Tara Brach - Four Spiritual Inquiries: Finding Heart Wisdom in Painful Times

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Four Spiritual Inquiries: Finding Heart Wisdom in Painful Times - When we get stuck in difficult emotions like hatred, anger and fear, we are in a trance of separation - disconnected from the whole of our inner experience, each other and the web of life. This talk explores four inquiries that help us reconnect with presence and heart. Rather than reacting with aggression or blame, these inquiries allow us to respond to our struggling world with our naturally wise and caring heart.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Many of you know of Dorothy Day, the Catholic social activist and canonized saint. And one of the moments that shaped her life happened when she was eight years old and she was a girl in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and she was living in Oakland and watching people as they were emerging from the devastation. And she's noticing that all the adults around her just started caring for strangers in a way she had never seen before. And it's with that vision. of a child. She sees that somehow they knew how to do this all along and then she asked this question,

why can't we live this way all the time? Why can't we live this way all the time? It feels like such a crucial question and aspiration, living from our full potential to love, from a sense of we, Why not? Her longing for a more loving world led to her founding the Catholic Worker Movement, very dedicated to nonviolence, social justice, serving those in need. And my first exposure to spiritual life, it was in Worcester, Massachusetts. I was 19 years old. And my friend Frank, who was a Catholic worker brought me to their hospitality house. It's called the mustard seed. And, you know, there they were he and his friends really giving their lives, you know, 24-7 to whoever was struggling and landed on their doorstep. And it just made this lifelong impression being there,

seeing them serving meals and these very diverse people hanging out, keeping company. The whole atmosphere when people would walk through the door was one of such welcome and respect. And many of those who were helping there had been people who earlier had arrived in great need. So Frank, who himself over these decades, because I've kept up with him, he's given his heart to social justice activism in his community. Well, back then, and again, 19 years old, he gave me a copy of the autobiography of a yogi. Many of you are familiar with that. Some months later,

that landed me taking yoga classes and really opened me to the power of yoga and then meditation, the inner trainings of the heart and mind, as that grounds for the open-hearted caring that Dorothy Day saw happening spontaneously during the earthquake. So, friends, And here we are and our entire world is quaking. You know, as I speak, many are feeling the devastated, enraged underneath, perhaps heartbroken by the entrenched hostility and violence between humans. The fears around the weakening of democracy and all the while our larger body, the earth, burning, all life systems threatened with the clock ticking. It just feels so central that we ask

Dorothy Day's question in the face of our quaking, burning world. You know, what stops us from joining hands and caring for those who are suffering, caring for our suffering earth? you know, what will break the limbic trance, the trance of aggression and hate and greed and reactivity that separates us, that turns us against each other and blinds us to a larger reality? So in this talk, I'd like to explore four spiritual inquiries, four inquiries that I have found help in a very profound way to reconnect us to our deepest heart wisdom and to do this when we're caught in that reactive trance, when we're feeling separate. And these questions help to guide us in responding, both in our personal life and in relating to our larger world from the heart.

And so I'll name them and then we'll spend a bit of time with each. And the first of the inquiries has to do with aspiration. You know, what is most important right now? What most matters to me? It's just as Dorothy Day realized and she was inhabiting her longing to foster care in the world, we need to contact what is our deepest aspiration? What does my heart most care about? That's the first inquiry. The second one is, okay, so what's true here? What's happening inside me right now. Reconnect with the truth of the present moment, you know, to clarity and presence. The third inquiry is, how can I meet this what's happening with kindness? You know, it's an inquiry about how do we awaken the heart? And the fourth has to do with our response,

our actions. What does love want for me? What does love ask for me? now, today, this life. Okay, so these are the inquiries and they're powerful guides to awakening from trance, really responding with heart wisdom to our world. And as you experiment with them, you might find one particularly compelling or that the sequence shifts for you. Sometimes it might be difficult to get in touch with aspiration. at first you might have to just keep saying what's true right now to get yourself into presence.

Experiment. Okay, now stepping back some big picture. If we want a kind of simple framing for our human predicament, it's really helpful to look at our evolutionary unfolding and know, okay, we have this survival and limbic brain. we're basically, this human animal is historically predatory. You know, we're geared for fighting, for fleeing. When we feel endangered, painful emotions take over, you know, fear, shame, hatred, anger. So when this survival limbic brain gets activated, our world, our experience is characterized by feeling

a separation, okay? Either a self with others out there or a group, it's an us-them. And we know that's not the end of the evolutionary story, that we've also evolved a prefrontal cortex and when the brain is integrated, we have these capacities for communication, collaboration, understanding, compassion, care. That's where the identity shifts from that separate cell trance from me to we, to a larger belonging. I often think about a story, the great anthropologist Margaret Mead. It's about her, a student had asked her what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in culture, and they expect her to talk about, you know, clay pots and tools for hunting. But Margaret Mead said that the first evidence of civilized.

was a 15,000-year-old fractured femur that links the hip to the knee. And this particular bone had been broken and it healed. And what that meant was that another person had taken time to stay with the fallen person, had bound up the wound, it carried the person to safety, it tended to them through their recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone had helped a fellow human rather than abandoning them to save their own life, other people had cared, got them to safety, tended. From the perspective of evolution, helping each other, and this is in widening circles,

collaborating, caring has been the single most formative force in our species development. When our brain is integrated, the parts talk to each other. There's inner communities. communication. And it includes the messages from the limbic system saying, oh my gosh, danger, we got to do something. But we maintain full access to our prefrontal cortex, which means we still can reason, we can still be mindful, we can be compassionate, there's presence. This is our evolutionary potential. This is what allows us to sense and trust in a larger belonging, that we're not caught in that trance of separation. We can sense a shared sentience spirit that's looking through all the eyes of beings that you see, that's shining through all

life forms. And as I say this, I'm really aware you wouldn't be here, you wouldn't be listening. if in some way in your life you haven't intuited or touched this potential of belonging to something larger, of a larger sense of presence beyond this limited ego self. So here we are with these capacities for wisdom and love. And yet as we know, we can very suddenly, in a moment's notice, devolve, you know, contract. We encounter something threatening or disturbing personally, societally, and we get cut off from that larger perspective and compassion. We get locked in that reactive trance.

And it's not only in the face of really traumatizing experience. If we're honest, we can see how daily we can get small and get very self-centered in the sense of circling around our own insecurity. and wants and fears. Story of a woman on a long trip, she arrived in Chicago exhausted and she's waiting for the flight for the next leg of her journey and she's hungry so she buys a small package of cookies, sits at a table to have her snack, and she's reading the paper and she becomes aware of someone rustling at her table and from behind her paper, this is a little.

is an older story. She wasn't on an iPad. She's shocked to see this nicely dressed middle-aged man helping himself to her cookies. And she doesn't want to make a scene so she leans over and takes another cookie for herself. In a moment or later, there's more rustling and he's helping himself to another cookie. By the time they're down to the last cookie in the package, she's outraged, but she doesn't say anything. And then before leaving the table, the man breaks the cookie in two, takes half and leaves the other half for her. Okay, half an hour later, she's at the gate, she's reaching into her bag for her ticket, and imagine her surprise and embarrassment when she finds her package of cookies lying there on open. Okay, she had been

eating his. And I love that story because we go into the trance of separation in a flash. were so inclined to mistrust or blame. You know, I think of last week, you know, Jonathan and I, my husband and I, we put away our own clothes because I am absolutely terrible at folding things. And his draws are these neat folded piles and I just stuff, you know. So last week I noticed that he had left a pile of clothes on the bureau for a whole day and then the next day, still there and I'm getting annoyed. And the third day, I'm about to cram him into his drawers.

And I look closer and as you can guess, they were mine, you know. And even if he had left them out, I mean, really, so what? But we know the experience of getting small. And of course, the more we've encountered trauma, the more likely we'll get hijacked by feelings of either being, victimized or self-protecting are aggressive. These energies come up. So, back to Dorothy Day, when we like she did feel that longing for a more loving, caring world, it's that trance that cuts us off from that sense of a larger belonging. And when we're stuck, we need pathways

for reconnecting. And spiritual inquiry is very, very powerful in terms of turning our attention and reconnecting us. Each of these inquiries activates the prefrontal cortex. It stimulates integration, internal communications. So we have the capacity to be in relationship with the fears and anger that come up but not be overwhelmed and maintain our sense of connectedness with each other in our world. Okay, so let's walk through them. The first one, the first inquiry around aspiration, you know, really what matters is essential because it's only when we remember what's really important to our hearts that were motivated to deepen attention and reconnect. Now, the challenge of that question, you know, what really matters is that it's very easy

to have it be mental or abstract. Well, what matters is caring or is helping or is realizing who I really am. It's spiritual awakening and having it be just words. For aspiration to move us, to move our attention has to be embodied, has to be really felt. Otherwise, it will not cut through the trance. We'll stay on autopilot in some way. And there's always a sense unless it's embodied. You know, what really matters is caring, is helping. There's always a sense that we'll get to it down the road. We'll live more aligned with our heart. But right now we need to take care of X, Y, or Z. Basically, that we have time. There's a parable, a Buddhist

parable that's scary and its relevancy. And in it, a wealthy man is shouting at his children inside a burning house to flee. But they're so absorbed in their games, they don't respond. And even though the house is being consumed by flames, they just keep playing their games. They don't respond. And I'll add, in addition to playing games, they're also caught in there fighting, they're caught in self-medicating, they're caught in their virtual daydreams, they're in a trance. Impermanence, remembering impermanence, whether it's our burning world, or that this body mind has got a limited time in this incarnation, remembering that helps us embody what really matters to us. When we get a glimmer of the burning house, we respond. I mean, those who,

I have so many friends who have had some life-threatening disease, cancer or another, and the gratitude that that voice of impermanence helped them stop skimming the surface and arrive in their life, live their moments. Are the parents who realize, oh my gosh, my children are going to be grown and gone in a flash. More time and presence with their children. Are the couples that on some level keep in mind that what will most matter, you know, if they're looking back from the end of their life, is that they find a way out of their conflict

and out of needing to be right. I think of those who directly experience the toll of climate change on the earth they love. they feel it, then the caring gets engaged. I often reflect on a friend, Palliative caregiver who, after being with thousands of people, describe the greatest regret of the dying is not living true to our hearts, to our true self. And it's such a powerful reflection if you want to get in touch with your aspiration, to sense that time is short that all this passes, you know, how do I want to live today? So, here we are, we're in the burning house, and the first inquiry will help us get in touch with that longing.

And then the second inquiry, which is absolutely what brings us into the moment, what's true here? What's happening inside me? You know, Carl Young said that our suffering comes from the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche. And this is individually and collectively. There's a story, Michael Mead, the storyteller, shares from India that I think is really helpful in this second inquiry of what's true. And it begins with a child playing with a ball and he's bitten by a poisonous snake. And so by the time his parents arrive, the venom's spread and the little one's unconscious. And there's no doctor nearby, so they take the child to a holy man to save him. And the monk declares he's not the kind of religious person who knows

how to heal. So the parents are pleading with him that someone on the spiritual path must have the power to perform an act of truth that could reverse the course of the poison. And so the monk says, I only know the truth of my own life, and he places his hand on the child's head and then reveals that he had long before lost any sense of true holiness and only kept up a saintly appearance. And no sooner had this act of telling truth been made than the eyes of the child opened again. The holy man insisted that the father used his power to tell the truth to remove more poison, And with his hand on his child's chest, the father confessed that, though widely respected and envied for his wealth and position,

he never felt generous to others or fulfilled within himself. He owned that he felt empty inside despite his power and wealth. And after this act of truth, the child sat up but couldn't stand or move from the spot. The father asked the mother to use her power of truth to save their child. And she spoke the truth she carried in her heart, that her child was the one she loved, but her marriage brought no love, and she remained in it only out of fear. And no sooner was this act of truth performed than the remaining poison left the child, who rose up and began to play with the ball again.

So how do we understand this? No, just to sense that if we want to heal suffering, We want to release the poison, wake up our hearts, the starting place is inquiry about what is true, you know, encouraging ourselves to include what we've been pushing away inside us, what's been difficult to feel. I love that question. What am I unwilling to feel? You know, how might we be keeping up appearances but feel disconnected with our true self, our true heart? or how have we been focused on achievement but feeling unworthy and empty inside, or caught in fear and not facing the loneliness, the lack of loving in our life, are angry and not faced our grief. So the suffering in our individual and collective life is a signal that we're not tending to primitive emotions. Suffering is a call.

It says pay attention to what's not included. included. And that takes courage, you know, to really say what is true here. And it can go very deep right to the essence of what we are. So along with this second inquiry asking what is true, we need to then follow up with a third inquiry which turns us towards presence of heart. How can I meet this moment, this truth, with kindness? unless there is a space of non-judging care, we'll contract away from the rawness of truth. We won't have the space for it, the tenderness for it. Now that care is already inside us.

It's part of our hardwiring and yet it's often buried in our habitual fear. So this third inquiry invites us to call forward our hearts intentionally. consciously. And there are many ways. It can be by imagining or calling on a larger source of loving from God, from Buddha, from a parent, from ancestors, from the natural world, or it may be the sincerity of prayer for myself, the line from her face that says, ask the friend for love, ask again, for I have found that every heart will get what it prays for most. We awaken the heart by praying for love, or by exploring, holding our own human heart with our awake spiritual heart, with a more open, tender space within us. So that's the third inquiry.

How can I bring kindness to what's here? And the fourth, earth is how we respond to what's going on. How do we respond? And the inquiry that I find so powerful comes from, learned it from Franco Sestesky, who's the founder of Zen Hospice, a wonderful teacher and friend. This inquiry is, what is love asking from me? What is love asking from me. And this is an inquiry that then guides us and how to respond to our life. It helps us bring out our heart wisdom as we respond to whatever the challenge is, whether it's, you know, our own addictive behavior or illness or loss or a relational conflict are for so many, right, this moment, the larger suffering in our world. What is love asking from me? I'd like to share with you

a recent story that brings in each of these inquiries just to give you a feeling for it. And this is a friend, a fellow teacher early last week, in the grip of very painful reaction of anger and blame to the horrific resurgence of violence in the Middle East. And like myself, she has few degrees of separation from the anguish of both Israeli and Palestinian France. I'm making a side here, which is some of you listening might be aware that I co-lead an international teacher training. It's for those who want to teach mindfulness.

And our current cohort is close to 2,000 participants from 75 countries. So I've got many friends in the program from around the globe, including Africa, Ukraine, Middle East. It makes more real and immediate the heartbreak of times like these conflicts with such huge human suffering. So as I met with my friend, we were both feeling that anguish. And we started, as I've described, because it helped so much. just reflecting on our deepest aspiration. And, you know, the way that we framed it, at the end of your life looking back, what will most matter about how you hold what's going on right now?

What will most matter? And for her it was to be able to respond, not react, to be part of the healing. And it was like a prayer. She said, oh, please, there's so much hatred. I don't want to seed more. very powerful. And so when we talked a few minutes about this, because for both of us there's deep resonance with the teaching that you find in many spiritual traditions, the Buddhist form is hatred

never seizes by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. Hatred never seizes by hatred, but by love. alone is healed. So we sensed that and took some moments to sit quietly together. The next inquiry is what is true and we wanted to just bring as much presence to it as possible. So just breathing and sitting calm to calm down the mind a little and then asking that question, what is true? What is happening inside me right now? And for her, it was we really were inviting all the parts and starting with a sense of blame and anger and rage, hatred in some ways,

you know, aimed at, you know, leaders in certain ways, you know, just really strong. And then underneath that, this powerlessness and fear that was very hard to stay with. And the way it kind of formed was this voice in her saying, there's not. answer. I don't see an answer. So then the question, how can I meet this with kindness? And together we were breathing, we both had our hands on our hearts, and it was really saying yes to what's there with a very tender, intimate kind of presence, feeling that larger sense of heart space holding this pain, this fear, this sense of, I think, I think, don't know the answer, the unknowing, and what emerged from that not knowing and from creating

space for it was an ocean of grief, you know, really deep, deep sorrow. And then there was breathing with that, the tears. And the grieving place was basically saying, I love life, I want to protect life. And the more she just let that sentiment roll through, the more she calmed. And so there was a sense of her heart trembling and caring and just more heart space, more heart space. And with that a sense of homecoming, knowing that that heart space was more the truth of who she was than any of the ways of emotions or thoughts or stories. The final inquiry, what is love asking for me right now? And for her, it was to keep not knowing, to keep cherishing, to speak out, to teach on the remembrance that all life is precious.

And I want to pause and say for my friend, for me, for all of all, of us, this is never a one-shot. I mean, we get carried into trance over and over and so over and over, we need to be able to pause and say what matters and move through this kind of inquiry if we want to finally be able to respond from heart wisdom. What does love want for me today? And we might find that it's very broad, that love is asking for us to pray more and to talk to others, or it might mean learning more about something or writing or donating our time or our money. These inquiries all have to stay fresh. A few days after that time with my friend, we talked again. And she said again that the hardest experience and

maybe you can relate to this, was not knowing the answer. Living with not knowing, these long-lived conflicts are so intractable. So again, I want to slow down and take a moment here because when unprocessed fear and anger take over, rather than that truthfulness of not knowing, the habit is to attach to certainty, this is right, this is wrong, a kind of certainty that doesn't include nuance, that's not really open to new information or learning. This is fundamentalist thinking. The fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt. I didn't come up with that. It just resonates. We know it with certainty. there's no possibility to communicate or connect or find a shared reality.

And by the way, this happens on both ends of the political spectrum and it's driven by social media because that amplifies that narrow, non-nuanced, rigid thinking. The suffering is that strong opinions buffer us from vulnerability and they actually hide truth. The poet Wendell Berry says, it may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And that when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. So my friend was very wise in what she said that she needed to keep living with the not-knowing.

And really, you know, do we know the answer to these recurrent violent conflicts? I mean, do we know how to respond to the trauma of centuries of persecution, horrors of concentration camps or are to the trauma of dispossession of land and military occupation, or if we broaden it, do we know how to respond to the kidnapping of African people from their continent, the centuries of slavery and continued racial violence? It's so much easier to have certainty if we block out the complexity of past collective trauma. But we're all linked into past collective drama, and if we're willing to include it, then we can get humble together. We can get humble together, friends.

We can pause because pausing is so crucial and open some, which is the beginning, the grounds of reconnecting with heart wisdom. Maddie Stepanek, some of you've heard of him. He was local here in D.C. published poet he started when he was three. And I want to just read you a poem he wrote the day after 9-11. He was 13 years old. And then he died a few years later of muscular dystrophy. We need to stop. Just stop. Stop for a moment. Before anybody says or does anything that may hurt anyone else, we need to be silent. just silent, silent for a moment before the future slips away into ashes and dust. Stop, be silent,

and notice, in so many ways we are the same. And now let us pray differently yet together before there is no earth, no life, no chance for peace. So Maddie had the power of these spiritual inquiries guiding him, he knew his earthly body probably didn't have long. He consciously dedicated his moments to fostering love and peace. He courageously opened to the truth of the moments, very courageous, and his actions were really grounded in and guided by love. So these inquiries are a process of inner reconnection. You know, when we're in a trance, we have disconnected from our whole being, our whole integrated heart mind, and we're actually commandeered by our survival limbic system, that the links to our prefrontal cortex actually

have been deactivated. This is a communications breakdown internally. We're forgetting what matters, forgetting presence, forgetting love. And just to broaden it for a moment, this same thing. The theme breakdown happens in a society that is entranced that's caught in bad othering, unable to bridge the differences, race, politics, ethnicity, more. It's a breakdown. We're forgetting our shared belonging.

And it makes it very difficult to respond collectively to this overarching catastrophe we're living, the disease of all life systems. Jonathan Haidt, who's a professor, social psychologist, he had an article in the Atlantic some time ago that likens our times now, this breakdown of communication to Babel after its destruction. And it's very fascinating the way he draws on the Bible story. If you're not familiar, the people of Babel had built a tower with its top in the heavens to make a name for themselves. and this is human ego, hubris, it's really driven by the survival brain, the limbic brain, and God was offended and punished them.

And how did he punish them? He saw that as long as humans had one language to communicate with, there's no limit to what they could accomplish. Remember, communication is that wide lens of belonging allows us to collaborate, to progress. And to put an end to that, he said, come, let us go down and confuse. use their language there so that they will not understand one another's speech. Isn't that what's happening? That we're no longer having any shared reality. There's so much we're living in these pockets of different realities. Our communication has been blocked as a society.

and when we're in a trance, it's blocked internally. So, as Jonathan Haidt puts it, instead of communicating, we said about competing and destroying each other. And he says, Babel's not a story about tribalism. It's a story about the fragmentation of everything. It's a scary, painful way to sense our world. And where the hope is, is that we have... ways of reconnecting individually and as a society of activating the inner communications,

activating communications. And when we do, we're much more inclined towards love and action. And whether our actions are focused on those immediately around us, our earth activism, our social justice, are joining with others to serve those most in need, like the mustard seed. I think of, you know, I checked to see and it's been 50 years now, it's still there and I think it's in the same place on Piedmont Street. Love and action. There's so many expressions like Maddie, poetry to foster peace. The point is that this is possible that our lives can become an expression of caring.

And when we're disconnected, there are pathways to connecting. So let's explore that now. We'll practice a little together these reflections. As a way of beginning these spiritual inquiries, you might find a way of coming into stillness and take a few full breaths and scanning your life, sense if there's a place, a situation, something going on that's triggering you so that you feel that you're in that trance of separation, contracted, reactive. And it might be something to do with your personal life or a reaction to what's going on in our larger world. But something you know is triggering

you and contracting you. And you might begin by asking yourself, if I was at the end of my life looking back at this time, what would most matter about how I relate to what's going on? What would most matter? Is it that I bring more presence into awareness, more kindness, more forgiveness, that I have the courage to be true to my true self, my wake heart? So what's the wisdom of impermanence? What's your deepest aspiration? And then take a pause. Again, feel the breath, let the breath help collect your attention, just quieting a little bit. And the second inquiry is really about truth. What is happening inside me right now?

What's true? And you might sense what is most asking for your attention. You might ask what am I unwilling to feel and with whatever is there. Just include it. Perhaps mentally whisper the name of what you're experiencing. Let it be there and ask again, what's true? true now, what most wants my attention, just softening and opening to what might have been unfelt, unseen. Your only job is to gently bear witness to truth. Feel your throat, your

chest, your belly, staying connected, perhaps noticing where there's the most vulnerability, noticing the parts most asking for attention. Maybe it's the places of not knowing or doubt or uncertainty, fear, hurt, grief. If it helps you to put your hand on your heart, please do, to begin this third inquiry. How can I meet this with kindness? You might sense what the most vulnerable part of you most needs. Just ask, what do you need? It might be love or forgiveness, understanding, company.

sense the possibility of offering from your own away cart what's needed. Let the energy go through your hand right into that place of vulnerability. Or imagine receiving it from a larger source. Sensing who or what might arouse that presence of love and care, perhaps ancestor or friend, child, a dog, invite love how might I meet this with kindness invite the love to flow

notice what shifts as you meet what's true inside you with tenderness perhaps you can sense an opening of heart space that space of awareness that's intrinsically caring as we open into heart space there can be a sense that this really is home it's more true than any passing identity or role

or viewpoint or feeling. And it's very powerful to get familiar with this enlarged, a lie of presence. It's the source of the heart wisdom that can guide you. And this leads us to our final reflection, again, sensing the situation you've been reacting to, whether it's an inner situation or interpersonal, or societal and ask, what is love asking for me today? How do I want to respond to this suffering?

And for now, you might just sense one or two ways that love wants you to respond. You can visualize and imagine that manifesting and perhaps sense the reconnecting, that movement from the trance of separation, to more felt connections. that movement or shift from circling around a self-story to realizing the truth of belonging and in the days and weeks to come when in a trance when you become aware that you're caught in some way you might explore these inquiries what matters what really matters what is true inside me right now How can I meet this with kindness? What is love asking?

Spiritual Master Sririr Narcadatta says that when you look at anything as separate from you, you cannot love it for you're afraid of it. When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. Thank you, friends. My palms are together, a real bow and an honoring of your good, bright hearts. Blessings.