Tara Brach - Introduction to Mindfulness: The Power of Heart Presence – Part 1

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

NOTE - Tara offers a meditation you can use as a practice during this introduction series: Mindfulness Meditation—Intimacy with our Inner Life. Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today's world. You'll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love. In this first session, we explore what makes mindfulness truly transformational: the flow of effective training, the power of aspiration, how to use the breath as a home base, and the attitudes that support a steady, strong, and liberating practice. As poet W. S. Merwin writes, "Little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently, for I am a river I am learning to cross." 

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome, friends. So this is a five-week journey through the basics of practicing mindfulness and the title of this is called The Power of Heart Presence. And I want to have a particular welcome here for those new, to this. You have the blessings of what in the Zen tradition is called beginner's mind, which is that freshness and openness without the preconceptions of what all of this is about, without that been there, done that attitude. It's said that the mind of an expert can be like

a closed fist, not open to new information and learning. And of course I want to invite all those who are familiar to start fresh. Let this be an opportunity to reboot and deepen practice, to embrace beginner's mind. There are two main currents that carry us towards meditating, and one of them is suffering. And by that I mean, we come because we feel in some way stuck in emotional pain, stress, physical ailments, relational struggles, so we're seeking help. The other current is really the love of truth, the love of finding out what is reality, the love of love. It's an intuition of greater dimensions or potential in living and this kind of draw to evolve

our heart and mind. And throughout history there's been a preoccupation to find that which heals and inspires opens us to the timeless. It's often been described as the sacred journey and it's the path of the sage and the saint and the shaman and holy beings and all truth seekers. And it's what brings us to yoga and to meditation, to prayer, to spiritual work, to service. Really training the attention awakens our full human potential. So my sense is that all of us, all of us come for a mix. So even if, let's say, we initially decided that I need something to lower my blood pressure and be less stressed, deep down we have a longing to live fully, to really awaken

to more truth, to more love in our life. And if we come for spiritual freedom, we're certainly glad to have ways to work with chronic pain or depression or difficulty. So I joined a spiritual community, started meditating in 1975, and both currents were drawing me. Certainly there was the emotional pain of being insecure and anxious and a lot of self-judgment. And I had also, at the same time, had tastes, a recurring taste, whether it was in nature or through psychedelics or yoga, of touching peace, touching clarity, presence, some sense of the numinous. And so there was a very real and compelling spiritual yearning for something more. And in the ashram, in our spiritual community, it really felt like we were doing something

quite special in those days. It felt very countercultural and exotic. And even though humans on all inhabited continents have done some practice of meditation since antiquity, it felt special. I remember at my first retreat hearing the story of a woman who decided to go to India to see the guru. And she calls her travel agent and her travel agent says, well, why don't you just go to Florida like you usually do? But the woman wants to go. So they make the long, the flight reservations for this long flight, and then she has to go on a train.

and she happens to meet some people who know of that particular guru and they tell her, you know, you can only say three words. And she said, I know, I know that. So then she gets to the bus ride that's supposed to take her to the encampment. Again, many people on the bus are on their way to see the guru too and they say, you know about a three-word thing and she goes, I know, I know. Long line when she gets there to see the guru. And so she's in that line and again they remind.

when she gets to the tent where he is that she can only say three words, she has it. Finally, she gets him. She goes in to see him. He there he is. He's in his saffron robes and his wispy beard and she says to him, Sheldon, come home. We don't need to go anywhere to join a new religion or change our life in any big way, give up anything major. What people find is that whatever their path is, meditation, this training of the heart and mind, enhances our life moments. I've done a good number of back-to-basics courses over the decades. And this season, it felt important to offer a fresh one that's really informed by the atmosphere of these times. We know it around the globe that we're just witnessing and experiencing so much crisis.

Climate instability and economic chaos and growth of authoritarianism, violence, deep social division. there's a kind of collective nervous system overload happening and I suspect you understand exactly what I mean and as members of the world we register it in different ways in our personal life but it's there for some it just feels like more chronic stress and for others up-leveled anxiety and overwhelm many feel anger many feel powerlessness There's heartbreak. A number of people have mentioned to me that it feels like we're going around business as usual while our world is unraveling and chaotic and that we're in a trance.

It's like we're on autopilot. We get emotionally reactive when we're triggered, but we're in a trance. And it really comes down to all of this as a sign of disconnection. from ourselves and each other and from what matters most. Rather than being able to be present with and hold what's happening, we're contracting. And so for me, these times have called on me to deepen my meditation practice. It really has been helping to metabolize and have space for and respond to what arises. and you might be feeling the same call to deepen meditation.

So again, that felt like this was the time to come back to basics and for those of you who are new to really dive in. In the Chinese script, mindfulness is translated as presence of heart. And I really love that translation, the spirit of that. because in many Eastern traditions, Asian traditions, heart and mind, the words are not separated. So this means that any training in mindfulness is also a training in heartfulness, that we're training in the two wings of awareness. And meditation, this training, offers a profound and timeless medicine.

It's really through the practices of mindfulness of heart presence that we can begin to interrupt the cycle of reactivity that keeps us trapped in fear and separation. We can also interrupt and step out of addictive habits. We can undo lifelong patterns of creating distance from each other. And when we're triggered and stressed by the events of our time, we can learn to touch an inner refuge, a space of calm, of clarity, of compassion that's always here beneath the noise. It allows us to awaken from that trance.

And it also allows us, and this is so essential, to touch into the courage and the intelligence we need to respond to our world, to our life. So, through these weeks, we'll be looking at tools for meeting what feels overwhelming and frightening and oppressive and sad and also, and this is important, for opening to the goodness that's always here, the goodness that we need to keep nourishing our spirits. The Washington Post a number of years ago did an experiment where they invited Joshua Bill, who's world-class violinist. He was giving a performance in a great concert hall that evening for a thousand people.

And he takes his Strativarius violin and goes into the subway as part of this experiment. And in the morning, the morning after that concert. And he put out a hat or a basket, I don't know. And he plays these amazing pieces from Bach on his Strativarius. So there he's in the subway playing these pieces. playing these pieces and they realized that after an hour of being there almost no one stopped except children and I think there was $17 in the hat which wouldn't have gotten you one quarter of the way to the ticket to the concert and what this experiment really asks is how much do we miss?

How much is our overwhelm and our stress, this transfer in blinding us to the beauty of and the goodness that's right here, blinding us to that green, new spring leaves. We're having spring here right now, where I live, or to the sunrise or sunset, or to the sound of a child's laughter, or to really looking at the eyes of dear ones, seeing the beauty, and how much are we missing? So here's the truth that we can train ourselves to become more present to the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. Okay friends, so this program's an invitation, a way of remembering who you really are

beyond the swirl of the thoughts and the emotions, a pathway home to presence, to love, to the remembrance of the sacred that our world so deeply longs for. there's a Zen saying that the most important thing is remembering the most important thing. And you might deeply long for connection or for love in life, creativity, but on a daily basis, be focused on what might go wrong, our finances, social anxiety, checking things off the to-do list. it's natural that we focus on what gives us an immediate sense of security and ease, that's that negativity bias. And we can go months, decades, getting through the day,

but not really tending to what most matters, to relationships, including intimacy with our inner life. So bringing an engaged presence to the world is really the medicine. I mean, Thoreau put it this way. He says that we spend our life fishing only to find it was not fish that we were after. And I often think of a palliative caregiver who talks about the regrets of the dying after being with thousands and thousands of people. and it really came down to not living true to their hearts.

That instead of really listening inwardly, they were really going along with shoulds and expectations and judgments. And I would say now this helpless reactivity to the next new assault from the news, but not coming into our... hearts and staying true. So the starting place, and this is really throughout the sacred journey, but the starting place is aspiration, that if you want to establish a regular meditation practice, if you're here because you want to refresh or deep in your practice, and if under that you're seeking heart presence, the more of this is in your conscious awareness, the more

more of the program will nourish your spirit. So we practice, our first practice is a short one where we reflect on arriving right here and looking at our aspiration. And for this and for all the practices we do, you might want to keep a journal handy because even writing just a sentence or two about what's either difficult or revealing can be very helpful. Okay, so just take a moment here, a pause, and notice that you're intentionally inviting yourself into presence. Take a few full deep breaths, scan your body and sense what might want to let go a little, perhaps noticing you can relax the shoulders back and down, maybe softening the hands, slight smile in the face, softening the muscles in the face, loosening the belly, letting

this next breath come into a softening belly. It's feeling your whole body, breathing. So you're listening to and feeling the moment, sounds, let them wash through, the sensations through the body. Feel the tingling in the hands. Feel the place the feet are resting on the floor, the contact, the pressure, warmth. Let your whole body be a field of sensation and gently bring this awake presence to the area of the heart. You might sense, what's the state of my heart right now?

You're just listening with interest. Whatever the mood is that's here, not any judgment, simply noticing the state of your heart, closed or open, tight, squeeze, flow, warmth, cool, fear, excitement, sadness, anxiety. What's the state of your heart? And if you listen more deeply, you might pay attention to what your heart's longing

is. What's the aspiration that's here? really matters in your life and you might sense if you were at the end of your life looking back, what would matter about today, about these days that you're living through, with whatever arises, sense that you're in some way honoring it. This is an ongoing exploration. You might find that what arises is something like not having so much fear or being more present. with others, are being more open-hearted. Whatever it is, just honor it. Feel the breath at the heart and with whatever you notice, just sense that you can bow to it. Okay, so if your eyes are

closed, find to open them, come on back. One of the best definitions of mindfulness is attending on purpose to our moment-to-moment experience with a non-de-moment. judgmental, interested, friendly presence. There's a film that some of you may have seen, gorillas in the midst, and in it, Diane Fosse shown to be this courageous, remarkable field biologists who managed to befriend a tribe of guerrillas. So Diane had gone to Africa to follow in the footsteps of her mentor, George Shaler. He was a primate biologist, and his renown came. when he returned from the wilds with more intimate and compelling information about guerrilla life

than any scientist had ever presented. And when his colleagues asked him, well, how was he able to get such remarkable detail? You know about the tribal structure and the family life and the intimate habits of guerrillas, he attributed it to one simple thing. He didn't carry a gun. He didn't carry a gun. And as it turns out, previous generations of observers had entered the territory of these large, wild guerrillas, with this assumption that they were fearsome and dangerous. So they came with an aggressive kind of energy, large rifles in hands, and appears that the guerrillas could sense the danger and fear from these rifle-toting men, and they kept a far distance. By contrast, George Shaler entered their territory without a weapon.

So he had to move slowly and gently and above all really respectfully towards these amazing creatures. And in time, sensing that he was benevolent, they allowed him in sort of. And later her student, Diane Fossey too, to sit right among them and learn their ways. So, what if we approached ourselves and each other with this kind of care and respect and curiosity? You know, what if not carrying a gun guided us in relating to our world, you know, guided us collectively in our different religions, ethnicities, races, countries, and relating to each other? Okay, I bring that up because if that's our vision, for the world, it starts with us being able to relate to our inner life with that care and that interest, with that respect.

And this is the essence of mindfulness, that intimate, non-judging attention to what's here. So to train, to develop the capacity, we purposely bring awake awareness to the different domains of our inner experience. that includes body sensations, which includes the breath, emotions, thoughts, and then behind that changing flow, the space of awake awareness itself. So over these weeks we're going to practice with each domain like observing the gorillas in the wild will learn to notice in an intimate way what's arising, the thoughts, the emotions, the sensations, letting them come and

go and staying in that one seat of awake presence. Okay, so here's why mindfulness is a superpower. If we're not aware, if we're not in that one seat of awake awareness, something arises, a daily trigger of being, let's say, ignored or interrupted or criticized or we're late for a meeting or car trouble, or something physically, are we hear about some other people, of news about the world. And then what happens is we get possessed. We really are in a trance. We're inside the cycle of thoughts and anxiety and anger, whatever it is. But there's no choice, there's no freedom. Instead, in a moment of being aware of what's arising inside, without a gun,

no judgment, we become enlarged. We're not possessed by what's going on or identified with it. The most helpful metaphor I know for this is that when we're mindful, we become an ocean that's aware of the waves but we're not tossed by them. And you might like it better as a saying which is if you trust you're the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves and if you forget you'll get seasick every day. So when we're enlarged by mindfulness we can see them. We can see clearly, oh, okay, this blaming thought, okay, this clutch in my chest, okay, about to act out in a way I'm going to regret. And we can relate without judging ourselves, but we can relate from a larger space of presence. So, mindfulness is an innate capacity of the mind of consciousness.

We all have some mindfulness in us. It's an inherent potential to be awake and present to life as it is. So we don't need to acquire it or manufacture it. It's like the clear blue sky. It's always there behind the clouds. But we rarely live from this natural awareness. Instead, we get caught inside the clouds and we lose perspective. We get in that trance of the repeating thoughts and emotions and reactivity. So we forget the presence that's here. So that's why we practice, not to create something new, but to strengthen the muscle of remembrance, a kind of coming back and reconnecting with what's here. You might think of mindfulness like an atrophied muscle that the more you use it, the stronger it gets.

You know, what we practice gets stronger. The ground of training in mindfulness is coming back out of the trance into sensory experience. and often it's the breath or body sensations or sounds. It's kind of a home base for presence. And this is because the senses are always in the present moment. I mean, unlike thoughts, which are usually the past or the future, when we're connected with the senses, we're connected with the immediacy of being.

I mean, you might check it out just in this moment, and just sense the thoughts and ideas and concepts that have been going around in your mind and on purpose just come back. Feel your breath, feel your body, feel the length and the volume of your arms, your hands, inside the hands, be aware of sound and mentally whisper hear, the word here, and sense the difference between here, the vivid immediacy of presence and being in the world of concepts and ideas. Okay, so the remainder of this session will be looking more closely at mindfulness of the breath

because the breath is the most universally practiced home base for mindfulness. It's always with us. I mean, unlike other sensations sometimes, it's the same. It's generally the breath is a neutral or pleasant sensation. And it's also a powerful bridge from the abstract world of thoughts back to this immediate lived experience where we literally feel ourselves coming home. Underneath all the waves of the passing sounds, the river of thoughts and feelings, you can notice the breath how the body breathes it.

itself and how it breathes with the trees and all the other beings that share the breath, the life of the atmosphere that's shared by all of us alive on the earth. So by attending to the breath, you begin to notice what's present all around you, and you become more alive just where you are. The breath is particularly valuable in times of high stress. One man was describing how he used to listen to a news podcast on the subway going into work and that over these last weeks he's used that time instead to practice mindfulness of his breath and then he extended to noticing the people around him more,

expanding his meditation to include smiling at strangers and he describes arriving at work and this is a highly charged understaffed hospital, it's lost a lot of its funding. And he says he arrives there just so much more sane and steady and open-hearted. The breath helps find that still point in the midst of the storm. Okay, so how do we practice with it? Choose the easiest place to pay attention to the breath and just place the attention there, noticing what it's like. it may be that you're paying attention to the inflow and outflow of the breath at the nose, or even the tip of the nostrils, or you might feel it in the throat,

or you might feel the rise and the fall of the breath at the chest or in the abdomen. Just pick one place that it's easy to pay attention. And when you place your attention there, just notice what it's like. I mean, if you're paying attention to the inflow, outflow at the nose, notice if the breath is long or short. if there's gaps between the breath. Perhaps if it's cool when the breath comes in and warm when it goes out, the breath feels heavier or light.

Even three breaths attentively felt can bring some sense of calm and ease. And your mind will drift. It's the nature of the mind to forget to go into trance. So the practices come on back. The breath is the home base. It's the place of mindfulness for you. Now how you come back, the mind has drifted, it's gone into thoughts and all of a sudden you go, oh my gosh, I wasn't supposed to be thinking, you know, here I am.

See if you can let go of any judgment supposed to, should, all that matters is coming back and coming back with a quality of friendliness, curiosity, and you know, and the quality of friendliness, ease. I love to think of it like you're training a puppy where when the puppy misbehaves in some way or acts out in a way that you don't want it to, you're not angry at the puppy. Instead, you're going to be gentle, you're going to be firm, you're going to be consistent. There's a necklace that's a shape of a dog bone and it says sit, stay, heal. Now I want to say, just because I'm a truth-teller as well as I can be that I have a new puppy. And just before I came in to record this talk,

the puppy peed on a rug I really like. And I did get angry. I felt the anger surge up. And so I breath. First I squawk, then I breathe. I have to really tell the truth there. I breathe and I breathe and I breathe. and maybe five breaths, six breaths, and I wasn't angry at the puppy.

You know, I was frustrated with the situation. But the breathing brought me from a trance into sanity. It has great power. So I found there's certain images that can be helpful when we're beginning to practice mindfulness of the breath. And one of them, this is from Ticknad Han, is, that you're sitting like a mountain, steady and grounded, and the mountain doesn't resist the changing weather. The storms roll through, the sun rises and sets,

the moon casts its quiet light, spring blossoms, winter snows, etc. They come and go. All through it, the mountain remains, still, vast, unmoved. And in this way, we can begin to sit with the breath, allowing whatever arises to come and go while resting in this steadiness of the inflow and outflow of the breath. Some people like a more delicate image, the gentle landing of a butterfly and a flower, because

this can evoke a sense of intimacy and care that each breath becomes a soft meeting, a moment of quiet attention. Another image is that of a boy anchored in the sea and waves rise and fall in the wind come and go and still the boy remains tethered by presence so it rises and dips with the motion but it's never lost. In this way the breath becomes our anchor in ever-changing ways of thoughts and sensations and emotions no matter the weather we're connected, we're held. Of course there's also the beautiful line from her former national poet laureate W.S. Merwin

who wrote, little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently, for I am a river I am learning to cross. So these images can help us settle and begin to relate to the breath not as something to manage or control, but as a companion, a home base, a living thread of presence. So let's practice for a few minutes. This will be a short practice, but you will need to take a moment to really pause and become still in a way that allows you to be both relaxed and also alert. So find a posture that works for you. And if there's any obvious tightness or tension in the body that you can easily release, do so. Your eyes can be closed or downcast and let the face be soft, loosening the jaw. If you'd like to be closed, you'd like to be.

like a slight smile at the mouth, sends a message to the whole nervous system to relax the shoulders, let the arms and hands rest easily and let the belly be soft, the breath natural. Remember that this is a practice of awareness. It's not breath control practice. You want to feel how the breath breath breath breathes itself. And by noticing the play of the breath you're inviting and cultivating a sense of presence. Underneath all the waves of sound and thoughts and feelings and sensations, you can sense the body breathing itself. So notice where it's easiest to feel the breath.

Nostrils, the coolness swirling, tingling in the back of the throat, rise in the fall of the chest or the belly, sense where you'd like to rest the attention. And if the breath is subtle, or hard to feel, you can feel the whole body breathing if you'd like. Or you can place a hand on your belly and feel the rise and fall of your belly in the palm of your hand. That's a beautiful way to stay with the breath. Come back gently to this breath. Each time the attention wanders and you notice, like training the puppy, sit, stay,

feel three or four or six more breaths. very gently allowing the breath to breathe itself. If it's helpful you can notice the beginning and middle and ending of the in-breath are the rise, the beginning and middle and end of the out-breath, or the fall. Notice the space between breaths. Rest yourself. Relax into the breathing.

Each breath arising and passing with mindful awareness. intimate presence with the breath and if you notice the attention has wandered, returning gently, curious, friendly, without judgment, resting again in the inflow and the outflow, you might sense that this presence is actually loving the breath, a refined light presence, tending the breath, loving the breath. And with each breath there comes a sense of deepening, relaxing, this breath, just this breath. And in these last moments, let go of any effort, just an effortless presence

with the breath, an effortless presence with this changing life. These are the words of, women, 10,000 flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life. Okay, friends, if your eyes are closed, you can open them if you'd like. So maybe you could sense a bit the breath as a home base, the value of that, a kind of homecoming. Are you might have found, for whatever particular reason, that the breath was difficult. For some, there's physical challenges with breathing, some it may be related to trauma. No worries, you don't have to use the breath as a home base.

There are other equally powerful, beautiful anchors that will serve you, such as a home base. just sensations through the body or sound. But if it's not difficult, I do encourage you to start practicing with the breath because it's always here and it's valuable as a grounds of practice. It's a way to come back here and steady attention. Okay, now for the dicey part of this opening session here which is establishing a regular practice. Because as we know, whatever we practice gets stronger and we get it. We get that to be physically healthy, we need to exercise regularly and it's the same with cultivating mindfulness, a present heart. I think Rumi said it the best when he asked, do you make regular visits to yourself?

And the challenge is that many of us have a very tense and unpleasant relationship with discipline. and there's a conditioning to strive or resign and either way to judge. Like we have this map in our mind of what it means to make progress. So I want to invite you to something really different and this is whether you're new at this are very experienced. And just to give you a bit of my own experience around practice, I spent 11 plus years in an ashram where I'm a very experienced. I had the support of others in gathering daily and had a very strong regular practice.

I left the ashram and I had a new baby. So all of a sudden everything's different and yikes, you know, for those first few months, I became very sporadic. It was catch-catch-catch-can. I was low on sleep and I could feel this growing kind of moodiness and reactivity. Of course I had the post-birth hormones flowing through. but I missed that refuge, that quiet, collected, clear presence that I was familiar with. And I was compassionate towards it.

I mean, I realized I had a new child, etc. Then I had a brilliant idea. And it was that out of love for life, out of love for waking up, that I would practice meditation every day no matter what. And I gave myself just infinite back doors which meant that I could practice, I was going to practice every day but it could be for any length of time, it could be in any posture, nursing counted. It was really creating intentional presence for some period of time where I was just going to be here now.

That was the intention, didn't have to happen, but that was the intention. So it's been 40 years, my son's turning 40 and I don't give myself the back door of nursing but I still have all sorts of other back doors. Mostly I have the privilege of time and a habit that I love so that I practice every day regularly for a good amount of time. Although now I have a new pop and it gets interrupted but I invite you to try this and it's not out of a sense of rigidity, but just out of love for life because life loves rhythms and the rhythm of making regular visits to ourselves is a gift to the soul.

It really is. Give yourself the back doors, you know, whatever length of time works, whatever way of practicing, it's just some intention to be present. And even give yourself a back door for the every day because if you may be, you may be a way miss some a day, then let your practice that day. Let's see you're at the end of the day and you haven't practiced and you don't even want to be quiet for a moment. Just say forgiven, forgiven and breathe and start fresh the next day. There's a saying that enlightenment is an accident and practice makes us accident prone. The Buddha basically put it this way.

is that you have the capacity for profound happiness, love, and freedom. He said, I wouldn't be teaching this if it weren't possible, that there's a natural wisdom and love in us. It's already here. And practice gives us access. It undoes the habits that keep us from presence so that we can remember that open blue sky. So if I look at in teaching over these years,

and I think of all the people I've worked with and I've seen some that continue to grow and open and flower and others that kind of plateaued or dropped their practice. The primary difference really is their attitude towards practice, doing it out of a love for love and a love for truth versus some should that was rigid. So this brings us back for this final part to the gorillas because I feel like that I feel like the attitude is all in that story. Curious, relaxed, and friendly. And with curious, it's that when we sit down to practice in some way we're curious about the nature of reality, who am I and what's happening with the inner guerrillas? What is really, what am I feeling?

What is this emotion? What can I learn? What are the ways of practicing that most bring clarity and insight and tenderness and openness. So bring curiosity to whatever arises. It's amazing that when something difficult arises, if there's a part of you that gets curious about it, there's less suffering. There's a story about a young boy and his dad who go out in a rowboat on a fine morning

and after a while the boy becomes curious about the world around him and he looks up at his dad and says, well, how do the fish breathe under the water? water. Dad thinks about it and goes, well, I really don't know that. Boy, says quietly for another moment and then turns back to his dad and says, how does our boat float on the water? Once again, his dad replies, well, I don't know, son. So he's pondering his thoughts and again a short while later the boy asked, why is this guy blue? Again, his dad shakes his head, don't know. The inquisitive boy is kind of worried that he's been annoying his father.

So he asks this time, Dad, do you mind that I'm asking you all these questions? Of course not, son, replies Dad. How else are you ever going to learn anything? Okay, curious. Curious, relaxed, beholding the guerrillas, if we're stressed and we have an agenda, they'll pick it up and hide. There's no intimacy with our inner life if we're not relaxed about it. I remember hearing about Ticknod Han who went to visit a San Francisco Zen Center and they

wanted to, they asked him how they could improve their practice. Here's what he responded. He said, you guys get up too early for one thing. You should get up a little later and your practice is too grim. I just have two instructions for you this week. One is to breathe and one is to smile. So you can kind of get the feeling of that. Mindfulness, art presence is a natural capacity. It will not emerge from grim striving.

It arises from a relaxed attentiveness, effortless mindfulness. Take a moment here to pause and just to try this little exercise out. For the next 10 seconds, I want you to close your eyes. Go ahead and do it. Now try not to be aware. There we go, starting now. Try not to be aware. Try not to be aware. Okay, that's enough, that's enough. Now take a moment, breathe and again, pay attention but let it be a kind of effortless mindfulness

that that noticing of the changing flow is just happening naturally. Relaxed heart presence. the power in practice of inviting yourself over and over to relax, to relax back into what's here. Okay. So we're talking about the attitude that will really carry you and actually create a liberating kind of meditation practice. And we've talked about curiosity and relaxing. The last piece is friendliness, a non-judging attention. This is without the gun. That's what directly opens us to heart presence. And if you sense how we typically go through daily life, our conditioning is to be preoccupied,

tight, judgmental. So this is actually quite profound. What if throughout this course your deep, deep intention was not to judge yourself, not to judge progress with a lack of? I mean, what if when judgments inevitably arise, you put your hand on your heart and just say, let go, let go. Because I promise letting go of the gun will extend to others to. You know, probably aware of this, but in the West that the whole process of shaking hands,

what it comes from is that message of I'm not carrying a gun. And in the east, instead of greeting by shaking hands, it's an amistay, which is, I see the sacred in you. And one leads to the next. If we're not judgmental, we begin to open so we can see the sacred in ourselves and each other. And this is the real spirit of this practice, that kind of profound reverence for life, the life that's inside us and around us. what we cultivate. And the felt sense of friendliness is right at the heart of it. You know,

one of the words for Meta, which in Polly is Love and Kindness that most describes metta is friendliness. And in Buddhism, the loving-kindness practice really helps fill the atmosphere with the sense of heart, with heartfulness. So as we close today friends, I thought we'd close with a brief loving-kindness practice, this kind of practice of deep friendliness towards the life within and around us. This again is a short practice just to give you a feeling for it. But I invite you when you're practicing your everyday no matter what if you want to take an extra minute or 20 minutes to touch into this kind of sense of meta, it brings everything

alive. So here we go, pausing, taking a few full breaths, letting go of tension in the body, just notice what might want to let go right now. And as we did earlier, bring the attention to your heart, again noticing the state of your heart right now. And if you'd like to put your hand on your heart to connect more fully with your heart, breathing, feeling your heart, feeling the touch, and take some moments to send whatever message or blessing to your own being most resonates right now and send it with a genuine sense of friendliness, of kindness, some message of care. And notice what happens. Just notice the felt sense of your being, the heart space that's here, with this simple intention to

to offer friendliness or kindness inwardly and then wide in the field so that you're sensing this world, all beings, as part of this heart presence and feel that in some way your being is bowing, namaste, offering care to the world. You might sense your prayer for our world. This heart presence is the essence of who you are. So you might sense this is homecoming, to whatever degree you experience it. Okay, dear ones, thank you for being part of this. May you make regular, curious, relaxed, and friendly visits to yourself through this week,

and I'll look forward to being together again next week. Thank you for participating for your presence and good hearts. Blessings.