Tara Brach - Meditation: Awakening Compassion with Tonglen

Episode Date: October 19, 2017

Our hearts awaken as we let ourselves be touched by the suffering within and around us. They shine as we respond with care to what has touched us. This meditation uses the breath to guide us in letting in and contacting suffering, and offering out our love. With practice this meditation enables us to realize the truth of our connectedness and the luminous love that is intrinsic to awareness. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. As you settle in, just close your eyes and feel your body, your heart. You can sense this as a life practice. The essence is simple. This willingness to directly contact reality right here and offer care.

You might start by just feeling the movement of the breath and sensing as you breathe in that you're contacting and aware of the life inside you. And as you breathe out, that you're flowing outward into the space around you, letting go, letting go. Let yourself sense this particular juncture of your life and whatever is arising within you, whatever reaction, whatever reaction, whatever place of emotional difficulty is strongest. It might be anger, might be fear, sorrow, confusion, feel where it lives in your body. If it helps a sense what really evokes it, the worst part of things going on and what really

brings it up, this could be in your personal life or more societally. It's just to help you get in touch and feel that as you breathe in you could directly contact where that vulnerability is. Breathing in is like saying you're willing to touch it, feel it, be with it. Let the breath come right to the place in your body where you feel most vulnerable, maybe the throat or the chest or the belly. For some it helps to put your hand where you feel it most strongly. So you're breathing in and let the touch help to contact and feel what's there.

And with the out breath, sense that you're offering that pain, that anger, that hurt into a field of loving presence. You're breathing it out and letting it be held in the heart of the world. Imagine light and warmth, holding, surrounding, embracing. So you're breathing in and touching what's here. and you're breathing out and really offering it into love, offering it love. If it's difficult to feel the experience, then pay more attention to the in-breath, letting yourself really contact where the experience is most in the body, the felt sense of it.

And if it feels overwhelming, then emphasize the out breath a little more, that you could breathe it out and let it be held by the heart of the world, sensing all the others that feel this too and that we're collectively holding this pain, this suffering in a heart space of love and continue to breathe and sense that you're now breathing in for all those beings that feel like you do, all those beings struggling with anger, hurt, fear, vulnerability, sorrow, whatever it is, you're breathing in for all of us, letting the collective pain touch your heart, let the heart be a transformer of sorrow so that you breathe it out and sense it held in a vast field of caring.

So you're breathing in for all of us and breathing out love for all of us. We continue by bringing to mind one person that we can imagine that is particularly vulnerable and threatened right now. It could be a person, the non-dominic culture that you know. know that's really feeling threatened, a person in your personal life that for whatever reason is struggling, but bring that person to mine and bring that person close in. So you can see the look on their face when things are difficult and actually imagine and sense from the inside out what it's like for this person, what it is this person's anticipating,

the fear of failure, the feel of physical threat, the fear of loss, deep loss, so that you breathe in and breathe in for this person, the vulnerability this person's experiencing, letting your heart be touched and breathing out your wish for healing, for safety, that this person be held in love. Again, if you feel like it's overwhelming to emphasize the out breath. If it's hard to connect, emphasize the in-breath and really feel in your body, what would this be like? What would it be like if it was you?

Widening it to breathe now for all the beings that might be struggling just the way this person is with the same vulnerability. So you imagine all beings that you're breathing in for all of them, letting your heart be as wide as the world and deep and breathing it out with your prayer for healing, for relief, for freedom, letting go of all ideas of self and other now and just feeling the heart space that's here. Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of compassion is characterized by listening to and responding to the cries of the world.

A bodhisattva of our times. I'd like to close by just reading a bit from Clarissa Estes, who describes it that us like seaworthy vessels that are capable of navigating the stormy waters of these times. She says we're made for these times. For years we've been in training for this exact plane of engagement. When a ship is in harbor and moored, it's safe. There can be no doubt. But that's not what great ships are built for.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to men the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world will help immensely. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of such acts. We know that it does not take everyone on earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene

in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold and dark times. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these, to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and the greatest necessity. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these, to be fierce and to show mercy towards others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Namaste and thank you for your presence.