Tara Brach - Navigating the Dark Ages

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome my friends. I regularly get questions from people who listen to this podcast about how to be caring, how to keep our hearts open in a world that feels increasingly divided and hostile and threatening. And it does seem that as the years pass that the heat's turning up, you know, physically, metaphysically, that this life, this world, everything's speeding up and really the challenges are more starkly compelling. And what's so amazing to me is that at the same time, I'm just seeing a continued increase in the numbers of people drawn to meditation, to practices that will help them deepen clarity and presence

and live from the heart. So they're both going on. And well, maybe you've noticed the same, that there's some basic longing in us humans that's drawing us to awaken our consciousness through these times. So today I'm sharing a talk from two years ago. It's about how to navigate in a challenging world, and it points to both the darkness of the times and also our potential to respond to darkness by calling forth ever more fully

the light of our hearts and spirits. And I often think this happened many years ago the Dalai Lama was meeting with some Western teachers who asked for a message for their students. And his message was, trust the power of heart and awareness to awaken through all circumstances. And I feel like that's so important for us right now to trust that we have the heart, we have the awareness that can guide us as we bring healing to our own. lives into our world. So I hope you find benefit in this talk. Maybe I'll begin with, this is a story about the poet Hafece and a man was talking to him about a profoundly enlightening experience.

He had a vision of God and this sense of experiencing, merging with light and love. And he asked Hafei's whether it was real. And Hafei's then asked him, do you have any goats? And the man nodded. Do you have a wife? Yeah. Children. Yeah. Siblings. Yeah. Parents, friends. So he nodded at each. And then Hafez said, the realness of your experience shows itself through the kindness you express with each of the beings in your life. And I think about that a lot, that the outer expression of awakening heart is that kindness. And pretty much every contemplative path or religion that I've ever encountered describes it this way. It really honors the heart that can be generous and kind and friendly. And certainly it's what we try to teach our.

children. There's a story I've always liked of a mom who's preparing pancakes for her two sons, Kevin's five and Ryan's three, and the boys start arguing over who gets the first pancake. So the mom sees this as an opportunity for a moral lesson and said, well, if Jesus was sitting here, he'd say, let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait. At which the old older boy turns to his younger brother and says, Ryan, you can have the first chance at playing Jesus. So we don't always embody, but we know that when we're kind, when we're generous, when we're open-hearted, we're really living from our most evolved self, our best self. and the same is true collectively, that an evolved society is rooted in compassion.

Gandhi wrote this. He said those who say spirituality has nothing to do with politics do not understand what spirituality really means. And I think what he means by saying that is that we can't separate how we engage as a collective from the principles we really cherish in our heart. And I think this is why so many are distressed by the growing dividedness and hostility in our world, the explicit aggression in governance by those with power because we belong to this world. It's part of our hearts. So I've been hearing from a number of people in response to events in the past few weeks with

expressions of distress and despair and grief and fear and anger. And of course I can feel my own distress. And the big question many wonder about is how can our spiritual path, how can our practices guide us in relating to what feels to many like a descent into the dark ages, particularly here in the United States. Of course, it's global, but it's acute here recently with the Supreme Court rolling back women's rights, allowing handguns in public, blocking the capacity of government to meet our climate goals and more and all against the will of the majority. And so there's this sense of this deep backslide. it's a backsliding of democracy.

And it's important to note, I think, that whenever rights of non-dominant groups are taken away, that always goes hand in hand with a backslide in democracy. So in these last weeks I do keep thinking of Gandhi who really dedicated his life to freedom, inner freedom and outer freedom. And he asked, he was asked by someone, what do you think of? Western civilization. And his response was, it would be a good idea. So friends, today's reflection, how in our personal and collective lives can we meet the darkness, the suffering that's here in a way that brings healing and freedom? And to start by saying that it's one of our major

human delusions and it's happened through different times of history that this is how it is. We're at the kind of end chapter and it's bad news and it's a descent into chaos and never returning descent into chaos and catastrophe. So we tend to fixate on the current in times in a narrow way and forget the past, the distant past, the future, the distant future. So we might forget right now how our worlds seem during, catastrophes like Black Plague or Depression or the Two World Wars. You know, we might forget that our ancestors survived and adapted through unbelievably harsh circumstances, many through slavery, through pogroms and more. And we forget the amazing resilience of life. We forget that the

trajectory of our human evolution, and albeit it's in fits and starts has been towards decreasing violence, towards more collaboration. And we also forget how stress, the really big stressors, actually can bring forward untapped creativity and intelligence that our descendants can continue to adapt in ways that we can't even imagine. So I say this because we need a larger view. We need to sense the vastness and mystery we belong to. You know, I often think that this is a universe that according to science sprung forth from a singularity, a single concentrated point, okay, and it's still expanding.

And where did that point come from? You know, how can there be a beginning without something before? You know, what's before? And is this all a beginningless, endless experience? The mind can't grasp it. Within this mystery, there's a mystery of love. You know, what is it? Of awareness.

You know, of poetry, of beauty, of acts of kindness and compassion. Cosmetologist Brian Swim put it this way. He said the earth was once molten rock and now it can sing opera. So we need a wide view and we need to be able to arrive again and again in just this moment in the sounds that are right here, in the fragrance, the smells, the sensations, the breath, You know, we need to be able to shift from our thoughts about the world into this living world, this presence and mystery that are flowing right now through us. A friend was given a wristwatch.

It's something that someone had gotten at one of the Tikknot Han retreats in Plum Village. And at the center of the watch, there's the word it. and then every 15-minute interval, all that's written is now, now, now, now. It's eternally now. So I reflect this morning, just this morning, now, moments of that now-ness have included, you know, cuddling with my very elderly dog. And of course, I'm appreciating moments with her because she is so elderly. the softness of her fur and she smells good and she's warm.

And then, you know, the taste of my protein drink, which I really love, it's thick and satisfying and meditating and listening to the sounds of the wrens and the cardinals and the crows and feeling the movement of the breath, just quietness. So moments of now. And then there have already been moments of taking in the news and feeling alarm, feeling that kind of sinking feeling, bad othering, the distress. So daily, it's like this, there's pleasant and there's unpleasant. And with the painful emotions, depending on the quality of presence, they either unfold

into deeper presence and a quality of tenderness of that kindness that have face-pointed. to are I get stuck for a while. And this is what I want to explore together. You know, how we free ourselves when we start really sinking and we get stuck and we lose access to that wider view and we lose access to the kindness of our hearts and to some clarity. And the image and the teachings that inspire me, this comes from the Tibetan tradition. And you can can see it in the artwork and the mandalayas come at the entrance of temples. It's images of these animal-headed gods and goddesses, we'll call them the shadow deities, and they guard the entrance to sacred space. And so these are the energies of anger and wrath and revenge and fear and hatred

and delusion. And the wisdom that is expressed through this is, only by meeting the deities with full awareness, with presence, with compassion, do we arrive in sacred space? It's not because the deities aren't there. It's a given in life that they're there. And not only that, they're not bad. Now, it's what we call the shadow or darkness or, you know, the animal-headed goddesses. they're not bad. They're primitive expressions of universal energies that are ringed in every nervous system. They're part of survival. And yet they're confused. They're not in their fully evolved state. So they're confused because they're filtered by a perception of separation. It's like when we feel like we're a separate entity, that's what our nervous system presents.

and the evolution of consciousness, this is the journey that we're on, the evolution of consciousness, it occurs as we engage with those primal energies with awareness. And in the moments that we do, and we're engaging really with the capacities of our more recently developed brain that has to do with compassion and mindfulness is correlated with the frontal cortex, when that's activated. And we meet the primal energies, the more primitive energies with compassion and mindfulness, they actually become transmuted. The confusion falls away and their basic energy comes forward in a real sense of luminosity and spirit. So, for example, if you meet the deity of anger with awareness,

Its energy becomes this very clear, wise discrimination. That's the essence energy. But when it's confused, it's in anger form. When you meet fear, it becomes loving-kindness. When you meet delusion with awareness, it becomes openness, emptiness. The power of this teaching is you already have these essences. of clarity, of kindness, of openness within you. You can navigate the dark ages. But what it means is when the energies present in their more primitive form, in order to embody their essence,

you need to meet them with awareness. Okay, so our challenge and the reason we do get stuck, and the reason collectively we get caught in dark ages is because the energies are not met with awareness. The suffering, the experience in our bodies is either denied or avoided or, you know, it's some way that we pull away from what's going on, go into our minds. And when the shadow's not faced individually, collectively, it becomes a destructive force. The more the shadows arising and it's not the more destructive. Okay, an example that I've always found powerful. I read a book, a story of an Austrian woman named Clara, and she was made present by a married uncle.

And when his wife died, he married her. So it's incestuous. All her children die soon after birth. Finally, fourth child sickly but lives. She nurses this child for two years obsessively, like he tries to pull away from the nipple and she forces him back as if that's what's going to make them live. She's also obsessed about a spotless home. She lives in fear of her husband's beatings. Her son grows up exceedingly fearful as an adult. He's afraid of microbes. He's afraid of germs, of dirt. He feels the very blood, this incestuous blood and his veins is dangerous and that it's going to bring about defects and feeble-mindedness. and he's afraid of gossip about his incestuous family, never has children. He's afraid of tainted blood. He's afraid of terrified of cancer, which took his mother's life, and he's horrified that he had

suckled at her breasts. He's afraid of moonlight, horses, snow, water, the dark, of judges, of Americans, of old men, of poets. So the question is, how could anyone live with so much fear? those shadow emotions, here's what he did. He seized on an all-encompassing explanation for the existence of sin and disease for all his failures and disappointments. It was not weakness in his parents, his blood, his mind. He was faultless. Others were felfth. He could not change his China blue eyes, but he could change the world they saw. So he would identify the secret source of every evil and rooted out. Free Europe of pollution and defilement. Only health and purity would remain. Are such grim and strange facts significant or merely interesting? So here's another.

The doctor who could not cure Clara Hitler's cancer was Jewish. So this is written by Mary Russell in her book A Threat of Grace. And you can see so powerfully how the shadow deities come up and when that self-hatred's not processed, it's turned outward to blame and hate others. And it's very explicit in Mind Kempf and I haven't read. I just read commentaries. But Hitler depicts a world in which the enemy is everywhere. And I hope this is sounding familiar. The reason I'm spending time is this is kind of an arctuple pattern when humans don't face the shadow deities, when we don't face fear. It's like dangers everywhere.

And online comp expresses his fear of inferiority, which drives the need to dominate others, so he's not going to be dominated. So you can see that fear of other makes other less than human. It's kind of a demon of sorts. And it's something we have to arm against, oppress, subdue. And so we see the same unfazed shadow in authoritarian leaders like Putin, you know, restoring Russia's past glory. There's been humiliation by the West and playing into the feelings of shame and pride of the Russian people. And you can see the same pattern in the white supremac gangs that were driven to violence on the sixth continue to be violent in the United States,

that the feelings of status, of relevance is increasingly threatened by a diverse, growingly diverse country. So there's this seeking to reestablish control to fortify a white Christian nation. You can see in the actions of the majority of Supreme Court justices and others who are attempting to control in a punitive way women and other non-dominant groups. And you can see around the globe, whenever shadow deities are on face, they take over and affects all of us. So the challenges to the degree the shadow takes over, we get cut off from really our potential, our intelligence, our creativity, our empathy, our kindness, that choices and actions are driven by primitive fears. And I always find interesting that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

said, at the Supreme Court level where I worked, 90% of our decisions are made on an emotional basis. The other 10% is our rationalization for the decision. So those are chilling percentages if the emotions are primarily fear, anger, and aversion. And whenever the dominant strata of a society feels threatened. And in current times markedly, this is in the United States, white, Christian male, that dominant strata becomes more cruel, more hateful, more violent, more punishing, more oppressive. So what I want to emphasize here and here on in is that when others are caught in the shadow in unprocessed feelings, their violence brings out our shadow. It's contagious. We get angry and hateful towards those who out of anger and hate get aggressive. We react in kind.

And it can spiral into a deeper and deeper sense of the dark ages. It perpetuates suffering. So on a lighter side, one of the Gary Larson cartoons I clipped years back, back in the days when people clip things. It has two women behind the locked door and they're peeping through the window at a monster on the doorstep. And one saying to the other, well, yes, Edna, it is a giant hideous insect, but maybe it's a giant hideous insect in need of help. And, you know, when others in our society act in ugly ways, let's say they use their power to harm vulnerable others, we don't view with the eyes of compassion. We get angry and feel aversion and I'm speaking for myself too. And as I mentioned, we run the risk of adding to the darkness.

So, the teachings that are embraced by so many spiritual leaders, Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, they're summarized beautifully in the Buddhist text that hatred never seizes by hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law. I come back to this verse again and again and if you've been with me for a while, you'll hear me speak it because no matter what we think is going on, hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed. So let's now look at how when our own primitive energies are flaring, do we find our way back to a wise heart? How can we meet the shadow deities with presence. And I'll share a story that's a very common example in recent days

and I'm sharing it because it's a friend, colleague who I just talked to a few days ago. And she has for several decades been working with inner city teens in a program that helps teens graduate, gets many of them to college. The program now includes mindfulness. It's beautiful. And she stayed in very close touch because she was very close with several of the teens. One of them that she was telling me about the day before yesterday is now an attorney. She went to college. She's a public defender. She's married. She has two children. Well, this young woman when she was in the program was raped at age 15. And as you can imagine, her life would have been entirely different if she had had her child,

which she didn't. And my friend could have told me more stories and you know about them. You know about them. And so my friend, as she was talking to me, saying, you know, she's struggling with the feelings of hatred and anger at the Supreme Court justices, the majority, and those in power and the states that are clamping down on women's rights. It's just the punitive quality of it, turning the most vulnerable in our society into criminals. And so we were on Zoom and I guided her. We decided we do a practice, you know, which is really how to meet the shadow deities.

and so she got in touch with what was there and named it, you know, anger, hatred. That's the beginning of mindfulness to name it. And then to allow it to be there. You know this from rain, recognize and allow it to be there. Not to make it wrong. This is part of the waves in the ocean. And then to really feel it, to investigate by feeling where it lives in the body, that heat, the pressure, just offering that gentle presence.

yep, you can be here, you can be here. I invited her, let it be as big as it wanted to be. Sometimes with anger, I'll say let it rip, you know, and it's not the thoughts, but the feelings. That's what's key. And that anger and the rage in her just felt a huge space, and she kept allowing, and she found that after a while, as it got bigger and bigger,

that she got in touch with fear, a layer of fear under it, a fear about all the harm that's occurring and going to occur with this kind of taking away of rights and invited her to put her hand on her heart as I'm doing right now and I often do and just to hold that with a real deep kindness. And as she did, the fear turned into a grieving, a grieving for all the women who are suffering and not just women because she's well aware as so many of us, that the movement afoot is to deprive many vulnerable, non-dominant groups of rights, just sensing her caring for all the vulnerable people that are being oppressed.

And then just invited her after offering that kindness to the feelings and inner to just rest in that, in other words, to rest and be that tender caring space. Let that be home. And she was resting in that and just the power of moving from being an angry person, that was her sense of herself, to resting in this tender, open presence that could include the currents of anger but wasn't defined by them. She was larger. And then that she could act from that kindness. She could do all she could do, but she was acting from really her spirit from her heart.

We talked afterwards and it's so clear that the enemy is not those individuals abusing power. It's the forces of aggression, the forces of ignorance, the same forces through history that when not face with awareness of God's domination, oppression, and violence. It's universal forces from the primitive psyche. And the power of meeting the deities with presence is that we reconnect with the source of what we are, that loving awareness, so that when we act from that, we act from kindness, we can bring healing to our world. Many of you probably have heard of Gary Snyder. He's a poet and environmental activists for over 50 years. And a good friend of mine, another Dharma teacher,

Wes Nisker, interviewed him and asked him if he had any advice for us. This is about the degradation of the earth. And his response, Gary's response was this. He said, don't feel guilty. Guilt and anger and fear are part of the problem. If you want to save the world, Save it because you love it. Save it because you love it. Friends, love is the only power that's great enough to overcome greed and anger and violence and fear. Martin Luther King called Love Our Soul Force, that this is the force that can transform the world. And as you're listening and reflecting, you might well resonate with this, that love and compassion are the way, and also wonder how it's realistic in a world where others are acting so hurtfully.

And so I just want to speak to that a bit because it's a really natural inquiry. And it's helpful to know that love and compassion are not weak. They have many facets. And I think that there's an expression coined by Joan Halifax, wonderful Dharma teacher, just we need a strong back and a soft front. And they're both expressions of love. The strong back is that clarity that knows where we need to create boundaries, that absolutely is dedicated to protecting. It has wise discernment of fight for what's needed.

And the soft front, that's that heart that's open and caring and friendly. And if we're wanting to seek healing, to bridge the divides, we need both that clarity and that care. In other words, we need to speak our truths, we need to keep distances at time to protect ourselves, we need to have agreements and rules, and for there to be healing, We need to have our hearts available, not blaming, seeking to understand. We need a friendly heart. I often think of Ruby's Sales as quite a model for me, a spiritual and civil rights activist,

sees the suffering, sees those causing suffering and assumes that behind their actions is suffering. she asked that amazing question, where does it hurt? And in one interview with Krista Tippett, she applies that I heard, that she applies this to white nationalists, to white supremacy, this question. And she talks of a spiritual crisis in white America and she talks about this as the calling of our time. This is what she says. I don't hear anyone speaking to the 45-year-old person in Appalachia who's dying of a young age, who feels like a they've been eradicated because whiteness is so much smaller today than it was yesterday.

So as a black person, I want a theology that gives hope and meaning to people who are struggling to have meaning in a world where they no longer are as essential to whiteness as they once were. I want a liberating white theology. I want a theology that speaks to Appalachia. I want a theology that begins to deepen people's understanding about their capacity to live fully human life. lives and to touch the goodness in them. So powerful, so powerful to see beyond that lens of bad othering to what's needed. I read a story about a former white supremacist, Derek Black. He was the white power heir parent to David Duke. David Duke was his godfather. And Derek believed

that white people were being oppressed in their own country, as many do. He didn't consider his beliefs as racist or hateful, more that his group was trying to preserve our own, as he said. In other words, he was living in the spiritual crisis of white America. So while Derek was a college in Florida, he was outed for being a white nationalist and many, many students ostracized him. After that happened, as he was being ostracized, one student, Matthew Stevenson, who was an Orthodox Jew, invited him to Shabbat dinner. And as Matthew described it, he was very clear in his own mind that it would not help anything by attacking Derek. So he saw himself as a potential bridge person. Okay, so Derek accepted the invitation and over time he became a regular at this dinner.

This went on for over two years. And initially, they both avoided talking about Derek's activism. Instead, they actually just went about establishing a friendship. They talked about other things, including religion, which they were both interested in. And they'd go for walks, go to the bay, see the sunset, you know, just be friends, be humans together. And Derek also became friends with a few others in the group and gradually more real conversations that include, included Derek's beliefs and activities started happening. And people in the Shabbat group, a few of them would say, you know, I want to understand this, your beliefs, and they'd walk and they'd listen.

And it was enough, there was enough friendship there that they could begin to challenge Derek and force him to look more deeply at what he was believing. And by way of example, one woman in the Shabbat group asked Derek if she could attend one of his seminars. And so she sat there listening to him denying the Holocaust and him blaming Jewish conspiracy for threatening the position of whites. And she was able to say to him afterwards, this is hate. I'm Jewish. This is hate. And because of the foundation of friendship, because there had been such kindness, he started reassessing his beliefs and he was left with the fact and this is how he put it. He said, I can be friends with Jewish students and with people of color,

but my belief system says they should all be removed from the United States. And that didn't work anymore because they had connected. So over time, those in the Shabakh group were very clear, they were strong in their moral outrage. You know, they had that strong back, they never pretended otherwise. And because they had established the kindness in their friendship, the soft front, there was a container for that honesty. The reason I share this is because there's no way to bridge differences unless there's a foundation of trust, of kindness. Otherwise, defenses will block. As it turned out, this whole experience for Derek led to writing a public letter disavowing his beliefs. And since then, he's been engaging in studies aiming at understanding

the roots of white supremacy and in activism that serves healing. The teaching for me is that the evolution of consciousness does not happen because we beat an enemy. It can't happen. It happens when there's a bridging of a divide, a movement towards connection, collaboration, understanding, care, strong backs, soft front. So we started, how do we draw on a spiritual path when we're relating a descent, into the dark ages. And we know it's so easy to default and meet what's going on with our own anger, our own hatred. And her face reminds us that our spirit expresses through kindness. All the great spiritual leaders call on us to awaken our hearts. Ruby sails again, she talks about the black spirituals that guided her. She says, I'm going to lay

down my sword and shield down by the riverside, down by the riverside, and study war no more. She says, it was not a retaliatory religion. It was a religion predicated on right relations and love and nonviolence. So my friends, what our world most needs is our presence, you know, needs us to have that wide view, needs us to be able to come right, into the present moment. And it needs us to be able to meet whatever the shadow deities are that are arising with real courage, real clarity, real presence. And we need to act from that awakening heart. You know, I often think and I see it in my own life that if there's despair, acting is the antidote. We need to act. And it doesn't have to be, you know, super visible,

heroic activism. It's really whatever fits our life, voting for sure, talking to friends and talking and bridging with those more of difference. Of course, there's joining local organizations, writing letters, in whatever way, contributing your time. your money, your heart to helping the world. That's part of what being whole is. It's engaged spirituality. And we can't navigate the dark ages alone. And this is the note I want to end on.

We really can't. I was just with some friends talking last night. And just being with others and naming the truth of what we're feeling, it ends up creating a heart space that's large enough to hold what's going on. We need to connect. I was recently, I was traveling and I was in the redwoods in California, you know, these massive trees. And they have very shallow roots. And what allows them to survive, the winds and so on, is that the root systems are completely interwoven.

They hold each other up. And we need to do the same with each other. This is a poem I really love from Naomi Shaiyib Nye. It's called Shoulders. A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently looking two times north and south because his son is asleep on his shoulder. No car must splash him.

No car drive too near to a shadow. This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo, but he's not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say fragile, handle with care. His ear fills up with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him. We're not going to be able to live in this world if we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another. The road will only be wide. The rain will never never stop falling. So the shadow deities will keep arising. And there will be many who don't meet with presence, there will be violence, there will be oppression. And we need to hold hands.

We need to care for each other, care for those who are vulnerable. We need to save this world because we love it. Okay, so let's do a very brief closing reflection together. Take a moment, if you will, to pause and breathe and invite yourself right here, right now. Feel your breath, feel your body breathing. Let your senses be awake. You hear the sounds around you, let them wash through, and then widening the view and sense through time. through beginningless time, the countless acts of kindness in our world, the countless moments when others have been in need or sick or vulnerable or lonely and someone has reached out. Just imagine countless acts of kindness, the kindnesses that are going on today. Also imagine how

many are feeling awe at beauty, how many are touched by the sorrow of loss, how many feel that love of goodness want there to be healing in our world, taking these moments to feel our shared heart, knowing that the shadow deities will naturally arise, and just to sense our collective calling to meet them with presence, to transform. form them into their essence of love and wisdom and to live from that, to live from kindness. Together, creating the world we believe in. Namaste friends, thank you for your presence. I send you all love, all blessings.