Tara Brach - Inviting Life's Difficulties to Tea

Episode Date: January 19, 2011

2011-01-19 - Inviting Life's Difficulties to Tea - One of the most illuminating themes in the Buddha's life story was the regular appearance of Mara--god of selfishness and greed, anger and fear, doubt and shame. Each time Mara surfaced, the Buddha's response was to say "I see you Mara," and invite him to tea. This talk explores how such unconditional friendliness and wisdom can bring healing and freedom to our lives. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

key theme in the Buddha's life and this kind of arctipal story of waking up is facing the shadow. And instead of running away in the story of the Buddha's unfolding, instead of indulging in pleasure or actually instead of pushing life away with austerity, either way, the Buddha came to rest under the Bodhi tree. he came to rest he just kind of paused and dedicated himself to facing the life that's here

so what he faced in the story is called Mara are the god of greed and hatred and delusion and doubt really Mara was none other than a reactive ego an ego when it's taken hold

and so as the story goes the Buddha spent the night under the Bodhi tree awakening his presence and being completely mindful and compassionate as the forces of Mara swept around. The forces of his shadow side. And by the end of the night, Mara had retreated. And the Buddha was free. What I most like about this story is that it wasn't a one-shot deal. Mara came back.

And I like that because it really makes it a relevant. story for all of us that we might say, okay, I faced my insecurity or okay, I faced this jealousy or this way I compare, this anger. And then what happens is somebody criticizes us, or disagrees with us, our child doesn't cooperate with what we're setting out, or something happens, you know, our partner acts disinterested when we're speaking, something. And Mara's back again in an instant. It was like, there we go again. We see this in the story of the Buddha. What would happen is the Buddha would be, you know, about to address a large gathering.

And all of a sudden Ananda, his loyal, devoted attendant, would see Mara creeping around the back of the gathering. And he'd go, oh, no, and he'd, you know, kind of do this kind of a thing. And he'd say to the Buddha, Mara is back. What are we going to do? This is terrible. This is terrible. and the Buddha would kind of on some level say,

well, just calm down and he'd see Mara and say, I see you Mara and come on in and let's have some tea. This little vignette of Mara coming back and the Buddha responding by saying, I see you, let's have some tea together, is one of the most powerful, instructive, relevant teachings I've ever run into. It's a great image inviting the shadow to tea.

So what I'd like to do tonight, and I try to do this frequently, is let this story be at the center of our reflection together. You know, how in our lives, when Mara appears, can we pause and instead of going, oh my God, something bad's happening? can we instead have that attentiveness that we can look and see, okay, I see this. And okay, let's be with this. Let's be with this with a quality of friendliness. The basic understanding is that when we don't do that,

when the energies of greed or selfishness or jealousy or anger, whatever it is, whenever it arises, if instead we go to war, we judge ourselves or we ignore it. If the Buddha had said in some way, let's get rid of this guy, what happens is we fuel those energies, we become more identified with them, and that's when they entrap us and entrap our life.

So this is really an investigation of how when these energies appear, can we actually let them be a gateway, way to being more awake, more compassion, and more free. It's critical to learn to have tea with Mara, not just as individuals, but as a culture and globally. I mean, we can see that when the energies of Mara appear, which is, you know, the insecurity, the vulnerability, the fear, and in our larger world, if there's not presence, if it's either ignored or we react, that's what leads to war and when the presence of Mars there and we ignore it and react it leads to addiction we can see that the real the great sufferings of our

culture as arising when we're not present with Mara so in my understanding of the Buddhist path this dedication to letting the existence of selfing or ego be something that's a call for attention is right at the center. The given is that Mara is here. I mean, it's not something that's wrong with us. Inside every one of us is this conditioning, every one of us is this conditioning to take things personally and to react and to be angry and to be grasping and so on. It's within every one of us.

So either we ignore it and judge it or judge it, or we let it be right at the center of waking up. I remember at a day long I taught some years ago. This is just a very example that really touched me. A woman was very moved, and she had this experience where she expressed how much she wanted other people's kindness. And then she did a meditation that I led that many of you have been part of where in some way I had her offering kindness towards herself.

Just touching herself, you know, kind of viscerally saying, okay, I care, I care. And she came out of that day along saying, I never do that. I realized I never offer kindness to myself. And I listened to her and I realized how many. people, how many of us pause frequently or even infrequently to in some way regard our inner life with care? I'm not going to ask for a hand raised on this one, but I mean, we know how important it is to show our care to others, don't we? And we know it matters to express our affection. But do we do that? Do we intentionally say, okay, let me be gentle or friendly with this life here?

We don't have a nourishing cup of tea with ourselves. So then it becomes important to look at, well, what do we do? What is our habit when we, when vulnerability arises, when fear arises, when we want something, when things are out of control, what do we do in Mara, when we sense the shadow of Mara? And one thing we do very quickly, most of us know, is that we do things to numb ourselves. It's the reason that eating disorders are so rampant. It's the quickest, earliest thing in our development that we learned to kind of numb ourselves when that tension came along. So we overconsume. We drink too much alcohol.

A friend told me this story of a man who went to a bar and ordered a drink. And the bartender gave him the drink, and the guy pushes the drink to the side. And then he goes and he orders another drink, right? The bartender serves it to him, but this time he drinks it down. So the bartender's kind of curious. He goes, what gives, you know? And the guy said, well, you know, I go to AA meetings. You know how you hear it regularly?

It's really the first drink that leads to trouble. So that's one way that Mara comes up. We numb. We get addicted in some way to whatever suza. And then of course, we know another way that we do it when Mara comes up is that we start speeding. When we sense that vulnerability, when we sense the shadow, we distract ourselves, we speed up, we go online. Have you ever noticed how when you start getting anxious, you immediately go to email? I mean, it's like we don't just sit with it.

It's not like we have tea with what's there. We go online. Then another thing we do, and we know this, is that, when we're feeling that shadow, when we have this need to be right and in control. Really hard to feel like we're wrong. Remember a story I heard a little girl was talking to her teacher about whales, and the teacher said it was physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human

because even though it was a very large mammal, its throat was very small. The little girl stated that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, irritated the teacher reiterated that a whale could not swallow a human it was physically impossible little girl said well when i get to heaven i'll ask jonah and the teacher asked well what if jonah went to hell little girl replied then you ask them so so you get the idea though it's like when we get tense restless anxious we want to be right and we put others down we make them wrong Now, the main way, and this is I'm going to spend a little bit more time with this, that when Mara appears, and again, that's these kind of ego, shadow presentations, the main thing we do when we sense the shadow inside us is we turn on ourselves and judge ourselves for it. We don't like our ego. Even when we're feeling superior a part of us doesn't like our ego. We don't like that inner sense of holding.

grabbing, pushing. We don't like that. So we judge ourselves. We condemn our imperfections. Church bullet in front of a church said, sermon this morning, Jesus walks on water. Sermon tonight, searching for Jesus. So you get the idea. So I've called this the trance of unworthiness as many of you know because we are judging chronically on some level. We're monitoring and sensing ourselves falling short of our idea about how we should be. How many of you feel like you do judge yourselves too much? Can I just see by hands? Okay. So most of us, now the reason that I like the word trance is because even though we are aware that we are aware that we turn on ourselves, we're not aware of how much that's impacting our living moments.

We're not aware of how when we're with others, the fact that on some level we don't trust or like ourselves is affecting our spontaneity and our freedom and how intimate we feel we can be with another person, because deep down we feel like, I know what I'm like. And when they find out, there's not going to be that good connection, right? It's a trance because we don't realize that when we're feeling something's wrong with us, we're not so free to really give ourselves wholeheartedly to our work or to creativity. And in a deep way, when we think something's wrong with us, we can't relax in the moment. There's always a sense we should be doing something more.

that we have to kind of protect or defend or cover up, we can't be at ease. This is very much reinforced by our culture. Our culture is one where there's a sense, there's not any easy way of belonging. You have to kind of prove yourself to belong, whether it's to belong to your friends or your spiritual community or your school community or your work community. You have to meet certain standards. And very early on, our parents as messengers to the culture,

kind of implanted these ideas that be this way and don't be that way. Be intelligent or be special or prove yourself in this way or don't be so loud. And how many of us feel that we met the standard, you know? I can speak for myself. I'm aware of this kind of inner monitoring a lot of the time that is in some way saying, well, how am I doing now? And then there's some, you know, of ideas of how I should be, like relax and open and loving and generous and not self-concerned and whatever it is.

And then there's this gap between that and what's actually happening. So the reason I'm spending time on this is that the gap is because in some way I'm detecting Mara. I'm detecting the ego self, the self that's grasping the self. self that's avoiding, the self that's concerned with herself. Now, I was sharing this trance of unworthiness teaching many years back with one student who described his own, and I shared this in the book Radical Acceptance, I'll share it again with you. He said it, he reminded himself of a tiger.

Her name was Mohini, and she was in the D.C. National Zoo decades ago now. and Mojini was in a actually this line was put in a tiger's cage I think it was like a 12 by 12 cage and she would just pace back and forth and finally the naturalists and the zoologists and others created this new natural environment

for Mojini out I guess it was in Front Royal but she had a you know field and ponds and just acres and acres and so they with enthusiasm, excitement, they bring her to her new home and release her and she goes to one little corner of the compound

and for the rest of her days Mohini just walked back and forth a 12 foot stretch in the corner of the compound until she wore down so there was no grass there. She never explored the wildness there.

And this man said he reminded himself of that because in some way he kept himself caged by his judgments. That by being in that trance of unworthiness, he was unable to venture into the wholeness of his being, you know, into spontaneity. He wasn't able to love fully because in some way he kept himself contained. When we don't have tea with Mara, when we don't see and open to the parts of ourselves

that are challenging, that are clutching, are fearful. We don't open to that. We end up living in a cage. We can't be all that we are. So the Buddha taught that the ground of suffering is forgetting the essence of who we are. We forget the goodness, the vastness, the consciousness, we forget the heart.

And we get identified with Mara. We get identified with the ego. He said, this is really the source of our suffering. And the reality is that we're all afraid of the same stuff. We're secretly afraid that we're not okay, that we're disgusting, that we're frauds, that something's wrong, because in some way we detect the ego and think it's bad. And this is really the invitation tonight that we're exploring is to step out of this notion that what in the Buddhist mythology is called Mara

and what we might call our ego self is bad. But rather understand that when we deepen our attention, those very energies become part of waking up. If we don't pay attention, they become a cage. They limit us. The great Zen masters had a understanding, as one in particular, one of those Zen patriarchs, that to be free, to be free and whole,

is to be without anxiety about imperfection. And I think another way of saying this, to be without anxiety about the shadow side. And we all know what's in us. Can we relate to that which is within us without anxiety? I mean, if you sense for a moment, and just take a moment right now, if you want just to close your eyes,

and sense something that you habitually kind of put yourself down for some expression of Mara it might be the way you get confused are angry anxious are insecure blaming judging some way that Mara plays through this particular body mind there may be even a recent example very recent that comes to mind

of Mara playing out And you might ask yourself, what would it mean to be without anxiety about imperfection, without anxiety about the fact that this conditioning is here? It doesn't mean you don't care. It doesn't mean that you're not wanting to unfold and bring an attention to it and have freedom. It just means not making it wrong or bad. If you can get just a glimmer of moving through your life, of what it would be like to not have anxiety about your ego imperfections.

Just a glimmer of that is a glimmer of freedom, and it's a glimmer of truth. Now, if you'd like, you can open your eyes. Our meditation training is really training and having tea with Mara. There's a basic intention towards presence, and presence is, okay, here, what did the Buddha do? He said, I see you, Mara, come to tea. Presence is made up of recognizing what's going on in the moment and allowing it. Friendly, allowing. There's two questions I often center practice on in my own practice and when I teach.

And one is simply, what is happening right now? So if you want to be able to say, I see you, Mara, you begin with, okay, what is happening right now? And you just check, what's going on? And then the second question is, can I be with this? Can I let this be? We can do this with the small kind of tensions and we can do this with the big occasions of our life. What is happening? And can I be with this? The story that I'd like to share with you and some of you I'm reminding you of that I find so instructive. I reflect on it myself a lot. Was an encounter I had with a man

now, it's probably 10, 12 years ago, at a retreat center in New England. And he'd come with his wife because he was in the mid-stages of Alzheimer's. And he needed her to help him find him his way from room to room and to get to the sittings on time and to help cut his food and so on. he knew his condition. He was a psychologist

and he has also been meditating for 15 years. And when we had a meeting, he was very upbeat. And in a way, and I kind of asked him, well, what gives? What's letting you regard this in this way? Because, you know, he really had a kind of resilience is the best word, I guess.

And he said to me, he looked at me in the eye and he said, I don't think anything's wrong. He said it's like fall When the leaves fall You know It's a change of seasons And it's painful sometimes

And scary sometimes And sad sometimes But it's not wrong Then he went on to tell me About Something had happened Early onset Where he had been

invited to teach a class And there were about 100 people And he got there And right before he started to speak He went completely blank like completely blank. He had no idea what he was going to say. He had no idea why he was there or why

100 sets of eyes were looking expectantly at him. And here's what he did. First he actually paused. He didn't do anything. He just paused. And then he put his palms together

and he began to name what he was aware of. Confused. And then he'd bow. Afraid. Then he'd bow. Heart pounding. Then he'd bow again. Embarrassed. This went on for a bit. And after a while he started saying, okay, relaxing a little, calming down, bow. Finally, he looked around and he said to the group, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And one of the people there said, you know, sit up and said, you know, no one has ever given us the teachings this way.

And what did he done? He paused. So Mara's arising, all the confusion and the reactive he's arising, and he paused. And that's the beginning of having tea with Mara, is you just stop. We are so inclined to tumble into the next thing and react. How many times have we regretted tumbling into the next thing and reacting? Too quickly saying something. He paused.

Then the next thing he did was that he put his palms together and he just began to acknowledge what was happening. Oh, confused, scared, embarrassed. And each time he acknowledged something, I see you Mara, he bowed. Now this is just another metaphor for inviting Mara to tea, right? You know, he said, you know, okay, be with this one. Okay, be with this one. Let me read you just a verse from, this is Dorothy Hunt. Do you think peace will come some other place than here, some other time than now,

and some other heart than yours? Peace is this moment without judgment. That is all. This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome. Peace is this moment without thinking that it should. be some other way, that you should feel some other thing, that your life should unfold according to your plans. Peace is this moment without judgment, this moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome. So let me speak to the challenge of having tea with Mara. The first big challenge

when Mara appears? We're not so alert because usually when Mara appears, the fear or whatever it is proliferates into thoughts, and we are just down the tracks in our thoughts. We're just off in them. We're in a trance. So there's not that much presence to say, oh, pause, be with what's here. We're just spinning. So one of the big trainings that we have, you know, because the tendency is so quickly,

don't want to fix or control or manage life rather than be with what's here, one of the big trainings in our spiritual path is to learn to notice thinking and come back. Notice thinking and come back. Right here. Just be right here. And it's a really big training. It's challenging because we're very, very addicted to our thoughts. We really rely on our thoughts to straighten things out quickly. fix the problems, you know, take care of it. So to have tea with Mara means we have to come back. It means we have to let go of the thoughts and come into the moment. Now, one of my favorite descriptions of this practice is Ajan Samato.

He says this. He says, the practice of letting go is very effective for minds obsessed by compulsive thinking. You simplify your meditation practice down to just two words, letting go. Rather than try to develop this practice and then develop that, achieve this and go into that, understand this and read the sutas and study the Abidama and then learn Polly and Sanskrit, then the

Majumakaya and the Prajana Paramita and get ordinations in Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajuriana, write books and become a world's renown authority on Buddhism, instead of becoming the world's expert on Buddhism and being invited to great international Buddhist conferences, just

let go, let go, let go. I did nothing but this for about two years. Every time I try to understand or figure things out, I'd say, let go, let go until the desire would fade out. So I'm making it very simple for you to save you from getting caught in incredible amounts of suffering. There's nothing more sorrowful than having to attend international Buddhist conferences. So one of the big challenges when Mara appears, one of the things that stops us from having tea is that we're lost in our thoughts. The second big thing that's challenging in terms of having to with Mara is that it's unpleasant. It's unpleasant to be here.

I mean, we would be inclined to have tea if it was really like having tea, right? Good tea. But what happens is we arrive here to be with what's there and we get directly in touch with angst, with a kind of if it's a feeling of fear, it's a squeeze, if it's a squeeze, if it's a feeling of anger, it's this kind of explosive thing that we just want to act on. If it's a feeling of restlessness, we just want to get away. We don't want to sit down into the moment, do we? It's hard. So there's an equation that is very, very helpful to remember, which is that pain times resistance equals suffering. That whatever is here, whatever the pain of Mara

here to the extent that we resisted that amps up the suffering and then of course the if you plug into that equation what if there's zero resistance pain times zero equals zero suffering so we know it when it comes to something like childbirth we know that if there's pain in the body there's contractions if you push against the contraction more pain we know physically that if there's pain in our body and we tense against it, that those knots become a permanent fixture in our body and we cut off circulation and flow

and that everything about healing has to do with relaxing and letting the flow resume, right? We know that it's not healthy to tense against tension in the body. Same thing with emotions. When Mara is there emotionally for us to push against Mara, to ignore Mara, locks in that emotional pain. One of the teachings from Carl Jung I refer back to most frequently is a teaching that says that there's nothing more painful to their children and themselves

than the unlived life of the parents. When we don't have tea with Maro, when we don't pause and connect with what's there, It's unlived life. And that's, it's not that it's a problem that Mara's there, that this ego reactivity is there. That's not the problem. The problem comes when we're not willing to be with it. Then it proliferates.

It proliferates and it begins to create the shape of who we are. The unlived life. So our practice, as I mentioned, this having tea is being able to pause and say, okay, this is it. It's here. This energy. and choosing and it's a courage

it's a kind of brave thing choosing okay I'm going to be with this I'm going to feel this and the first step I found that really makes it possible to kind of gentle into it when it's difficult is to

formally acknowledge oh I'm suffering this is hard let me just say that again that if you can get it ouch this is difficult and not add on Oh, other people have to deal with worse things are,

oh, I deserve it, or anything else like that, but just keep it pure and simple. This is hard. Ouch. Then it's possible to begin to gentle into it and have tea with it. So that's the first kind of key thing. I sometimes call it ouch. If you can say,

ouch, this is hard. the second key piece when it's difficult is kindness is intentional kindness and i want to spend a few minutes on this because unless there's the intention to be kind towards how mara is presenting in us to be forgiving that mara is presenting in us on some level we're going to be armored and i'm spending time with it because we so quickly judge ourselves for having Mara arise. Forgive, forgive, forgive. The story that helps me on this one, on this kindness piece,

one of the first illustrations that I ran into that really just stuck with me for a long, long time. It was a woman who described how her adult daughter asked her to join her in therapy. and then in the therapy session, let her know that when this daughter was a teenager, her stepfather, this woman's then husband, had abused her repeatedly. Now, at that time, this has been going on, this woman had been drinking heavily,

and she was clueless. So here she is, now her daughter's an adult, hearing about that this had gone on. And when she heard it, when she realized that in some way, had been collaborated with her drinking. Let it happen. She went into this crushing depression. I mean, she just crushing suicidal depression. She went to see a Jesuit priest who had been a teacher actually in her college, Catholic college, and now retired. And he sat and talked, you know,

she spoke and described everything was going on and he took her hand in his and he drew a circle in the center of her hand he said this is what you're living with right now this rage and this fear

and this self-loathing and everything you've just named this is what you're living with and you have to feel it but please try to remember this too and he put his big priest hand over hers and he said this is the merciful kingdom of God this is the mercy of God

and if you can remember this if you can feel what you have to heal but remember this and again this hand and this warmth he said if you can feel this too you will discover a compassion that can heal and free you so for this woman

for many many months all the pain and all the reactivity of Mara would arise in her all her rage and self-loathing and at first she just imagined the priest's hand over hers. It was just a very immediate physical thing she could remember, some kind feeling. And then she started sensing that there was some compassion and forgiveness in this universe

that didn't make it that what she had done was right, but that she was forgivable. And gradually she began to feel that her own heart could hold her being with kindness. We can't have tea with Mara unless we forgive that Mara is there. I mean, how many of us have treated those we most love in ways we regret? Again, I'm not asking you to raise your hand on that. I mean, most of us at times, right? How many times have we had our fears or our preoccupation or anger or our personal needs could be so compelling that we weren't able to, and maybe it didn't even happen consciously,

maybe we weren't aware at the time, but in some way we couldn't show up? Most of us. Having tea with Mara means forgiving that. It's big to do that. Now, in a few moments, we're going to do a meditation, a having tea with Mara meditation, which I suspect you knew we would. But before we do, I want to say something that feels really important, that often these kind of teachings are given very energetically saying, you know, when it comes up, just pause. and notice it and open to it and be with it. And what I'd like to say is that it's not always time to have tea. That there are times in our life where we can't do that and we need to understand and forgive that too,

that we can't just be with what's there. There are times that we might be touching into trauma, that we just don't have the resourcefulness to be with that trauma. are times that we've just been worn down by our distress or our stress, and we need to kind of step away from the rawness of it. So there's a kind of wisdom to knowing when we have the resilience or the strength or the humor or the perspective or whatever it is that the Buddha had when he said,

I see you, Mara, and come on in and let's have tea. There are times that we might need support, we might need backup while we're having tea with Mara, like a friend or a therapist, or a healer, or a teacher. Sometimes we can invite a presence there when we're having tea that might not be there physically, but we can emotionally invite in God or Jesus

or the bodhisattva of compassion to be with us while we're having tea with Mara. Whatever works. And at times we just don't do it. we go off and have a cup of tea somewhere else or go and have some exercise or listen to music or read a good book. It's okay. The deep point here is this understanding that eventually to be free we need to open with kindness to the different energies that live in us. We need to live this life. that by opening to Mara and having tea with Mara,

our identity with Mara dissolves. And we become that compassionate presence that's inviting the energy to tea, but is not defined by that energy. Does that make sense, this piece about identity? Because this is the key. When we say yes, when we have tea with Mara, we're no longer identified with Mara.

Mara is a current, in the ocean of what we are, but it doesn't define us. We're larger. Okay, let's practice. Let's explore this a little. So as you come into stillness, you might sense whatever wants attention in your life, wherever there's some place you get stuck, and these energies seem to come up, take over a little. It might be something that's a pattern or something that's happened recently. where you got caught in clinging, maybe some addictive clinging to another person, to substance, or maybe caught in fear or anxiety, something to do with work, perhaps insecurity in a relationship. Maybe you got caught in a reaction to what's going on with your health.

Maybe some aggressive response where you got caught in judging or blaming others. Just sensing some path. where you've kind of gotten caught in kind of reaction that you'd like to bring more presence to. And it helps if you can bring a situation to mind where you really felt Mara activated, these ego energies activated. You kind of go, if you're running a film,

just go to right to the segment that most, or it's most strong. and kind of freeze the movement there and just really investigate a little. What's the fear? What's the worst thing you think is going to happen in those moments when you're caught up in Mara? You must be believing something is going to go wrong or is wrong. In those moments, you might have some ideas about how the world's looking at you. Some fear, some hurt.

See if you can pause. Just kind of, see if you're seeing Mara in the crowd and you're saying, you. Okay, I see this reactivity. You might notice how you normally relate to the reactivity, whether you don't like yourself for it or what kind of judgments there. Like Ananda and the story of the Buddha trying to get rid of Mara. Oh, bad, he's here, you know. See if there's some of that. You don't like your own aggression. You don't like your anxiety. You don't like the way you cling or grasp. You just see if there's some of that. You don't like your own aggression. You don't like your anxiety. You don't like the way you cling or grasp. You know, just see if there's some of that you don't like you're

some of that not liking. Like the man that I described with Alzheimer's, see if you can keep on pausing and noticing and just see what's here and just see if you can begin to name it. Just, okay, fear and just say yes. In some way, the bow is like saying yes or if it helps you to put your hand on your heart, I often do that. It says if you're just noticing what's there and you're with the hand, you're just sending that message, it's okay. This is allowed to be here. It's a beautiful thing just to allow the experience to be there but to allow it in awareness. Very different than being identified with it. Okay, jealous. Yes, yes to this. Hurt. Okay, this too. So you're inviting to tea into presence, these different currents of your experience, naming them,

feeling them in your body, offering kindness. like that priestly hand is in some way conveying kindness forgiveness to whatever you're noticing and maybe in this meditation right now

it's hard to contact anything and you're feeling cut off or numb then that's what you're noticing and that counts too just as much a numb cut off maybe what's coming up is not liking having to do this

oh not liking okay yes to that Your only real job right now is to notice what's going on inside you and say yes with kindness. This too. You might sense if there's any other part of your inner life you'd like to invite to tea right now. It doesn't have to be a full long tea party. You can just herbal tea party or whatever we want to call it. Just inviting the parts of you to be here and to see. say this too. Forgiven, forgiven. Sometimes you can invite a part of your experience into

presence and know that it will be at another time that you unfold it more. But just to acknowledge, to bow, it's okay. Noticing how the more you include and say yes to, the more you open to a spacious presence, to a sense of beingness that's not confined, not care, not limited to the ego. You become larger with yes. Pasha Joyce Gertler writes, Finally on my way to yes, I bump into all the places where I said no to my life.

All the untended wounds, the red and purple scars, those hieroglyphs of pain, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again. Where I find them, the old wounds, I lift them one by one close to my heart

and I say, holy, holy, where I find them, the old wounds. I lift them one by one close to my heart and I say, holy, holy. Okay, opening your eyes. A few more words on this before we close. Just as we bring these parts of our inner life, into awareness, we do the same process in our relationship with each other.

You know, Relka talks about living our lives in widening circles. And so when we're with each other, we're inviting our reaction to each other to tea. In other words, when there's any sense of separation and reactivity, if we want to keep on waking up in relationship, what we're inviting to tea is our reaction to each other. So how do we do that? I mean, the habit when there's separation from another person, the habit is to go into either fight or flight. Either we pull away from that person or we push them away.

So to heal to have tea with Mara means, again, just in the same way as we pause and we sense, okay, what's going on inside me, if it has to do with our own experience, when it's reactivity to another person, we do the exact same thing. What's coming up? Pause. Be with. Be with kindness. Forgive our reaction to another person and open up to what's happening inside us. It allows us to then see the other person's vulnerability. If we opened up to what's underneath our reaction, we're going to find fear or hurt. Then we can look at another person and we'll see the same. This poem I just read ended with the words holy, holy. What we've been talking about tonight really is a path towards wholeness.

The word holy really has to do with the sacred experience of when we are back in touch with a wholeness. of being. And this story, this archetypal story of the Buddha, and I want to go back to kind of the beginning

of the talk, of the Buddha saying, I see you Mara and inviting Mara to tea, is a pathway to touching

that which is holy in our life. We get excluded from that sacred ground in any moment that we judge this

ego self, and we judge the ego of others. And we begin to move towards the sense of the sacred when we say yes to what's here. It doesn't mean that we allow violation, doesn't mean that we allow our own misbehaviors or another. We can respond, but we begin by in our hearts contacting the moment and saying yes. So we close with that spirit, again, just to invite you to take these last few moments to just feel what's here. And as you pause, asking these two basic questions,

what is happening inside me right now? And can I be with this? And to experiment with whatever you notice is going on inside you, see how deeply you can say yes. You might whisper the word yes, or imagine bowing, or you might imagine a cellular yes, and feel it viscerally that you're energetically allowing the life that's here to be as it is

when you're saying yes to the life that's here. Who are you when the response to the life that's here is yes? May we recognize the loving presence that is the very essence of our beings. May this life be lived from the realization of loving presence. may all beings touch a great and natural peace may all beings be free namaste the talk you just listened to has been freely offered

if you'd like to make a donation learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington please visit either my website which is tarabrock.com our IMCW site which is IMCW

Thank you very much.