Tara Brach - Freedom and Happiness in Daily Life

Episode Date: June 13, 2014

2014-06-11 - Freedom and Happiness in Daily Life - How you live today is how you live your life. This talk explores different meditative practices and teachings that help us reconnect with and nurture presence in the midst of the array of daily stressors. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. A friend of mine went to India some years back, and he was there practicing meditation intensively for three or four months. And at one point, he said it finally came together for him, where he experienced a really exquisite place of peace and openness and equanimity, a real sense of homecoming. And soon after, and he thought to himself that this is really it. You know, that this, there's something in touching that now he knew who he was really beyond

any kind of separate or egoic or small sense of self. So it was really something very precious to him. And as he flew home back to the States and as you know it's a lot of jet lag, but still there was that sense of knowing. And so then he and his wife went directly to spend a few days at a family gathering. Do you know the rest of the story? He said he felt like he crashed into planet Earth. It was like he was booted out of the garden. It was very, very humbling. And I share that because formal meditation practice is a, intentionally, it's a controlled environment. And we're very purposely, you know, kind of putting the do not disturb sign on,

and we are often not answering our iPhone. And there is some tendency to be closing our eyes often. That's not a rule, but often just to quiet down some. It's an on-purpose, somewhat controlled environment, and it's great for training. And daily life has a number of different currents that reach us they can easily tug us around, right? So we can move from being in that quietness.

And it doesn't matter whether we've been at a month-long retreat or a meditation class like this one or maybe at home we did our sitting and then got in the car or got on the subway or whatever. But we know what it's like. There's speed, there's an enormous amount of stimulation and noise, there's emails flooding in that are just, dragging us from one state of mind to another, the advertising, the consuming.

We're in this world that really is not in the same kind of flow as sitting quietly and really not being very goal-oriented. So I've shared with some of you this New Yorker cartoon. I really liked where you had Tarzan stepping out of his hut and saying to Jane, you know, it's a jungle out here, you know. And it's like that. A few days ago, I shared a story that I love on Facebook, and it was a story of this little boy who his mother went to the hospital to have what was going to be his new baby sister,

and he couldn't wait for her to come home for the hospital, and he told his parents he really wanted to have some time alone with his new sister. And at first they weren't that up for it. He was four years old, and they felt like he needed some supervision. But finally, after a lot of begging, they agreed. and so he tiptoed into a room, he stood next to her crib, and said to her, tell me about God, I'm beginning to forget. So I've always been touched by that story because I think it's a feeling we all have,

whatever language we use, that there's something we're forgetting. There's something we've kind of lost track of in our busyness, in our way of moving through the jungle. And we actually can sense we're a bit in a trance that we're on autopilot a lot, that we get caught up. So the training of formal meditation, I likened it. I was talking on Monday in Fairfax County,

part of a presentation with Congressman Tim Ryan to a lot of people understood in bringing mindfulness into the school system. And the metaphor I found that I think really helpful. You know, our children come to school and they're, you know, it's the jungle effect. Their minds are disorganized, they're distracted. They're usually very fatigued. Well, imagine if you go to the Kennedy Center and you listen to the National Symphony Orchestra, what happens before they start playing? They tune up their instruments, right? Every good

musician will tune up first. Well, we need to tune ourselves. We need to practice some in tuning so that we can be ready for that great project of learning, are communicating with each other, or being at work and being at work in a way that we're collaborative, not defensive. We need to tune up. So formal practice, what we train in when we're sitting still, or as you explore today, standing still, and just take a little time to purposely quiet down, helps us get attune, helps us get collected, clear, so that we can go, whether you want to call it the jungle or into our daily life, and actually have some access to a quality of presence or heart that's really what we value.

So, I'd like to talk today about how we can bring practice alive in daily life. What are the strategies beyond our formal sitting practice that truly helps us wake up from the trance? And this is more of a hands-on kind of a talk we'll be having. But it really comes from that statement that always gets to me, which is, how you live today is how you lived your life. How you live today is how you lived your life. And for some of us, that can be really jarring because when we look back on today,

it can feel like we skim the surface, or we got caught in the mundane, or we spent a lot of our time reactive, that we weren't really inhabiting the fullness of our own. who we can be. So it's really an inquiry into how we can live our moments as if they really matter, not that we're on our way to something else. Does that resonate for you? That sense we're on our way usually? So how do we remember? You know, there's a poster and I first saw many years ago, I think, in a health food store with Swami Satchananda, who's a Hindu

yog with long, long beard, and he's on a surfboard in tree pose. And the caption underneath is, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. Come meditate with Swami Satchananda on, whatever night it was. We can learn to surf. We can find some balance in the midst of it. And I'll kind of clump this in two categories, which is when we get disconnected or need some help sustaining presence, how do we come back? How do we get ourselves back here? And then the other categories, how can we cultivate those inner resources so that we have more available to us, the heart or the courage or the clarity? The given, the kind of assumption or teaching behind everyday practices. By the way, Ajan Buddha Dasa is a Thai teacher, master, monk.

He describes this sometimes as everyday nirvana or moment to moment nirvana, nirvana for everybody, where we can actually touch freedom really in the midst of whatever. And the given is our life will never cooperate with our expectations or our wants, at least not all the time. Life doesn't cooperate. People don't cooperate with us. You know, our minds don't cooperate. Our bodies don't. So stuff happens.

And I'll give you my personal example of stuff happening, the most recent one that was such a, like, glaring stuff happened that I couldn't, can't resist sharing, which is that this weekend I decided to take my sister who's visiting me. We went out early on Sunday morning, and I wanted to take her on one of my favorite little walks on the Potomac, and it's a kind of single file rocky up and down trail. And we took our two dogs and single file went out a few miles.

It was beautiful. Very much that we got to a place I like just to kind of meditate and just feeling the day and the day waking up and the colors of the green of the trees and the river in the background. Beautiful. Turn around and start making our way back. And just again, we're a couple of miles out on this, one lane trail

and a runner goes by and he says there are more behind me the next runner says 900 runners coming this is life not cooperating is Gortex not cooperating so there we are we had to make our way

past 900 runners and at first I was very very tight and it was like what are they doing on my trail kind of feel And Ajan Shah, another Thai teacher, puts it this way, he says, you know, if you're attached to things going your way, you're going to be in trouble. And if you're very, very attached, you're going to be in really big trouble. And what he does, sometimes rumor has it, he'd see somebody who was really suffering, and he'd go up to them and say, oh, you must be very attached, you know.

You really can get it. So, if you're familiar with the Buddhist noble truths, the first truth really is that dissatisfaction is pervasive, is universal, because things don't go our way, and we suffer when we attach to having things be how we want them, or resisting how they are. So I was attached. I was attached literally, I was going against the flow, you know, and I was not liking it. And it felt like a bad trip.

You know, I felt like I was like, the world was coming behind me and I was in this bad trip, but by about the 186th person, I started getting this glimmer of understanding which can be summed up to two words, which is, this too. You understand? It's like there's nothing outside the Dharma.

There's nothing outside the path. outside the path, this too was part of what was here. So started feeling myself walking, feeling the sensations of moving along and breathing and a bit more space as I went this too. And then by about the 360th person, there was more humor about it. And then I realized, oh, I could be smiling at, I can smile at 900, well, now it was only 440, but I was only but I can smile. And there could be actually some good contact here. So the rest of the way was pretty interesting.

A lot more awareness, a lot more space. And when we had a chance to cut off the trail, we did. And it got very, very quiet again, a very, very sense of, you know, the kind of solitude we had been going for. So it was really different, but not that much better. It was just different, really. And the dogs, by the way, all the stuff, time we're totally fine. They were happy. But this is the understanding that stuff happens.

And the sooner we can go this too, and there are many different words for it, sometimes they'll just say yes, or sometimes it's just an energetic sense of making space for reality. The sooner we do it, the more quickly we touch into freedom. Some of you might remember a story I told some years back when the British were trying to create golf courses in India they ran into a really big problem

because monkeys would jump down from the trees and take their golf balls and throw them and it really infuriated the golfers now it might have been kind of punishment for trying to colonize another country right but anyway this is what was happening so they tried to build these tall fences

to protect their game from these enterprising monkeys, but monkeys climb over fences. They tried to transport them, export them, get rid of them, but all the relatives of the monkeys came. It was a big party, so it didn't work. So eventually the golfers gave in, and they created a kind of novel rule, which was, you play the ball where the monkey drops it.

So you get it, right? This is our life. You know, the monkeys are going to throw around, the balls. Stuff's going to happen. We're going to be against a flow. It's just going to happen. So that's the big picture. Just to create some humor and wisdom about it, stuff happens. And then in some way when we say this too, we can begin to come back again. Now how do we come back? What I've found is the single most helpful strategy is having the body be your anchor.

In other words, having a sense of scanning through the body again saying, okay, I'm standing here, feel myself standing. Okay, hands, feel these hands. Breath, feel this breath. So we begin to use the body as an anchor. You know, there was a kindergarten teacher that asked the children what was the purpose of their body. And the response was, by one, to carry our heads around, you know. So it's really to get that these bodies are here to live this life.

We live through our bodies. And if we can get our body and mind in the same place at the same time, we can deal with wherever the monkey throws the ball. So, coming back to this body, it takes practice. You'll find if you're in a conversation with someone and you are very on purpose when you're listening to also feel your breath, you're actually going to be less planning what you're going to say and more receptive. If you're walking to the post box or to the subway station or to the store across the

parking lot and you actually feel your feet as they touch the ground, the sensations, the rest of your senses will be more there too. Why? When we're in thoughts, our senses are not awake. You're not hearing the sounds that are actually happening. You'll have missed out on that rain that was falling, right? So we have to come back to our bodies to be here for our lives. I mean, there's that line that life is what's happening while we're making plans for something else. So that's the beginning, is that we practice anchoring in our body. Practice with activities that don't take a lot of thought first.

If you want to start training in on this, because this is a training. Practice in the shower. The shower, for most people, it's more pleasant than not. So practice there. It's amazing how different showers have become for me when I don't think my way through a shower where I'm not just totally somewhere else but actually feeling the pressure and the heat and the flow

of what's washing through. Wonderful. Practice the shower. I also like practicing when I'm washing dishes. It used to be that I would wash dishes and everything was about how quickly can I get them done and get them lined up in the dishwasher get everything done and get away.

And now I actually feel warm water and suds and textures and movement. I don't always do it that way. It's like maybe one out of five times. But it's fun. So practice with what is a daily task that is very physical. The other place to practice is whenever you're walking. You know, we usually have a concept that we're walking

and we're on our way somewhere else, and that is more what's happening than any moment that's going to. on? Do you know how many swaths, how much the swaths of time are through our day that were actually going somewhere else and we're not here? Sadly, it's a lot of the time. Walking can radically change that. There's a trick which is walk a little slower, a little bit. I always feel for myself if I walk half as fast, I notice twice as much. You can tell the difference between being in a car and a bike, it's kind of like that. You'll notice more. And because we're so speedy by nature, when you change the speed, you radically alter your reality. So I'm just

thrown out some things to experiment with, but walking's a big one. On purpose today, I wanted to have us do a standing meditation. How many of you like doing the standing practice? Can I see for hands? Those of you that aren't here, it's three quarters maybe. I stand and meditate as much as I sit and meditate. I'll just stand still for 45 minutes. Partly more awake. Partly it feels better to my body to be standing. Partly because sometimes I do my meditation when I'm out for a walk on the river, so I just stand. But I encourage standing meditation because it'll start breaking the compartmentalization that happens when we hitch a meditative state of mind to a certain posture

where you're sitting, some of us, Gian Mudra with the hands and the legs fold, and it's like the only time we're going to be seeing the crystal rainbows of light or when we're like that, and it's not like that. In fact, the purpose of practice is not the crystal rainbows of light or the rarefied states we think they are, it's can we be with each other and have our hearts open and start seeing past the mask? Can we feel a breath and just feel some gratitude for just being? Can we live this life with awareness? So we practice a standing practice. Another coming back practice that's very key to the whole path is the sacred pause. And I talk about pausing a lot.

I'm just going to take a few moments on it now because I think many of you have experienced how most of the time we're kind of toppling into the future. We're on our way, as I've been mentioning, somewhere else. And we can't just wake up out of trance unless we can sense some stillness or some silence. We can't wake up. This is Arthur Rubenstein, who's a well-known pianist, was asked, how do you handle the notes

as well as you do? Here's his response. He says, oh, I handle the notes no better than many others, but the pauses. Ah, that's where the art resides. So the pure stillness of a pause

forms the background that really lets the foreground take shape with clarity and freshness and we know that we can see that in artwork especially in Asian artwork Japanese you can see the sense of space and how much the space

is what allows the form to express there's a beautiful poem called fire and one of the lines is what lets fire burn is the space between the logs, the breathing space. So we practice pausing.

And you can pause in any moment, but I find it really helpful to pre-chuse some areas that you're going to practice pausing. So it may be that you decide every time, right before you get out of a car, you're just going to stay put and just take a few breaths and just pause and just feel the life in that moment. might be after you hang up a phone, instead of going right back to your computer screen, you just pause. It doesn't have to be long. You can pause for 10 seconds, and you will find you will re-enter your day with a really genuine freshness that wasn't there. You can pause before Eden. You can pause at a red light. It's kind of an enforced pause,

but you might as well turn it into one. It counts. You know. So you just take a few breaths and feel your body. Okay, so far what we've touched on. Using the body is an anchor and using breath. Practicing a bit with the standing meditation and walking so that the transitions in your life become real life, not just on your way moments. The sacred pause.

One of the places I pause is I'll be in the middle of a walk outside in the woods. And if I even get the notion of it, I'll just totally stop. And it's amazing how I'll realize the veil of trance I had been in in some way, hadn't noticed it, but when I stop all of a sudden, it's stark,

and vivid, the senses wake up. Something about purposely coming into stillness that has with it a real magic to it. And then the next piece of coming back is what I call light rain. Now, many of you are familiar with the rain acronym. And when we're really stuck, when there's a tangle emotionally, we use rain, which is recognize, allow, investigate with an intimate attention,

and then the end of rain is not identified. We're free. We're back to our natural open awareness. We can do a light rain. And I'm going to give you an example of it because it's so, so helpful and includes the pause. And so this is something you use when you're at odds with life, when you're caught up in some conflict or when you're in some way resisting the flow, you've lost your prescription sunglasses or you're annoyed at somebody's behavior or you're restless

about something or you're wanting to snack and you know you're about to overdo it. You can do light rain. And I'll give you an example of one man's experience with light rain that was very helpful. His son was, had gone to the University of Colorado, done a liberal arts major. He graduated and then he stayed in the area. So there he was with this, this father was here, professional, living in the D.C. area, sons in his mid-20s, living in the Boulder area with his girlfriend in a group house in the winter snowboarding and teaching some snowboarding and skiing and in the summer waiting at restaurants and doing a lot of mountain biking and having a blast. And the father stance was all for him having a wonderful, alive, healthy life.

And, you know, when's he going to get down and find a job, a real job, that kind of thing. And underneath that, he knew it was fear. He was afraid that a son would end up, you know, not finding his niche and not really feeling contribution and creative and becoming, you know, fulfilling his potential. But what happened was, and this is how it leads to him, leeks and everyday life is that every visit, every phone call, there was some undercurrent of tension and inevitably the question would come up, you know, as to what he was doing and the father couldn't kind of disguise his, it was just strained, his kind of critique was out there.

And then he realizes many of us do that this is real life, we're not waiting for our children to then do something or become something. This is real life. These are days, and months passing where there's distance in a relationship that really mattered. So he began practicing light rain. And what that means is he'd be thinking and a thought of his son would come up and it would be judgmental or he'd be after a phone call or before a phone call or whatever. And he would pause. And the pause is when you just notice, okay, judging's happening and you just let it be. So the first part of rain, recognized and allow, it's like saying this too. Okay, this is what's happening, this too. But the this

too is the consciousness that creates some space. It's not like this too and then keep on thinking the thoughts, it's this too, pause. And then he used a little investigating and feel the kind of clench in his heart and kind of the fear, because it's a fear for his son, investigate with an intimate attention, very purposely not judging himself, for judging. So I want to say that again, when we catch ourselves judging and we want to be mindful not to judge ourselves for the judging, he was gentle. And in that space, in that gentleness, in that presence, he'd open up some. He'd be a little freer, a little less identified. He did this hundreds and hundreds of times because probably thousands of judgments would come up,

but he'd catch enough of them. And gradually things began. to shift. He wasn't as addicted to having the kind of sideways comment on the phone or during visits. It just started loosening up. And their relationship returned to something it had been before that he missed so much, which is they had a fantastic kind of humor and playfulness and so on. It revived in a way. Now, I call this rain on blame. It's one of my everyday practices that's been probably the most valuable in the last decade, where when I catch myself judging, I know that judging separates me and it separates me from myself. So I'll just pause and it can be quick. It might be 25 seconds, but I'm not as much in the trance

of judgment. For this man and his son, after about eight months his son started sharing his worries because he and his girlfriend wanted to get married, they wanted to have children, So things actually changed even more than just resuming their banter. But the beginning of it was practicing this light rain. So I thought maybe, let me see what timing. Yeah, let's just do a little bit of practice. This is an everyday practice that can really make a difference. So sitting in a way that will let you deepen your attention some, closing your eyes.

Now a light rain is done on the spot when things are happening. So you're actually doing a reflection about. light rain. And what that means is that you can just sense today or yesterday any moment where you might have been a little bit reactive where you weren't really being who you can be. You weren't coming from your most centered or open-hearted or clear self. Any moments, today, yesterday, the day before, last year for some of you. some maybe. And imagine yourself into the situation. Just re-enter it. So you can recognize the emotional reactivity. That's the R of rain. And just allow it to be there. So these are

kind of the moments of this too. You're saying, okay, so this is part of the path too, this judgment or this anger, this hurt, this anxiety, whatever it is. And then you're pausing and just Take a few full breaths in the pause. Just imagine that in this pause, in the midst of the situation, you can say this to and take a few full breaths. It helps to anchor you in the pause. Just take a moment to investigate with some kindness, whatever feelings are involved in this situation. The assumption is you might be in the middle, at work, you might be on the subway, you could be somewhere where you don't have time for a deep meditation, but you're just checking in with yourself and you're doing it kindly. You might still feel your breath,

and just imagine that you can then resume whatever activity you were involved with. And just notice if as you resume you can sense the possibility of more natural presence, more balance. When you're ready, opening your eyes. Good. So this is something to experiment with. Just these kind of mini pauses where you notice what's happening, you say this too, you take some breaths, you kind of check in, and you move on.

And the only thing I really encourage you to do when you start moving on is just notice the difference. It's pretty magical what this pause for light rain can offer, which brings us to the next part of the last piece that I want to cover with you, which is what I call resourcing, where you start accessing your resources in daily life. And we're pretty habitual creatures. You know, our thought patterns and our behaviors and our emotions, the same constellations seem to keep arising and arising. So, resourcing is when you actually change your habits some,

like what we just did. We're instead of going ahead and just saying what you want to say or reaching into the refrigerator or whatever, you know, sending off the email, off the email, you pause, you go this too, you feel your body, you feel your heart. You actually have more resources available. And there's an understanding that neurons that fire together wire together. So the more you keep practicing judgment, the deeper the grooves are. Or the more you practice going back and snacking and then having another and another, the more the addictive grooves are played out. So the idea of resourcing is shifting our patterns in a way that we can actually practice new habits that allow us to really be more true to ourselves.

One of the inspirations, positive psychology, Martin Seligman, to really exploring how can we rewire ourselves so that we're really resting in our full potential. Well, for him the inspiration was his daughter, and there's a wonderful story that he tells about his daughter, Nikki, when he and Nikki were gardening and she was just five. He writes, I should confess that when I garden, I'm gold-directed, time-urgent. Nikki was throwing weeds in the air and dancing around. And I yelled at her.

She came back to me and said, Daddy, do you remember before I was five, I whined all the time, I whined every day? Did you notice that since my fifth birthday, I haven't whined at all? I said, yes, Nikki. well, Daddy, that was because on my birthday I decided I wasn't going to whine anymore. It was the hardest thing I've ever done.

And if I can stop whining, you can stop being so grumpy. We can practice new habits and the beginning of it is intention. If you leave this class and you feel a bit more intentional about waking up in daily life, and then each day, and practice takes something daily, you have to repeat it, each day at the beginning of the day, some part of you saying, when such and such comes up, I really want to be able to respond with more appreciation or more grace or more kindness. Or you say, you know, when I get scared in this situation,

I want to pause and be kind to myself. Or when I find myself judging, I want to remember that it creates separation and come back to my own heart, whenever it is. If you have an intention and every day at the beginning of the day, you reflect on that, it creates a kind of gravitational field where there's more remembrance. I mean, I have one where I'll say at the end of my meditation in some way, teach me about kindness. And it's kind of to create a kind of receptivity. So whatever learnings are possible, I'm available to them. So you begin by setting your intention. That's the practice that will call on your resources, change your habits. It's a great storm, isn't it?

That's confirmation for intention. Yes, it's a good thing. Saul and Mort are walking from religious service. Saul wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying. Mort replies, well, why don't you ask Rabbi Schwartz. So Sol goes up to Rabbi Schwartz and asks, Rabbi, may I smoke while I pray? Rabbi Schwartz says, no, my son, you may not. It's utter disrespect to our religion. Soul goes back to his friend and tells him what the good rabbi told him. Mort says, I'm not surprised. You asked the wrong question. Let me try. And so Morp goes up to Rabbi Schwartz, says, Rabbi, may I pray while I smoke? To which Rabbi Schwartz eagerly replies, by all means, my son by all means, setting our intention to be awake in the midst of whatever it is.

So find out what your intention is, what is it you want to aspire to and practice each day, either naming it or asking for it, praying for it, letting it be in front of you. The second piece is as we move through the day, what do we pay attention to? And we've talked a lot in here about how we have an evolutionary bias towards the negative. That we, if there's something threatening coming up, that's what we pay attention to rather than the thing we're excited about. If something bad happens, if we talk to a number of people and one person gives us negative feedback, everybody else is affirming, we glom onto the negative. So the next practice is when something good happens, meaning when you have evoked in you some sense of wonder, our appreciation, our happiness, our peace, whatever it is, stop.

You want to retrain the brain by stopping and breathing and feeling it, get to know it. This is a very neurologically based practice. If you want to rewire yourself, stop when you're feeling good and get really familiar with the sensations and feelings and mind state of that. And then it becomes neurons of fire together, wire together. It's more available. Okay? One friend, the way she teaches about this,

is that when you're feeling a sense of, happiness or wonder or good feeling, when you stop, take 10 breaths. And with each breath, let yourself feel the fullness of that experience. And that creates a little more structure around it. Also keep your eye out for moments when there's no grasping or no resistance. It's just everything's okay. You're not wanting something different. You're not pushing anything away. there's a wonderful story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller who wrote Catch 22 so they're at this party that's thrown by a hedge fund manager who's billionaire, billionaire, billionaire and Vonnegut informs Heller that their host makes more in one day than all the book sales from Catch 22

and this is Heller's response. He says yes, but I have something he will never have. Savonaget says, what's that, Joe? The response is, enough. I know I have enough. Please notice your enough moments. They're precious. I mean, it might be right now as you're sitting here

that there's not like a sense of, oh, I need things to be different. There's not a resistance. There's rain. There's the sounds of the rain. You might start feeling your body sitting here. Just feel whatever mood's there. It could be any mood, but it's okay that it's there.

There's a kind of this too. That's a moment of grace. Get to know it. This is again what Ajan Buda Dasa calls momentary nirvana. So we've been talking about different practices and savoring and feeling that sense of enough. gratitude practice for many

moons I would have a gratitude buddy and we'd email at the end of each day and just name two things we were grateful for. There's been a lot of research subsequently done on if you just each day one little thing where you just write down a little bit of a list or send somebody

that list it alleviates depression and increases well-being. Gratitude's powerful. The last piece I want to mention we'll start with a reflection and we're going to end pretty soon. So if you will, just close your eyes again.

And as you close your eyes, let your senses be awake. What are the inner qualities when you're at your best, when you're most at home and yourself? What are the qualities that most feel like the essence of your own goodness? Is it generosity?

Is it being calm? Is it energize? creative, caring. What are the inner qualities that you really value? And as you sense them also sense what enables you to connect with those qualities? What's going on in your life when you're most calm or peaceful or open-hearted? What supports or cultivates or nourishes those qualities? Some of you might be thinking about the time in nature, Others may be listening to music. Somebody might be talking about

thinking about working in a garden or doing yoga. Some of you might be considering being with certain loved ones, meditating. Most of us live with long to-do lists and a sense of not enough time. It's important for ourselves

our next generations to balance that with a to-be list. Since your to-be list, What are the ways of designing your life that allows for more being? And to continue this reflection you might sense in particular with other people, what it is that allows you to really be fully who you are with others. The message tonight really is like the child in the story, it's natural to forget.

But if you want to go deep in your spiritual life, you can't. spiritual life you can. It takes a kind of intention to remember, to remember when we're with those who are closest with, how the Dalai Lama put it, my religious kindness, to remember with all those that we encounter, this possibility of sensing our connection. How you live today is how you live your life. I want to close with a poem. It's called The Rules of the New Car. By Wesley McNair.

After I got married and became the stepfather of two children, just before we had two more, I bought it, the bright blue sorrowful car that slowly turned to scratches and the flat black spots of gum in the seats and stains impossible to remove from the floor mats. Never again, I said, as our kids, four of them by now, climbed into the new car. This time there will be rules. The first to go was the rule I made for myself about cleaning it once a week. Though why I shouted at the kids in the rearview mirror,

should I have to clean it if they would just remember to fold their hands? Three years later, it was the same car I had before, except for the dent my wife put in the grill when, ignoring the regulation about snacks, she reached for a bag of chips on her way home from work and hit a tow truck. Oh, the ache I felt for the broken rules and the beautiful car that had been lost and the car that we now had on soft shocks in the driveway still unpaid for.

Then one day, for no particular reason except that the car was loaded down with wood for the fireplace at my in-laws camp and groceries and sheets and clothes for the week. and my wife sat in the passenger seat the dog lightly panting beside the kids in the back all innocent anticipation waiting for me to join them I opened the door to my life

so we close in a simple way tonight with the loving kindness practice to just sense as you breathe in and out that the breath could be at the heart let the senses be awake the sounds around you, feelings of sitting here, and sense yourself holding your own life in prayer, may I live today as if it's real life, this moment, as if it's real life. And then in your own words, just offering whatever blessing to yourself resonates in this moment and sensing each other

those that are sitting here near you, those in the room, those that join us, listen. or watching the podcast, those everywhere with that longing to wake up, to bring our hearts and our awareness to the moment, just feeling this whole field of loving awareness and our shared prayer that all beings everywhere might experience the joy of being alive, that all beings everywhere might experience great and natural peace, that all beings everywhere might awaken and be free. Namaste and thank you. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington,

please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.