, investigate, and really sense, well, who am I? Who's really aware? What is awareness? and bring an interest to it.

The more interest you have in truth, the more truth is revealed. So we spend many moments identified as a more centralized, fixed, solid self. On our way, moving through time, I'm here and I'm moving into the future. It's very powerful to open out of that map and realize the boundlessness, the aliveness of a larger truth. Ruth. So here's a fun essay for you. Life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get at the end of it? Death, a great reward. I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way, then you should live 20 years in an

old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch. You go to work. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college. You party until you're ready for high school. You become a little kid. You play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little boy or girl, child.

You go back into the womb. You spend your last nine months floating. And you finish off as a gleam in someone's eye. Okay, so we're exploring together the ways we can wake up from thoughts and relax with groundlessness, really discover true refuge in this ever-changing life, what the Tibetans call original mind, that clear light from which everything in the universe comes, everything in the universe goes. It's an indivisible oneness. I want to explore together one more pathway to refuge to homecoming.

And this is the pathway of intentionally turning towards love. So love is an expression of our essence, an expression of the light, and there are many flavors. And it's natural that when we turn towards love, it has a kind of dualistic frame, or often reflecting from the perception of being a self-loving another person or being loved. But here's the thing. The power of love is when we arouse that kind of a reflection of loving someone or feeling loved. It opens our heart in a way that dissolves the boundaries of self-an-other. It reconnects us to our true belonging, to that sense of a child coming.

home to oneness. For Lisa, my friend, one pathway home throughout her life and while she was dying was gratitude. I've known, you know, I knew her since I was 16 and really no matter what she was going through, whatever anxiety or upset or sorrow, she had this amazing appreciation for the goodness of life. And it was a conscious appreciation. and in those final months, every day at the beginning of each day, she meditated on what she was grateful for. And she did that through the day. And it really, I think, helped her relax with groundlessness, with that transition.

And you could feel that same gratitude, same love coming through her son as he shared that the words while she was passing that flowed through him were thank you. You know, I started these two talks sharing my inspiration, reading Pema Children's book, How You Live is How You Die. And in it she explores just as we've been doing through this, how in our current lives we can open and let go into reality into that groundlessness, into the changing flow of our life, and how this actually directly enables us to let go more easily, more fearlessly during the transition we call death. Pema goes into what the Tibetan teachings call the bardos,

which are actual stages of transition and dying. And they're likened to the process of dissolution, the clouds, thinning out, parting, leaving a blue sky, the understanding being that everything dissolves. our senses, our thoughts, our bodies, and what's left is pristine awareness in all its clarity. So the transition stages, the bardos, are, they're naturally disorienting, just as in a day-to-day way, you know, when we just open to groundlessness, we want to find security, we want to know what's going on. it's very hard to let go into that.

And if you've practiced in day-to-day life, just what we're exploring, opening out of the thoughts, coming into the aliveness and realness of moment-to-moment experience, you will more easily be able to let go during the death transition and recognize like a child returning home that luminous awareness, that goodness of your own true nature. You know, as I speak, I'm aware, some may be thinking, well, I'm already old and I don't have time to practice enough. And so I just wanted to close saying that the home you're returning to the refuge is the essence, the source of what you already truly are. You're not going anywhere. That essence is

here, now, always. It's never too late. And opening to that, trusting the possibility of homecoming will make you more curious, more open, actually more available. So in that spirit, reflection, my friends, with these talks of finding refuge in this living, dying world, just invite you to come into stillness. Take a few long, deep breaths. See if you can feel the breath at your heart. You might have a smile, a slight smile in your mouth and just sense that you can smile into your heart.

And with each breath, with each out breath, I kind of letting go. letting go of any tension, anything that's not necessary. And you may bring to mind someone who's easy to love. Could be human that's alive or not alive, it could be a non-human, a being who's easy to love. And as you bring them to mind, bring them close in and remind yourself of what makes them so lovable of their goodness. perhaps of the consciousness or sentience that looks at you through those eyes of their love,

of their creativity, intelligence, aliveness, responsiveness, humor, whatever it is, to sense their goodness. And you might really see the eyes looking at you that do look at you with love and feel the connection. Just open to that so you can feel the loving that's there. And you might whisper the person's name and say thank you. You might say that again or say the person's name and I love you. And just feel what happens when you express your care. Let that loving fill you, let it be as big as it is.

So it fills the space, spaces within you and around you. Let it be as vast as it is. And feel how that space is warm and lit up, luminous, tender. Just be that vast space of loving awareness, knowing that as the deepest truth of who you are from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Remember the clear light, the pure, clear white light from which everything in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns, the original nature of your own mind, the natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let go into the clear light, trust it, merge with

it. It is your own true nature. It is home. Remember these teachings. Remember the clear light, the pure, bright, shining white light of your own nature, it is deathless. No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only a split second, a half breath away. It is never too late to recognize the clear light. So, dear ones, thank you for your beautiful attention and presence. May we remember together we're not humans trying to awaken on a spiritual path. We are that light of loving awareness appearing in these temporary human forms. And it's never too late to relax and remember and come home to what's always and already here. Bless you, love you, be well.