Tara Brach - Nourishing a Liberating Intention

Episode Date: July 12, 2014

2014-07-09 - Nourishing a Liberating Intention - The Buddha taught that this entire world arises out of the tip of intention. Intentions can arise from an egoic wants and fears, and they can arise from the wisdom of our heart that is calling us home. This talk explores the qualities that signify a liberating intention and how, by bringing presence to our current intention, we uncover the purity and power of our hearts true aspiration.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. So welcome. Begin this talk sharing with you about a conference I presented at some years back. This was run by Tricycle, which is a Buddhist magazine, an online forum. And I was invited to be part of the opening presentation. They had a lineup of us, and we're each asked to address a key question in spiritual life, which is what really allows people to heal and awaken, to come into freedom. And we're each asked to give 10 minutes to that. Now just a little

background, this tricycle conference was held at the World Trade Center, and this was two weeks before 9-11. So here we were. And so I was in this lineup of five presenters, and they were all very, very well known. I wasn't. I was the only woman. And they put me as a second person, which I thought was great, because it gave me 10 minutes to kind of collect my thoughts and come into a presence, but not too long to go insane, you know, with nervousness. So there I was, and the first person to speak was Richard Baker Roshi, who's the Dharma heir to Suzuki Roshi, who I admired greatly. So he got up and his, he, he, he began saying transformation or awakening comes down to two things.

Intention and attention. Thank you very much. And he sat down. And I was sitting there going, you know, uh-oh, it's my turn. I wanted to get up and say like he said, you know, I have no idea what I said, but I really remember what he said. And really his teaching is going to be what will be exploring tonight, which is really how the path of healing is energized and guided by intention.

And the path of freedom is energized and guided by intention. And there's a kind of virtuous cycle that happens, which is that when we have the intention to wake up, so we're meditating. We have the intention to notice what's happening. notice more. So intention energizes presence and then because presence feels like home, we feel good there, that then motivates us more to have that intention to really live from presence. So it's kind of a virtuous cycle. But intention is a complex word. You know, the Buddha said that this entire world arises out of the tip of intention.

this entire world. And so when we explore it, we get that there's different levels and that we can have the intention to make a lot of money or to get a promotion or to prove ourselves in somewhere, to get revenge. And that's a very egoic level of intention. It solidifies the ego sense. It solidifies the wanting, fearing self.

And in contrast, when our intention is, is I just really want to love without holding back. I really want to see the truth of who you are and who I am. These kind of intentions actually energize the path of realization. They move us, they turn us towards our full potential. So this latter kind of intention I think of as a liberating intention. There's the egoic and then there's a liberating kind of intention. And in Buddhism it's often described as aspiration, our deepest aspiration.

If you pay attention to anyone that you really trust as a very awake, very kind being, you'll discover hand in hand with that person's awakeness and kindness is an intention in that direction. It matters to them. This is the Dalai Lama. Every day, every morning when he wakes up, he begins his day in this way. It's a prayer from Shanti-Dava. And here are the words. May I be a guard for those who need protection, a guide for those on the path, a boat,

a raft, a bridge for those to cross the flood. May I be a lamp in the darkness, a resting place for the weary, and a healing medicine for all who are sick. For as long as earth and sky endure, may I assist until all living beings are awakened. So this is the Dalai Lama's way of every day setting that kind of inner compass. This is the direction of my life.

This is what matters. And we each need that kind of compass because there's so many tugs on us. We know that. Our conditioning, our culture, there's so many tugs that we need a way of setting our direction, setting our intention. You wouldn't be here, and if you're listening to a podcast, right, and you would not be listening unless you had some of those very deep, pure currents of a liberating intention.

No matter what reason you think you are listening, there's something that is yearning for truth and yearning for freedom. And in a similar way, we wouldn't be helpful to a loved one, or we wouldn't get involved in a creative project, or we wouldn't spend time in nature unless there was some of this flavor of liberating intention. But the truth is, if we look at our day, and I think it's important to do this, huge swaths of our day are not guided by or connected to that kind of intention. And instead what we find out is that we're caught up in different currents that are really

more to do with wanting and fearing. And the more stressed we are, the less we're tapped in. When I lead guided meditations, I always start with some getting into presence and then asking what is it that matters to our hearts. I'm aware that for some people we can ask that question, but if we're not really present, we're going to get some prepackaged response. You know, like it's going to maybe the right words like, you know, I want to have more presence or I want to be kinder to others, but it's just a kind of voice in our mind and

it's not embodied. It's not like we really are caring. And that's okay. I mean, I have, I sometimes have people come after class and say, you know, you leave that that reflection on what's my deepest intention. I don't have the foggiest notion what my deepest intention is. And that's okay too. The first step is just getting the knack of remembering to even ask the question.

Okay? Because when we start putting the light of attention on something, then reality starts unfolding itself. So we start beginning to become discerning and notice saying, oh, right now I'm just operating off of egoic intentions. Like, you know, what's driving me is, you know, that I really want to check things off the list so I can feel like I don't have as much to do. When we are being driven by an intention that's really navigating, that's really moving us through the day, the key feature of that is that it's embodied. In other

words if you're if an intention's impacting you it's because something matters and it could be something matters that you're drawn to take a nap or it could be that you're drawn to comfort a friend it's something that matters so I'm giving you right now a key signature of intention it has to matter it has to be alive in your body you know this in the Supreme Court there's a kind of question of like what's really behind some of the decisions and Chief Justice Douglas wrote this he said 90% of the decisions made in the Supreme Court are made on the basis of emotions.

And then the other 10% is what's used to rationalize those emotions. The real decisions in our life come from our emotions. Colors Kossinada, who writes about the Shaman Don Juan. He writes, conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. So what I'm getting at is emotions and the way that they express their intentions are a really major force in our life. Our life emerges out of the tip of intention. So it becomes a very, very important question, what's our intention? What's really driving

us in any moment? Much of the day will find that our intention is driven by some, Some need to feel more secure, some need to soothe ourself, some need to prove ourselves, this egoic level. I have a drawing here of people in a 12-step group, and one guy is saying, Hi, my name is Barry and I check my email two to three hundred times a day. How many of you feel like you have an addiction to email? Can I see?

Just to keep checking, can I see? Yeah. So there's some intention. There's some intention in there. There's something in us that wants to be engaged, distract distract ourselves, something that wants to feel plugged into something else. It's another way of consuming. And the truth is that we will always be driven by intention that's really strong in the limbic system but then justify it with our rational mind.

Like in this story, a mother was preparing pancreating, for her sons, Kevin, five, and Ryan and three. The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake. Mom saw an opportunity for a moral lesson and said, if Jesus was sitting here, he would say, let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait. Kevin turned to his younger brother and said, Ryan,

you can have the first chance at being Jesus. What we're going to be exploring together is waking up and getting more aware when we're in the midst of the of things of what intention is really going on because it affects the outcomes in our life. And we start noticing in our communications with each other that on some level we're trying to get approved of. You know, if we're really honest, we're wanting the other person to like us in some way or be impressed with us some way, we're trying to look smart, we're trying to avoid error, we're trying to get the person to cooperate. It's important to watch our motives,

because they are felt energetically by the other person. So if we're interested in real authentic relating, we need to be onto ourselves in that way. So personal story is that two mornings a week, my husband Jonathan and I meditate together and then we do a kind of check-in and it's exploring what's going on for each other. And during these times, I'm usually the ones, the ones particularly intent on making sure we communicate anything that might be

creating separation. I'm intent and I'm also a little controlling about it at times. I'm just going to put that out there. So earlier last week we started chatting and by the end we had talked about everything and anything but our relationship. So before we ended I asked, so how are we doing? You know I said is there anything you feel it would be good for us to pay attention to? And then I kind of sat back because I thought, now that was skillful. I put that out really well. And, you know, I was kind of self-satisfied.

And I was on my turf, you know. He started squirming around, you know, kind of trying hard to come up with something and looked at me hoping he'd get some clues, you know, like, is there something I'm missing here? You know, that kind of thing. He had that deer in the headlights look, but I just stayed quiet waiting to see what he'd come up with. And then he got a very familiar, mischievous look,

and he pulled out his iPhone, and he asked Siri, how to respond when your wife asks, how are we doing? Within moments he had the answer, and I wanted, this is honest to God. This is what Siri responded. I'm okay, you're okay, and this is the best of all possible worlds. I gave up. She's too good, you know? So we went on to plan an evening kayak or something else.

I mean, I gave up. What was really fun when we were debriefing was just watching the levels of intention. Like here I had asked such a benign thing, you know. So how are we doing? So the moral of the story is watch out when somebody grabs for their iPhone when you've asked them something. But we're often in, it's sometimes a veil we don't see in some sort of a train. where we're being driven by some want or some fear that's not in consciousness. And if it's not in consciousness, it's controlling us.

So let me ask you just to take a moment to check in. I like to do this to really see how this is alive for you. And you might, as you check in, just review today a little, these last hours, and just to ask yourself, so what has been the predominant intention that has been moving me, guiding me, directing me? It's quite natural that sometimes the intention is we feel stressed and we're trying to get more comfortable, trying to take care of business. And you might have found there also was an intention to be present, are to be helpful.

Just notice what's true and see without any judgment, just to get a sense of what was the quality or kind of intention that was there. You might consider that the beginning of moving towards more liberating intention is just that you sense that matters to you, that you want to remember. In one of her poems Mary Oliver describes kneeling prayer-like in a few. field and she's contemplating with wonder a grasshopper who's gazing around with enormous complicated eyes. She writes, tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? What do you plan to do with your one wild? wild and precious life. Opening your eyes if you'd like to. So part of our daily tranche is not, we're not rather than that frame of this precious life, we're in a kind of routine and it's as if it's just going to keep going and going and going. And we forget that life is fleeting.

And sometimes it's not until something happens, something major happens to shake the grounds that we actually reconnect in some deep way with that more liberating intention. There's a woman, Alison Ballantine, who's a pediatric physician, who is asked to give the commencement address for graduating physicians a few years ago where she taught. And she sent me what she, she sent me a copy of what she read. and what she spoke to the group. And I want to share a piece of this with you

because I found it so moving. She said, we become so accustomed to life on the hamster wheel of achievement and approval that we just forget. We scamper on and on chasing the ephemeral promises of Sunday all, or if only. She said, growing up, I learned a hard lesson about how that hamster wheel can cheat us.

My father was a pediatric surgeon with tremendous enthusiasm and drive to succeed that encompass his work as family and his friendships. He was a huge influence in my life. He taught me the value of hard work and the satisfaction of a job done right. But on a winter day when he was driving home from the hospital where he worked, his car slid on a patch of black ice hitting a telephone pole on the driver's side, killing him instantly. She was 48 and I was 18. She goes on to say this is part of what serves as a reminder of her that I cannot live my life on the hamster wheel waiting for some day or if only I.

And she closes her talk offering the graduates these words. She says, what you have is in the present moment and it is unfathomably precious. I heard a similar message from a woman who had a maybe two-year-old. old daughter and she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a year to live. And her mantra was, no time to rush. No time to rush. So this is the wisdom of impermanence. If we really want to start cultivating and nourishing a liberating intention. If we want to, it doesn't mean we don't take care on an egoic level, but if we want to be tapped into the what really matters, This wisdom of impermanence is really important. It's truth.

So we begin to look, we'll just look a little more closely at what happens. That when we have that wisdom of impermanence, we get clear more on what matters and we also start looking at how we're living our life through new eyes. We start seeing just how distracted we are. This is Rumi. He says, gamble everything for love if you are a true human human. being. Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses. Dang, it's wonderful, isn't that great?

You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses. So let's explore a little what helps us awaken from a more egoic level of intention to liberating intent and I'll read you D.H. Lawrence who I think says beautifully says men are not free doing just what they want. Men are only free when they are doing what the deepest self likes and there's getting down to the deepest self it takes some diving. So what allows us to dive this is probably the key of everything what allows us to dive is this present-centered attention. You know, when we're talking to ourselves all the time,

in the future and the past, we keep re-solidifying this very confined world, a world of a self and others out there and a world where we need to get more done and where something's missing and where we're not enough. And of course our intention's going to come out of that. It's because we keep talking to our own. ourselves. One of Don Juan's teachings, this is the shaman again, is that when we stop talking

to ourselves, that world dissolves and there's some majesty that really starts opening up. So we dive by learning to come into presence to quiet some of that persistent inner dialogue so that we can listen in a more deep way to our heart and spirit. So the basic notion is if we don't have some capacity to attend to what's here and now, we cannot attend to what most matters. And this is, I think, said beautifully by Denise Levertoff in her poem Flickering Mind. She says, she's speaking to God. She says, Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.

I stopped to think of you or think about you in my mind at once like a minnow darts away, darts into the shadows that gleams like frets unceasing over the rivers purling and passing. Not for one second will myself hold still, but wanders anywhere, everywhere it can turn. Not you, it is I am absent. You are the stream, the fish, the light, the pulsing shadow. you, the unchanging presence in whom all moves and changes, how can I focus my flickering, perceive at the fountain's heart the sapphire I know is there?

This diving, this coming home into a liberating intent is made possible as we begin to quiet and listen to that sapphire in the depths of the fountain. quiet and listen, what is going on right here? When we bring the light of awareness to our intention, what we might find is, okay, what's going on is I'm wanting to prove myself, or I'm wanting approval, or I'm wanting to numb myself, so I don't have to feel this.

But if we keep paying attention to that intention, it'll start unfolding into something increasingly pure and deep. And I want to give you an example of this that touched me. This is a woman that was describing how she had had decades of a standoff with her older sibling, her older sister. And as a young person, she was kind of the hippie of the family, kind of impulsive and non-traditional. And she also was the bad girl. She got into all sorts of trouble when she was younger.

And even as she got older, she continually kind of blurred out the wrong thing and then feel misunderstood and unappreciated. So she and her sister were distant and there was a tension and she had once really kind of offended enough so that she wasn't even invited to one of the niece's weddings after a particularly bad argument. So there was a real estrangement. But now, as she described it, her dad had died and their mom was sick. and so they were starting to be forced together.

And this happens in families. There can be an estrangement, then all of a sudden for life circumstances were forced together, and then what happens? So there they were, it was a Thanksgiving gathering, and she was, you know, a more mature person, and she was decided she was going to draw on her meditation practice, but she was ready for a difficulty that would inevitably come with her sister.

And sure enough, they were talking about her mother's diet, and this woman suggested that, that her mother would be healthier if it was gluten-free because of some problems her mother was having. The older sister just got fed up. She was, everything else to fit with your philosophy. Here you go again, and she left the room kind of in anger and frustration. And this woman was stuck feeling just like she had felt at age 8 and 12 and 14. Once again, she dislikes me, she doesn't respect me, I'm not okay.

Something's wrong with me. wrong with me. But this time, instead of the flickering mind that darts around and gets into reaction, he says, okay, let me be present. And she started paying attention to what was really going on. And she said, okay, so what's my intention? What's been going on? And she realized her intention was she wanted her sister's respect. She wanted to be seen as being knowledgeable, as being okay. This is her... egoic intention. And it's a fine intention. And in fact her next response was just to, as I sometimes put my hand on my heart, just to be kind towards that intention.

And I'll pause here and say when you start noticing egoic intention, that's not a time to judge. There'll be no dropping deeper if you judge. That's a time to be very compassionate, of course. Of course that was her habit. Okay? So she got in touch with the habit, okay, want approval, want this, and was very, very kind towards it. And she said, what really am I wanting? And she kept listening and there was a kind of a softening and opening. And she knew that underneath getting that approval is that she really wanted to feel connected.

She wanted loving connection. And so as she started feeling that, that's when her body resinated, like, that's what I really, really want and that became her prayer. reentered the scene that evening and for the rest of the evening she was more relaxed didn't need to insert her opinion or defend herself and that things went much more easily okay the next next holiday Hanukkah came and there was more even the ease and even the sisters even laughed together over some old family stories and later that night her sister told her about a tough

time she was having with her youngest her teenage son something had shifted and then her older sister said, and thank you for listening, you're being a good shoulder to lean on. There's a real power in staying with and tracing back in tension. For her, she, there's a phrase I love, not my will, but my heart's well. My will is the ego contention. It's okay, be kind towards it, but then says, what's your heart's real longing? And for her, she had her release this demand that her sister understand or her pre-being. appreciate. She had to release that. And underneath it she could then feel, okay, I want to connect. We move through the world with each other and we're energetically communicating

our intention. If your intention is to prove yourself or look smart or this or that, person might be impressed but some place in them they're also feeling your intention. And those egoic intentions create distance. We're layered. I think. I think of our intentions as marbled, but when we start shining the light of awareness on it with real kindness, then the purity begins to express itself more and more and it becomes our prayer, it becomes a liberating intention. Maybe we'll take a moment to reflect, I'll give you a chance to explore how you might work with this one in life.

So this is a pause where you can just take a moment to come into it. to your body to feel yourself here, to feel your breath. As we've described, if the mind is all distracted, it's very hard to pay attention to the heart and what really matters. You can bring yourself back right here by feeling the aliveness in your body, feeling the breath at the heart. You might sense your intention to be right here. From this presence you might sense a situation.

in your life where you encounter some conflict with somebody perhaps. And not a situation where it's major rage or trauma that comes up, but just some conflict. And if you have a situation like that in mind where there's tension and distance, easy misunderstanding, offense, you might review. view the situation and go right to the point of where there's the most kind of estrangement, where you feel most in some way that there's your adversarial, aggressive or defensive. And pause. Pause where you feel the emotional reactivity. And just let yourself feel the reactivity, whether it's hurt or anger, whatever it is.

And this is time to mindfully inquire. So what has been my intention? right now. What am I trying to get from this person or make happen? Often we're trying to control things to feel better about ourselves, to feel safer. What's your intention? As you sense into it, it's usually this egoic layer, it's kind of driven by the limbic system where our wants and fears are active. Take a moment to offer some genuine kindness. This is human, this is natural, It's okay. It's critical to take the moment to offer a gesture of kindness and if it helps you to put your hand on your heart and just really it's okay. You know, this is a natural human

response. Everybody is rigged to respond with this egoic level of intention. Everybody. We all have that, trying to control things in some way. It's just offering kindness, gentleness and and with some real interests, keep listening inward and sense what matters most to me with this relationship? What's most important? What's really my deepest, most compelling intention? Knowing it's not always easy to contact or live from it, but you can have a sense of it being there and a prayer for that.

May this be what it is. May this guide me, this more liberating intention. sense in the days and weeks to come the possibility of pausing when there's some conflict and reactivity. And instead of the old pathways of judging or withdrawing or lashing out, just pausing and just saying, okay, what's my intention right now if you have a chance to do that? Being kind towards yourself and then sensing what really matters, what really matter? Feeling free to open your eyes if you'd like. So often what happens is I'll get the question, how do I know if it's a liberating intention? Like how do I know if I really

have touched into a deep aspiration? And I'd like to put out a kind of roadmap I find helpful a few different characteristics that let you know when you've really tapped into a liberating intention. And the first one has to do with the content of the intention, which is a liberating intention has to do with manifesto. our innate potential. It's not about becoming different than we are. It's about unfolding what's already inherent to our being. It's like the flower aspiring to bloom, that we aspire to express our creativity or to embody love or to serve from our hearts. There's a story I read about the Bantu tribe where there is a ritual

when the children are sleeping, the father goes around and with each child and whispers in his or her ear, be who you are. I think that's the essence of a liberating intention is to truly, truly embody the love and the awareness that's our nature. But there's different language for it. But this is in contrast to the aspiration that, God damn it, I'm going to hike the Appalachian Trail, you know, or the aspiration, you know, I'm going to. I'm going to create an app, for instance, Samadhi, or whatever it is. You know, it's like it's not about setting a new goal or a thing to do. It's about manifesting what's possible.

That's one piece. The second I mentioned earlier, which is, you know it's a true aspiration, a liberating intention when it's embodied. It's like your body zings with it. Your body knows. It's sincere. You know the word sincere from, from it's from the old English when they used to put wax over there. I think they're

silverware, they're what they used, whatever forks and knives and so on. Sincere means without wax. There's no coverings. It's just that real immediate tenderness. There's an innocent quality. It's embodied, innocent, tender. Here's Oprah Winfrey. She says, before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself, what is my truest intention? Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it's right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it. So you get the idea of, so we've got the first piece of a authentic, liberating intention is really, really, it's intention to be to live truth of what we are to help others live the truth it's

it's to manifest potential and the second piece embodied sincere without wax innocent the third one is that an authentic liberating intention always relates to this moment it's the inquiry of what does my spiritual life aspire to in this moment so it's it's not like that in five years I aspire to be patient and kind. A liberating intention is, please, may that kindness be here. You might remember St. Augustine, he writes this. He says,

Dear Lord, please, give me chastity and continence, but not yet. So those are the three, a liberating intention when it's towards being all that we are, when it's alive with caring, and when it has to do with a very, right now, living it right this moment. It's like that bumper sticker. One friend told me she saw in the beltway. It says, if you lived in your heart, you'd be home right now. So

I started in this talk with the Dalai Lama and how, in this beautiful way, every day he starts to set the compass of his heart. And there's an understanding that where our attention goes, energy flows. and the more we bring attention to what matters, any moment you ask yourself, just that simple question, what most matters, you are opening the windows

and the doors of your heart to the life that's here, to the potential that's here, just by asking the question. And the more purposefully we practice with intention, like letting it be a daily practice, letting impermanence really, really guide us the more alive it becomes. So we'll close with a practice I try to do whenever I have a chance.

Some of you've done this with me before, which is an aspiration practice where we do remember impermanence. And so if you've been sitting long and you're uncomfortable, just move around a little bit and find yourself a way to sit that most allows you to feel alert and relax. When you're relaxed, this flickering mind that darts all over, you might take some moments to establish presence, to feel yourself really coming into your body with your senses awake. Take some moments to listen, receptive.

It's nothing to do with listening, just letting this spontaneous knowing of sound. With that same receptivity, listening to and feeling the life that's right here inside you. noticing that you can relax a little, just soften and relax a little, perhaps extend the breath a bit, a steep, full in breath, and a slow out breath. You feel the aliveness, let your senses be awake, sense a quietness that's here. And begin by imagining that you have a year to live, that that's real, you have a year to live. And just take a moment to sense, how do you want to live? What matters?

What's the quality of heart, mind, beingness that matters to? And that now you have a month, just a month. And just sense that. Listen to your heart, what matters? How do you want to live? How do you want to be in relationship with others? How do you want to be in relationship with your inner life? What's the quality of heart, mind?

being that matters. You know you have a day. This is it, just a day. How do you want to move through the hours of this day and the moments of this day? What really matters? What's the quality of being that you want to embody or manifest?

And it's just a few moments now. You just have a few moments, a minute or two minutes. What is it that matters right now? Right now. This is it. What most matters? What's the deepest intention or prayer? Bringing your intention right into this moment and just being, being what matters, being that love, being that awareness,

and closing by sensing the sincerity of your prayer, that what you know most matters be remembered, that what most matters guide you, that moment by moment you can embody and live from the truth of who you are. Namaste and thank you. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.