Tara Brach - Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life. "Our freedom comes not from what is happening, but from how we are relating to it. See if you can relate with the spirit of yes, allowing whatever arises to be here. And if it feels difficult, painful, then bringing some real kindness, a 'yes' with gentleness and kindness."

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. I invite you to find your way of sitting. Whatever posture allows you to feel alert so you're sitting in an upright way and also at ease. And take some moments to settle in to invite yourself into presence. perhaps feeling the breath, feeling your body, letting your senses be awake and knowing that you're right here. In meditation practice we awaken mindfulness of what's here in the moment and we also become

aware of how we're relating to our experience. So we begin by sensing the possibility of regarding whatever arises with kindness and we can help to bring our bodies into alignment in a kind and open way with the image of a smile. You might begin by imagining a great open blue sky and visualize that sky wide open, filled with the curve of a smile, the brightness and receptivity of a smile. And just imagine that your mind can merge with that open sky of awareness. So your mind is filled with the warmth and receptivity of a smile. You might soften the eyes, let the sensations in the area of the eyes just float in that open sky of awareness.

And let the outer corners of the eyes lift a bit as if you could smile into the eyes and let the brow be smooth. The eyes are smiling. Bringing a very slight but real smile to the lips, the sense the inside of your mouth smiling and let that spread through the face, allowing all the micro-muscles of the face to soften and relax. You might feel it tingling or vibrating.

You might imagine and sense that your throat can fill your nose, neck and visualize and sense the curve of a smile in the throat area, softening and opening there. So you can feel the face, the scalp, the skull, throat, all filled with the ease and the receptivity of a smile and then smiling into the heart, visualizing and sensing the felt experience of a smile spreading through the heart and the chest. You might imagine widening ripples of ease, spreading out through the chest, freeing up the shoulders some so they can relax back and down, feeling the energy moving up and down the arms. Let the hands rest in an easy, effortless way. The eyes are soft and smiling. The mouth, a slight smile, and the throat.

soft, open, receptive and the heart, smiling into the heart, not to cover over but really to make room for the life that's here. Feeling some ease spreading through the shoulders, the arms, right down into the hands, the hands soft, relaxed so that if you feel from the inside out, feel your thumbs, other fingers, the space between the palms and the backs of the hands. Perhaps you can sense the tingling and the vibrating and the aliveness in the hands. Let there be an openness to the chest

and then sense that this next breath can be received in a softening belly. This breath, now this one and again, awakening awareness deep in the belly, the torso, visualizing and sensing the curve of a smile spreading through the belly, further awakening a presence from the inside out, becoming aware of the aliveness deep in the pelvic region, aware of the legs, the length, the volume of your legs, and feeling the energy and the feet from the inside out,

and explore what happens when you widen the lens and feel this whole body all at once, this whole dance of aliveness, a field of sensation, the whole field lit up with the warmth of a smile, including the appearing, disappearing of sounds, sensing the space that sounds are happening in, the space that includes the most distant sounds, vast sky of awareness, filled with the receptivity of a smile, including the sounds and the sensations, feelings, changing river of experience, moving through, and resting in that wakeful openness. You might let the breath be in the foreground. Nothing to do, just a receptive presence with or resting in

awareness of the breath, still aware of the sounds and other sensations, that background space of awareness that everything's happening in. And when the mind drifts into thoughts, future, the past, it's quite natural. When there's an awareness of that, to gently relax back into this presence. If something strong calls your attention, something very pleasant or unpleasant, could be a sensation in the body or a feeling, mood, then let that be in the foreground, allowing whatever arises to be just as it is regarding with a relaxed, interested, friendly, attentiveness, noticing how it changes. Our freedom comes not from what's happening but from how we're relating to it.

See if you can relate with the spirit of yes, allowing whatever arises to be here. And if it feels difficult, painful, then bringing some real kindness a yes with gentleness and kindness. Notice what happens when there's kindness. A key part of meditation practice is the pathway back from thoughts to presence. The quality or the attitude that you bring to that will seed what arises next. So if you notice your thinking and you judge yourself, that's the seed you plant. But if you notice that you've been lost in, you're lost in thought and the response is to sense, oh, okay, relax open again, re-relax the body, shoulders, soften the hands, relax the heart, a slight smile at the mouth,

and the intention to bring a kind and gentle presence to this next breath, a kind and gentle presence, to the life that's arising moment to moment. And as a way of closing the meditation, feeling the breath at the heart again, and sensing whatever prayer or message of care you'd like to offer to your own being, and then feeling that heart space that includes all of us, all beings everywhere, taking a moment, taking a moment to sense your prayer for our world. Namaste and blessings.