Tara Brach - Introduction to Mindfulness: The Power of Heart Presence, Part 5

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

The final session of this series explores the most powerful strategies Tara knows to bring mindfulness alive in all facets of daily living. These informal practices help our entire life to become an expression of our awakening and wise heart. 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.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste friends. Welcome. Thank you for being here. So this is our final session in this intro series on mindfulness, on heart presence. I can still remember the moment early on in my first 10-day retreat. mindfulness retreat, having this sense that this practice, these teachings can carry me the full way through my whole life is all I need on a path of awakening love, awakening wisdom. And it still feels true these many decades later that over these 50 years of practicing

that I keep coming back over and over again to just what we're at. exploring during these weeks of this introductory program, the very basic instructions for bringing presence and heart to the moment. So these last four weeks, we've been really looking at the basic elements in formal practice, you know, the ones that really are done as a deliberate pause from regular activity, often sitting still, although walking meditation is wonderful also, But the blessings of this path are found through awakening presence during all of our activities, all of our moments in daily life. And that's what's going to be our focus today.

There's a Zen master Suzuki Roshi who was asked the question, what should a Zen practitioner do with his spare time? And Suzuki, at first he looked perplexed and then he repeated the phrase, spare time. He said it a few times and then he began to laugh uproarously, you know, like as if all the moments of our life aren't real life, that they don't count. I often think of this psychologist who went to Las Vegas and then came back with that sign saying, you must be present to win. Remember that? So it's true. It's true in relationships. We need to be present to have relationships flower. It's true in work, it's true in play, in all parts of our life. If we're

lost in memories and planning and reactivity, what I call a trance, we're not really living and loving fully. A few years ago, I was preparing a talk on this, really how we need to wake up presence as we move through all parts of our day. And I was in the shower thinking about some ways to focus and illustrate the talk. And I realized that I was slathering shaving cream all over my head. So it's like, really, are we here for this life? And the key thing is that learning to be present for our lives is not a church on Sunday kind of a, path. But NAR is it a grim training day in and day out that we're in some ways stressing and straining to be mindful. It's really about discovering a quality of heart and awareness

that allows all life, whatever's unfolding to be real life, so that we're here, that we're here for the beauty that's around us, the sound of the wind in the trees, the new green of spring, the taste of a strawberry, the brightness in our child's eyes. You know, I sometimes think of that surprising surge of pleasure when we exchange a smile with a stranger. You know, can we be here for that? So life becomes real life as we open to the beauty and the goodness. And also, as we open to the beauty and the goodness, and also as we open to the real pain and challenges that come with every life. We need to have that refuge of heart presence when we're meeting the difficult emotions, the inner weather, the failures, the disappointments

in work and relationships, the health challenges. We need a way to be intimate with our experience that really includes the greatest losses. There was a meditation teacher, Tamara Engels, who had cancer. And she writes in her last months, this is what she wrote. She said, my days are short. And as I grow weaker, I experience so much gratitude for my meditation. Not only the joy and ease it brought, but the hard parts. For every bored and restless sitting, for every fearful fantasy,

for every pain and ache I sat through, for every itch I didn't scratch was a training for kindness, a training for the muscle for bearing witness, for the trusting spirit that carries me now as I face my death. The only certainty we have is that life will change and at times it can feel seismic, the shifting of the ground, that we will lose. lose our health, we'll lose dear ones. And the gift of this path is that it opens us to the awareness and love that can hold whatever arises. It opens us to that inner freedom that lets us be with this living, dying world. And it's not just the freedom to be with the large, profound experiences of joy and sorrow in a daily way. This path helps us find

remembrance and balance and open-heartedness and clarity just amidst the ongoing triggers and stressors that we experience. I'll share an early experience of mine. That first retreat I was describing where I realized, wow, this path can take me the whole way. I remember before leaving, sitting in the meditation hall and my heart was wide open. I truly felt that this whole world was in my heart and I was just suffused with tenderness, with light, with the benevolence towards all. And it felt like homecoming. I felt like, ah, this really is the truth of who I am.

So then I left the retreat. I arrived home where I had my young child and my, then husband, now ex-husband, and I saw on the kitchen table that he hadn't mailed the check that was supposed to go out for the mortgage. And I realized immediately I'd be paying an unnecessary late payment and I slammed the table and I shouted at him and very quietly he said, well, I guess you got a lot from that retreat. So of course that stopped me in my tracks because I did get a lot from that retreat. And it still only took moments for me to flip into that rage. We need the formal practices we've been exploring. And we need informal practices of mindfulness

that purposely arouse our presence and compassion in the midst of it all. So with informal practice, the capacities that we really cherish, the love, the compassion, the creativity, the wisdom, the intuition, they shift from fleeting states like what I experienced at the retreat, that open-heartedness, to much more enduring traits, much more accessible when we need them. So for the remainder of this time reflecting together this session, I'd like to share what's worked for me and for many, many others in bringing heart presence alive through the ups and downs of daily life. And we'll do a number of short reflections together.

The first domain of informal mindfulness that I want to explore has to do with setting conscious intention. The Buddha said that the entire world, this entire world, arises out of the tip of intention. So, what consciously matters to you, that's what guides your attention. There's a saying in India that when a pickpocket sees a saint, they see the saint's pocket. Our intentions are layered. and I'm supposing that like me, many of you care deeply about presence, that you care about loving relationships, and again, like me, that you can spend much of your day in that kind of doing trance, fixated on getting more done. And that translates to being somewhat preoccupied

and not so present and often on autopilot, even with those most dear. So, first of all, I want to note that valuing presence and valuing kindness doesn't mean stopping activity, but it does require a kind of remembrance in the midst of activity. But here's what helps. It helps to consciously set your intention at the beginning of the day for what you want to remember through the day. So this is a mindful life strategy that maybe at the very earliest part of the day you have some form of meditation practice where you take a few moments to reflect on your deepest intention, whether it's presence or creativity

or kindness or clarity or love, and identify several spots during the day where you want to be sure to remember, to stay in touch. And the reason I say just pick several spots is because if you say, well, for the rest of the day I want to stay present and clear and calm and, you know, it doesn't happen. But if you think of certain

times that you're most likely to go into trance and say, I want to really be present then. You know, I really want to have my heart open then. It's much more likely you'll remember. So, for instance, for me,

I'll intend, you know, that I move through the day with presence, with care for others, and I'll look specifically at, oh, there's going to be this Zoom meeting, or this time I'm teaching a webinar, or here's when I'm connecting with a family member or a friend, and I'll imagine bringing that presence and warmth into that. And then, at the end of the day, you do, you're sandwiching the day with intention and reflection, You do a short reflection, just looking back and sensing how to go.

And it's not to judge. It's to learn, oh, when I was talking to that family member, I got judgmental. Oh, I was multitasking and I wasn't really there for such and such. I went into a trance because that informs the future. If you don't judge but you just are there to understand better your patterning, you'll increasingly find that you're living from your intention. And it matters because so often you hear about, well, the regrets of the dying are that they didn't live true to their hearts.

And instead, they live true to expectations or shoulds or addictive habits or busyness. And yet we know that to have a happy life, it means living aligned with our heart, true to our heart. So set your intention in the morning and try to remember your intention as much as possible through the day. Check in at the end of the day. How did it go with a forgiving and curious heart? The next informal practice that supports heart presence in daily life is to use your body as an anchor as you move through the day. Because as we know, there's huge swaths of time that we're lost in thought. We're dissociated.

We're in a trance. We're on autopilot or reactive. And why it matters is that the body is always in the present moment. So when you return to sensations, you might do it right now. Just feel your hands. You know, the breath, the feet on the floor, your hands on a doorknob, your sitting posture or standing posture from the inside out in the moments of returning you are interrupting the trance you're interrupting autopilot you're cutting through reactivity

and it gives the possibility of reconnecting to your full intelligence your intuition your creativity use practical cues to help train yourself to come back to the body You might take a single, full, conscious breath whenever you switch tasks or finish sending an email or walk through a doorway. Another cue is if you're in a tense conversation, take a moment to breathe and feel your hands, soften your hands. Just come back to your body for a moment. Another way to practice coming back to the body is if you're out walking, let's say in nature, and there's such a habit to be out and feel ourselves in our body some, but then just be often thought, come back. And when you come back to the body, check each sense.

It's so powerful. Okay, what am I seeing right now? What sounds am I hearing? What am I smelling? What am I feeling? And just do that, just a couple of rounds. There's so much more intimacy with the world. This is embodied presence and it's supported by something radical that I want to name that you can also explore as an informal practice, which is periodically really slow down your movement. Bring just an embodied attention to whatever you're doing but slowly. So slow down brushing your teeth. It could be a pretty entertaining video just to see clips of the way people brush their teeth. I mean it's really vigorous, very, very fast.

slow down when you're cleaning the kitchen. We're just so habituated to speed and it disconnects. There's an experience that if we walk half as fast, we take in twice as much. There's a story of a family and they're going through a desert and the parents are on one camel and the kids on another and all their belongings on a third. And you see the child turning around saying something to his father and the father's responding, will you stop asking when we're going to get there for crying out loud, we're nomads?

We're just always on our way and moving fast. So there's a lot of power to slowing down, using the body as an anchor to re-arrive here and now. And you might take a moment to sense for yourself, what are the situations in your life that you might explore coming back to your body in. Just pick a few so you can really practice. You know, maybe it's when you're cleaning the kitchen. Maybe it's when you're taking a shower.

Maybe it's when you're brushing your teeth. Walking outside. Situations where you might move more slowly, be fully here. Here's a short poem from the poet, Dana Fall, she says, it only takes a reminder to breathe. A moment to be still and just like that, something in me settles, softens, make space for imperfection. The harsh voice of judgment drops to a whisper,

and I remember again that life isn't a relay race, that we will all cross the finish line, that waking up to life is what we were born for. as many times as I forget catch myself charging forward without even knowing where I'm going, that many times I can make the choice to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk slowly into the mystery. One of the most important informal practices in bringing presence alive and daily life is related to slowing down. and it's the sacred art of pausing. Many of you've probably noticed that there can be a sense of getting through the day,

that we're trying to get through the day, that we're never stopping, that there's this kind of tumbling into the next moment and often we're rushing. And if you think of it in terms of our life, it's a sense of we're racing to the finish line and what is that, the finish line of death, you know? if we're honest, we're often skimming the surface and there's not so many moments of truly arriving, having this moment matter as much as any moment. I often think of the woman who had a one and a half year old child when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and she was told she had a year to live and her mantra from that point on was, I have no time to live. I have no time to

rush. I have no time to rush. And she described pausing again and again because she wanted to live her moments fully. We don't know how long we have. And pausing is such a blessing. We need to pause to open to the sufferings that are here and also the joys. I think so often of Victor Frankel's line you may be familiar that between the stimulus and the response, there is a space and in that space is your power and your freedom. Pausing reconnects us with wholeness. We open in a pause to a more integrated brain and more open heart and a deep way to our wisdom and to our love.

There are key moments that are particularly valuable to pause. I mean, if you sense you're in an anxious rush, pause for just 10 seconds. just 10 seconds pause and read you will almost always be grateful and maybe even surprised at how much more resourced and present you feel as for that mom we really don't have time to rush it's a gift of presence to pause it's also really powerful good medicine to pause in the moments that you're triggered by somebody when i get a triggering email or text i have trained myself to pause And in fact, I have a rule to never respond right away, to process and settle enough so when I respond, it's from a much more awake heart.

And beyond that, I even'll read what I write in response as if it's to me, so I can really sense that presence. So that's my rule. Well, except a few weeks ago when I got really annoyed and I dashed off a response and I created all this defensiveness and distance with a dear one that I then had to untangle. I mean, I really regretted it. And I just keep finding it without the pause. We react from an upset, defensive, judgmental part of ourselves.

It's not from our wholeness and it creates distance. So it's a life-changing practice when angry, difficult, charged exchanges are happening in-person, online to pause. pause before responding. And it takes practice. It's super uncomfortable. I mean, when you're pausing and you're all worked up, you're just sitting with that worked-upness and you feel like bursting because everything in you wants to take control. But wait. Because the truth is this, that the longer you pause, the more possibility of responding in a way that is from your best self that brings more understanding and connection. And it's very visible. and practical. It's because your system will have had time for the brain to get more integrated

again, bringing the prefrontal cortex back online, relaxing, opening the heart. And don't just pause for what's challenging. When you experience goodness, joy, beauty, love, gratitude, wonder, pause then too. No time to rush. Live it. Truly, mindfulness isn't just for difficulty. It grows our capacity to celebrate life. You know, it opens us to moments of delight and awe and connection and actually helps us be more inclined and receptive to them. And that's based on science, that we are designed to remember the scary, hurtful experiences much more readily than the goodness. So there's a real wisdom to taking in the goodness, spending time with pleasant experience. There's more chance that it'll

stay in your implicit memory and incline you towards more of the same in the future. So you might practice. Practice by really pausing with moments of beauty or warmth or laughter or gratitude. When you let it in, really feel it bathing you, the good feelings. Five breaths, maybe 20 seconds. let it really sink in. And through the day, this is beyond the particular moments of pausing when there's something challenging or something beautiful, try short microposes throughout the day. You know, after you get off the phone or at a red light or before getting out of the car, before sending an email, speaking in a group, just try and

micro-poss. And let's pause now for a moment. Just drop everything that's in your mind, no time to rush. Let this moment matter as much as any. Just feel your body and your breath and maybe even offer a gesture of kindness inwardly. It's radical. It really is radical, friends, you know, less than a minute here. Here we are. And it shifts everything. The sacred art of the pause. It's really a gateway to presence, to homecoming. So the next domain of waking up mindfulness and daily life is learning to guard your attention. Your attention is your most valuable commodity. I mean, it determines whether you're happy or sad, whether you're present or in a trance. And as you've probably noticed, it's under siege. I mean, billions of dollars,

the best of science is being used to find ways to hijack your mind, your attention. And it's hubris for most of us to think we're exempt. We are addicted to screens, to social media, news, the digital distractions are continuously pulling us away from presence, away from heart. and into actually into anxiety, into comparing, into feeling separate, reacting, where our attention goes, energy flows. And if presence, love, spiritual awakening matters, we need to be dedicated and purposeful in this zone. Okay, so the obvious hack is to turn off unnecessary notifications, to create iPhone-free zones during the day. For me, I do it at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, never

have the iPhone in my bedroom at night. A related hack is limit news consumption. Again, for me, it's, you know, I don't take any news in at the beginning of the day and the end of the day and I take off Sundays, I fast, news fast on Sundays, it makes a huge difference. And then of course the related hack is choose carefully what you read, watch, and listen to. Okay, now here's a challenging one in terms of guarding attention. Have you ever just sense for yourself, you ever nodded earnestly in a Zoom meeting while you're also answering texts and scrolling the news and taking your supplements and checking the weather and motioning your dog to stop barking all without unmuting?

It's good we're not live doing a hand raise here. But multitasking, it fragments attention. There's just so much research on it. We can't bring as much intelligence to heart to anything we're doing when we're multitasking. So the hack, try doing one thing at a time. I know that sounds utterly wild, but one thing at a time. And on purpose, practice. maybe just wash the dishes or maybe when you're outside walking just walk you don't listen to something

or driving just drive or when you take a shower not to plan or just lather shaving cream on your head just listen to someone on the phone when you're speaking if you do calls or when you participate on Zoom just be there if we want to be creative we want to connect if we want to enjoy, if we want to learn something, we have to remember that multitasking puts us in the shallows. We're not all there. There's a line attributed to Einstein. If you're driving safely and kissing a girl,

you're simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. So if you want to be here one thing at a time, there's that Zen story, Zen teacher, who often occurs, encouraged this of his students. He'd say one thing at a time. When you eat, just eat. You know, when you read, just read. Well, one day a novice found this teacher in his apartment eating and reading the news. And he said, you know, he was upset. And he said, you teach us when we eat, just eat, when we read, just read. And the teacher nodded sagely. He said, And when you eat and read, just eat and read.

So I'm sharing this friends because this is not rigid. It's just, as with all things, purposeful. And you might reflect for a moment again scanning your life. It's so rare that we just do one thing really attentively. Where might you practice? You might just pick an activity or two that you want to explore what is it like? when you're just doing one thing, when you're bringing your whole heart to just what you're doing and set your intention for that. Perhaps the most central domain of awakening mindfulness

in daily life is bringing a present heart into our relationships. And here we need all of our informal practices. We need to have intentionality. We need to use the body as an anchor. We need to know how to slow down, we need to be able to fully pause, not to multitask in order to give full attention. And it's a lifetime process. There's nothing more rewarding, and it's a lifetime process. All the research on happiness says that the bottom line, it comes from close connections with others, and that extends to non-human others. So our next four areas of informal practice are how we can bring a present heart into relationships and they're going to include mindful listening, mindful speaking, seeing the goodness in others, and seeing vulnerability. And I just want to say

that we could take any one of them and spend the next year on them and if you just commit to any one of them and really focus on it, life-changing. And by the way, there are talks in my archives on each if you want to go deeper. There is much research showing that intimacy with others is directly related to our capacity for listening. Research in interpersonal neurobiology also shows that attunement to others requires the capacity for self-attunement. In other words, we have to be able to listen non-judgmentally and with presence to our

inner life if we're going to be able to do it with any capacity with others. And I share this because learning to listen really is a practice of inner and outer mindfulness. And listening is a gift. It creates a safe space inviting forward who another person is and also who we are. Rachel Naomi Remen says, when you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves often for the first time. Just pause here to reflect and you might think of a relationship with someone who really matters to you, someone who's dear, and remind yourself of a recent time that you were together. And notice as you review that recent time how well you were listening and see if you can do that without judging, just curiosity.

How well were you listening? Notice if in some way you were preoccupied in a rush, or maybe if you had an agenda so often we're wanting something when we're communicating with others. We want acknowledgement or approval or their cooperation or we want to look good or we want their help or their support. Or we might have an agenda that's related to, to avoiding what we fear. Maybe in listening and speaking or fearing another's judgment or losing

time, precious time, or the demand that might be on us. So just notice for yourself, was there an agenda like that? Were you preoccupied or were you fully there? And let this reflection be in the spirit of deepening, listening as you move forward. Paying attention is the deepest expression of love. I reflected on that so often. Paying attention is the deepest expression of love. Listening is an act of love. It connects.

I mean, when there's listening, when there's attunement, inside mirror neurons are firing, our brains become synchronized. And it's not just for another that we're listening. You know, when we become more present, we become more awake in large, Mark Nippo puts it this way. He says, to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. So as a way of practicing listening, your cue is you're about to talk with someone and right before you speak with them, set the conscious intention to listen without

judgment, to listen without preparing a response. And assure yourself you have time. I have to do that because like many of us, I have some background sense of there's not enough time, there's not enough time. Assure yourself you have enough time and then set yourself to be curious. Who's here? What's behind the words? As you're listening, try anchoring in your body so that you're listening with your whole body and again without interrupting or planning your response. And then when a person's done, pause, pause before you speak. Let there be a little space after someone speaks. I want to read an anonymous verse I ran across.

Isn't it true to get to know the beauty and majesty of a tree, you have to be quiet and rest in the shade of the tree? Don't you have to stand under the tree? To understand anyone you need to stand under them for a little while. What does that mean? It means you have to listen to them and be quiet and take in who they are as if from under, as if from inside out. I want to read you one more quote.

If you have listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. That's from Nick Penna, fifth grade. So again, let's pause together. You might bring to mind that person you reflected on earlier, someone you have the intention to listen more deeply with, someone who you might be speaking with again soon, so bring someone to mind probably that person before, and imagine the situation. that you might be in. And imagine setting yourself to really listen this time.

That you're in some way going to say to yourself, I have enough time. Who is this person? What's behind the words? Listening to them and being quiet and taking in who they are as if from under, as if from inside out.

And since, as you reflect right now, they might feel or respond having been listened to deeply and sense also your experience, who you are when listening. If you've listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. Like listening, mindful speaking is intrinsic to nourishing safety, intimacy, and love. And in Buddhism, the guidelines for mindful speaking are, and that can include expressing, yourself in any way, writing, and so on, to speak what's true and what's helpful. And of course, it sounds simple and it takes a huge amount of presence and practice. And think of it, because often when we say, I'm speaking my truth, I'm just speaking my truth, it means I'm expressing my anger,

and it may not be my deepest truth. It may be that under the anger there's hurt. Also, how do we know what really helps? And sometimes expressing anger is important in necessary. Sometimes it creates more distance that can't really be bridged. And what's our timeline for what helps? Something might not feel good or seem like it's helping right away, but we humans keep growing and learning. So, I'm just pointing these out because it's hard. For me, the most valuable remembrance in terms of wise speech, especially when it's a difficult, sensitive conversation, is to first check my intention before I speak and to imagine the outcome of what I might say. So if you do that and you find your intention is coming from fear or it's coming from anger or from

greed and you can sense, hmm, the outcome is not what I'd really hope for. Pause. Pause so that you can arrive at your deepest intention. Because for most of us, our deepest intention is to, to, to, you know, to, you can arrive at your deepest intention. increase understanding and connection and the health of the relationship. And then imagine the outcome when you're communicating from that deeper intention. I shared an example of me lashing out in an email before pausing, speaking my truth, and it was angry.

And if I had checked my intention, it would have been to show somebody I'm right and they're wrong. It would have been aggression. the outcome as I found out was hurt and anger and shut down. What if I had paused, which I had to do afterwards, and sensed, wait a minute, I really want there to be understanding, I want to feel our caring, I want us to collaborate respectfully, what a different way I would have communicated. And of course, when I got around to repairing from that intention, what a world of difference. So I just want to name it again that if you reflect on your intention before speaking and you

actually sense what's the anticipated outcome, it's an amazing guide. And you might right now again pause and sense a relationship where there's a repeating kind of conflictual situation, some tension. and you might imagine into a situation where you're with this person and what comes up and what creates the tension and then pause the film in your mind. If you checked your intention before you spoke, what might you find? Maybe it's feeling hurt or disregarded, wanting to show your right, wanting to control things. And keep pausing in sense, what's your deepest intention with this person? What do you really

want? If it was the end of your life looking back, what would matter? And if you remembered that, what might be more creative choices in communicating that bring a different and better outcome? So I want to bring in here another dimension of wise speech, of communicating what's true and helpful, and that is our willingness to express vulnerability or imperfect humanity, our hurts or fears, or insecurities, our longings. If we're communicating our authenticity, part of what's true is vulnerability, and that needs inclusion if there's going to be any real connection. So the invitation is when you can, and this is a really challenging and beautiful practice, take the chance to lean towards being more real and authentic in your vulnerability.

And by the way, that doesn't mean you think you should bear your soul in every conversation. I mean, some are not safe enough. If they are, there are many moments when it's totally wonderful to be light and playful or informative or helpful and just to know that true love is only possible if we bring our full realness into it. I love this from Adrian Rich. She says, an honorable human relationship. That is one in which two people have the right to use the word love

is a process of deepening the truths that they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. If it were easy to tell difficult truths, we do it more. But we fear being vulnerable. We're afraid we might be wounded or rejected. And by the way, in our current atmosphere of our larger society, vulnerability is considered weak. Yet the reality is when we engage mindfully and heartfully, when we speak these truths, it's really true strength, empowerment, and freedom that arises.

So it's wise to experiment where we feel most safe and to keep stretching, because this really is the gateway to what we most long for, to real connection. These are the words of the poet Mark Nipo. He says, we waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection

that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which if not put down diminishes our chances for joy. It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something and then forgetting that we chose to put them on. We complain that nothing feels quite real. In this way, our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world, but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being soft and unrepeatable.

So we pause together here and you might imagine, let's say one person, that you care about who feels safe enough, who you'll be connecting with soon, and imagine what it means to un-glove yourself. What would it mean to lean towards engaging from more realness, sharing vulnerability? As you consider this, include the fears that arise as you reflect and hold them with kindness, because they're natural and universal.

We can feel those fears and yet still trust the possibility of profound awakening by being real. In relating with one another, one of the most radical and wonderful practices we can undertake is intentionally looking for another's goodness. And our survival negativity bias filters more than we're aware of. Because rather than seeing another's basic goodness, we don't go around usually just wow, in wonder at people's, at the qualities that we respect and love and admire. More likely we can fixate on others' imperfections, especially the behaviors that bother us or that we also exhibit or that trigger our insecurity.

So this informal practice of intentionally looking beyond the mask, the coverings, to sense the basic goodness that's here, helps us. it gets us in touch with the love and the creativity and intelligence, the humor, the sentience that's living through another. And we cultivate the capacity to see what Thomas Merton calls the secret beauty behind the eyes of every being. I remember some years back talking to some parents, they were very concerned about their son in his early 20s who was living with them, He was having a hard time finding work, and he had a lot of attention deficit going on. He was disorganized, low self-esteem, and he's just spent a lot of time with his ear pods in

or hanging with friends that were still in town. So his parents were concerned, like, how will he ever make it? And his mother said, what should I do? Should I send him white light? You know, really, what do I do? And I said, I just asked a question. I said, what do you really love about him? And they very quickly, both parents, oh, he's got a great wicked sense of humor.

He's really creative. He's really bright. And he's just the kindest person. So I invited them for the next 30 days or so to do the loving kindness practice and just reflect on that. Reflect on the gold, the goodness, and feel their love. And just that's it, just that. when I got back together with them, the mood and the household had really changed. Something in their belief in his goodness had been contagious

versus projecting out fears about what was going to go wrong. Something got through to him in a way that he relaxed. And he started volunteering doing some educational videography, assisting an organization, and then got hired to work part-time. The greatest gift we offer is to mirror another person's goodness. It's so easy to lock into our worries or our judgments and not to really tend to the depth of who others are and seeing goodness brings it forward. Again, Thomas Merritton says life is this simple.

We're living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable. It is true. One of my fondest wishes, this is for cultures around the world, each in their own way, is to make a practice of namaste, which is really a gesture and a felt experience where we're sensing, I see the sacred in you, in me, in all of us. I mean, what if we could greet each other with namaste and leave each other with namaste and hold each other in that spirit. Simply the intention of seeing the sacred wakes us up because the goodness is here and our attention brings it forward.

So take a moment as we've been doing, bringing someone in your close circle to mind and sense that you're going to be doing the informal practice of namaste in your heart mind right now and just see their goodness. What is it you love and appreciate about them? And since the genuineness of Namaste, of bowing in some way to that goodness, it's a felt sense of reverence of care. And imagine letting them know what you appreciate, being a mirror of goodness and the feeling that would come alive between you, the increased intimacy and light And just imagine if you could move through your life how many relationships would come alive with that feeling of light and warmth if your intention is to mirror goodness.

One of the heart trainings that has most changed my life is a compassion practice that's grounded in seeing others' vulnerability. And here again we need to be purposeful. Most of us when people are hurting, we see the unhealthy behaviors that come from the pain and we forget the pain. And I often use that metaphor of coming on a small dog in the woods and the dog, you know, we go to pet the dog and the dog lurches forward with its fangs bared and we're angry and we feel aversive. Then we see that the dog has a leg in a trap. We understand. And if we could see ourselves and others, if we could sense the leg in the trap,

the hurt, the vulnerability, rather than judge and add to the suffering, we're able to respond in a caring, wise way. There's a schoolteacher, Kyle Schwartz, and she wanted to better understand her students. And she taught in an area with a whole lot of poverty. The students lived in really challenging environment. And she felt like if she knew better what their lives were like, she could support them in a more sensitive way. So she asked a question. She says, what do you want me to know about you? And I want to read you some of the responses that she got. One child said, I wish my teacher knew,

my dad is in jail and I haven't seen him in years. Another, I wish my teacher knew I don't always eat dinner because my mom works and I don't know how to work the stove. I wish my teacher knew I like coming to school because it's quiet here, not like my house with all the yelling. I wish my teacher knew that my dad died this year and I feel more alone and disconnected from my peers than ever before. I wish my teacher knew I have arthritis, juvenile arthritis. Sometimes I can't do everything like the other kids. I wish my teacher knew I have ADHD and I'm different from everyone else. I wish my teacher knew that I got bullied on the bus. it made me feel sad. I wish my teacher knew how much I miss my dad

because he got deported to Mexico when I was three years old and I haven't seen him in six years. So friends, these are real human beings, young beings wanting someone to know and to understand and care. And really, only if we can attune to another's vulnerability, can we connect and respond to their needs. We need to in some way be able to ask, and we can do it silently and deepen our attention, ask where does it hurt?

We ask that of ourselves to get in touch with ourselves and of others. And then maybe we'll see, oh, this person's hurting they need to feel seen or to feel understood or cared about or this person needs to feel they matter, that they're respected. You know, if we see the vulnerability which we all have, we can be part of the healing in our world. Now, you might wonder, what if someone is causing harm, harming us, harming others who are vulnerable? And I love that phrase that we need a strong back and a soft front. The strong back do everything we need to and can do to protect. And still, the soft front that sees another's pain, that our hearts are open. So we act in a way that's wise. With the

dog, with the leg to trap, we might not get so close. We could get bit, but more, we can find whatever ways we can to get the dog's leg out of the trap to heal. So you might reflect in your life someone who's having a hard time, maybe behaving in unhealthy ways, and of course it may be appropriate to intervene, the strong back for the sake of this person another, but first, pause, what are they most deeply need from you, that soft front? What are they most deeply need energetically or words? What would help them?

Just feel your intention to offer care, sensing how your relationship might change if you are looking for the vulnerability, you're remembering the hurt that's there, how that would just arouse a genuine tenderness. Okay, so my mind. mindfulness and relationships, listening to understand, speaking the truth, to help, seeing goodness, seeing vulnerability.

And now to widen, especially in current times, it's crucial that we look at what it means to have a mindful relationship with our world, with this larger society. And in teaching so many people have reported to me this, the distress about the world and not knowing what to do. Some say they feel paralyzed, some powerless, fearful, angry, grieving. And there's this background hum of chronic anxiety about what's unfolding, also guilt about not responding. Action absorbs anxiety, also guilt. And the point is not to act to get away from anxiety or guilt, it's to act because it's our world.

We belong. And when we engage from caring in our larger belonging, we naturally feel more at ease, more at home and ourself. There's a saying in Zen that there are only two things, you sit and you sweep the garden, and it doesn't matter how big the garden is. So here we are on this path and we're sitting, learning to be quiet, listening inwardly, awakening our presence, our heart. And when we do, we find our spirit quite naturally feels called to tend to the garden, our shared

world. And friends, the garden of our world is struggling with dis-ease. You know, you might sense how you're already sweeping the garden, tending to those in your immediate circles and wider. If you haven't already, it really helps to pick something you care about in the wider society. friend says, pick whatever most breaks your heart. You don't have to do a lot, different things. Pick one. It could be local, could be global. It might have to do with reducing racism or protecting democracy, tending the environment, supporting the cause of oppressed people that are being violated.

Just add your voice, your energy in some way, make a sign, join hands with others, protest, plant seeds for a more just compassionate future because we can't change at all but having an inner refuge of presence empowers you to contribute to the world and your love will find a way to do so so that you can sit and sweep the garden and again we pause and you might reflect and sense your garden in your personal life your immediate circles of friends and colleagues and relations. And as you do, just asking that simple question, what is love asking today? How might I be sweeping the garden today? And then widening to sense the larger society that we belong to. This season, responding to the collective suffering of these times, sense what might be breaking your

heart. And then that inquiry, what is love asking? L.R. No says, do not. Do not. be dismayed by the brokenness of the world, all things break, and all things can be mended, not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, unconditionally. The broken world waits in the darkness for the light that is you. So, dear ones, we're coming to the end of this course. We've covered a lot of territory, formal practices that awaken the heart and the mind, and then a number of informal practices that really help us live from our wholeness, from care and from presence, from creativity, from wisdom. Please trust that what you practice gets stronger and you can go very deep on this path

if you choose. You can discover a real freedom in the midst of this changing life and bring much healing and inspiration to others. We started, and you might not remember way back then, but we started our journey with the key ingredients in navigating the path, and I want to end by naming them again. And one of them is our interest, our curiosity, that's really seeking truth. You know, what is true here?

It's a don't know mind, beginner's mind, that we don't hold on to certainties and that we really bring ourselves to that wondering, what is true. And the second quality is friendliness, nourishing the heart. Please dedicate yourself to recognizing and relaxing judgments, to choosing love. There is so much pain and beauty in this world. An awakening heart presence, living from a present heart is the greatest offering to your own soul and to the healing of all beings.

So let's close together in that spirit and take a moment as we've been doing throughout to bring your attention inward and sense just right here in this pause, breathing and collecting the attention some, feeling what's going on inside you, sensing the state of your heart right now, offering this human heart whatever wish, whatever blessing most resonates in this moment.

You might put your hand on your heart as you do so and let it come from a sincere place. What are you wishing for yourself on this path? You're sensing it's really your spiritual heart holding your human heart. And as we sense that heart space and sense it as the heart space that we share with all beings and we can feel our shared prayer, that all beings everywhere discover loving presence as their essence, that all beings might live from loving presence, that there might be a growing justice and peace and love in our world, that all beings everywhere might awaken and be free. So thank you, friends. Thank you for being part of this series.

on mindfulness, on heart presence, and wishing you all love, all blessings on the path.