Tara Brach - Part 2: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom

Episode Date: August 10, 2023

Part 2: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom - The Buddha said, "I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible." While this is our potential, we each have deep conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of well-being, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Thanks so much for joining us. This is part two. This session is part two of rewire for happiness. You know, a friend recently sent me a cartoon and in it three dogs were sharing their peak happiness experience. And the first one was saying, well, you know what I love. It's rolling dead squirrel. Another one says, oh my God, yes. Well, how about peeing on the floor at Petco? The other's going, wait, wait, wait. What's the furthest distance? Either of you have rubbed your butt across the carpet. So we all have our experiences of happiness. And this might be a little

bit of a questionable opening. But the truth is, we all do have certain actions. activities or experiences that bring temporary pleasure and of course great to enjoy them as long as no harm is caused to carpets or anything. The focus of this session is what brings true happiness. It's often described as happy for no reason. And I think that's a wonderful phrase because it talks about the deep contentment and freedom that's possible. when we're resting in a natural presence, when we're not dependent on life going a certain way. So, my friends, I wish you all blessings as you listen and reflect, really all blessings as you bring these practices and teachings alive in your life.

Namaste and welcome. We're gathered for part two of two-part series of talks called Rewire for Happiness. We wire for happiness, that's the title. And some people ask the question why all this focus on happiness and can't that be another way of grasping? You know, grasping after happiness and absolutely yes. You know if we misunderstand what happiness is and we don't understand really the wisdom that makes us available to happiness it certainly can be grasping.

I did hear a quote, one person shared, I asked my partner what she wanted for Christmas. She told me, nothing would make her happier than a diamond necklace. So I bought her nothing. Some of you, my Henny Youngman from way back says, what's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money, you know? So it's the same idea. So how come we're reflecting on happiness? And I would say in the most simple way, it's our potential.

The Buddha taught that he wouldn't be sharing all these practices and teachings if it wasn't possible to touch really deep well-being, contentment and freedom. It is possible. And so we look at it because it's part of our capacity to inhabit and feel and express happiness. and we have all sorts of conditioning, habitual conditioning, that keeps us from experiencing that so much so that we get really accustomed to not being happy and forget that that's part of our, you know, what we're born to touch. So there are two different ways that we're exploring, waking up our capacity for happiness.

And one of them I've described, and this was the first class, as gladdening the mind. And we start recognizing, well, our habits of paying attention are skewed. And they have us move to the day, I think the quote that says it the best that, you know, life is a problem to solve, not a mystery to be lived. We're solving problems all the time. We're assuming there's a problem. We're trying to fix things. It's like that grim looping that we get caught in and tensing against really what's around

the corner. So that's the habit. So we have to purposely gladden our mind to kind of balance that out and so that's the first approach and I wanted to share some... I found one way that I have been gladdening my mind recently that is so powerful for me is I've shared, I have a new granddaughter and their family sent me a little video clip. It's like 25 seconds of my son and my granddaughter gazing at each other and she's just beaming with adoration like this big smile and then he's goofing around with her and she's

smiling more. All I need, any mood I'm in, 25 seconds and just seeing love and other people's love and joy, lights me out. That's gladdening the mind. So after the last class I gave three of the core practices that if we spent maybe a total of five to seven minutes a day doing, it profoundly changes the patterning neuropathways and biochemistry. And one of them is to pause when something is pleasant or delight you in some way and actually take it in. Each day once, savor something.

Doesn't matter how simple it is, but once savor something. So that's one of the practices that we explored and the other was one act of kindness a day. Again, it could be just a smile or touching somebody's shoulder. So savoring an act of kindness and the last is to at the end of the day reflect on three things you're grateful for. It doesn't take that long. So anybody that wants to continue on this path of cultivating happiness, that's part one, is just intentionally gladdening the mind. Now this second class, we're looking at a different experience of happiness and it's called

Sukha, that's the Pali word, and it's unconditional happiness. It's the happiness that's not linked to seeing your grandchild beam or it's not linked to good weather or to feeling good. It's sometimes described happy for no reason, which I love. So what we'll be doing is looking at the basic practice of presence that helps us to realize that unconditioned happiness. But first I'd like to review the blocks to happiness. Like, what is it? What's the condition blocks in each of us that keeps us tight or grim or low in our mood?

And they come down to two basic categories that are interrelated. One is the sense of something's missing and the other is that something's wrong. And something's missing has the shape of what we sometimes call if only mind. And if only mine's basically saying, if only I had the right partner or if only I got that promotion and, you know, or if only I lost the 20 pounds or if only I could accomplish such and such. So that's the shape of if only and we end up organizing our lives around if only mind. There's some sense that if we really get what we want and it can be very narrowed down

if only I could have a beer or if only I could have a piece of cheesecake. In the moment it gets very narrow then I could have, you know. So some of the big ones with if only mind are if only so and so would change. I'm not going to even do a hand raise on how many of you know that one. And then the biggest one of all I think is if only I would change. You know, if only I could be different in some way. For many of us in a very daily way we're looking for ourselves to be different and often it has the shape if only I could get more things done.

I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, checking things off the list, then we think we're going to be okay. I saw this cartoon of two bears in a cave and one's sleeping and the other is like wide awake. He's saying, darn it, I know better than to have a cup of coffee after you know, I know better than to have a cup of coffee after October. I love that one. So the problem with if only mind, if only I could get more done

or if only I could get the right partner or whatever it is, is it just doesn't work. It just does not come through as we are hoping it well. We're regularly wrong in what we think is going to help us. part of it is that we have to some degree a biochemical set point to happiness so that even if we so-called win the lottery or even if we have an accident that hurts us, there's a coming back to our normal level after a certain amount of time to come back.

So the if only mind doesn't work but we go around chasing the substitutes anyway. Okay then there's the other one. something's wrong and that's huge. We have the survival conditioning that quickly evaluates things as a problem or that something if not right now is about to go wrong. So we're tensed against the future. Our bodies get tensed. And we assume what I now have taken to calling warrior pose, you know, like...

You yogis know what I mean. We're in the sense of trouble, like there's trouble ahead and the aperture of our mind narrows. And we're really looking for where there can be trouble and we're not really open to seeing the changing leaves or smelling what the air is like in fall. You know, it's just a very narrow kind of space of mind. And I mentioned that wonderful poem by the poet Hafe's last time that says most of the time we're busy taking the thousand serious moves, just one after another that's kind of grim. Now often the negativity bias, this problem of, it's got this sense of limitation like I'm deficient

or I have to meet other people's expectations or I'm obliged or I have to go along with society's rules. So there's even when we're not conscious of it, it's this limiting sense. There's a classic story. There's a lot of stories in monasteries that teach about these things and one, a young monk has just arrived at the monastery and he's assigned to help other monks in copying the old cannons and they're doing it by hand and he realizes that they're copying from copies and he gets worried that if there was a mistake early on it's like telephone, you know, that

it would be appearing over and over again. So he talks to the abbot about it and the abbot says, well we've been doing this for centuries but you have a good point. So he goes down to the dark caves way, way below the monastery where the original manuscripts locked in a vault. It hasn't been open for hundreds of years. Hours go by and the old abbot doesn't reappear. So this young novice gets worried since he's the one that knew about this.

So he follows him down and he goes down into the caves and he sees the old abbot banging his head against the wall and crying uncontrollably. So he says, father, father what's wrong? And in a choking voice the old abbot says the word is celebrate. That's the negativity bias in a nutshell. So the negativity bias, this habit of thinking everything's a problem, is actually very good for avoiding some real physical threats. But it's not a good strategy for trusting other people.

It's not a good strategy for intimacy, for enjoying our life, or really for our bodies. So these are the blocks, something's missing if only mind, and some of the mind. something's wrong. And when we start seeing them and when we start gladdening our mind on purpose, whether it's doing the loving-kindness practice or sensing what we appreciate or savoring or extending an act of kindness or watching a video of our grandchild, when we start gladdening the mind, it actually allows us to rebalance things so that we are actually able to read more in the very presence that makes unconditional happiness our well-being possible.

So some words on Suka, this unconditional happiness. Sometimes the word happiness, it has different meanings for different people. So you can equally substitute well-being, contentment. It's really that peace and ease and satisfaction of feeling enough. this moment is enough. Okay? Happiness doesn't have to have a carbonated feeling of, you know, like it doesn't have to be super high energy.

So this is the range that we're talking about, this unconditional well-being. What I think for me is one of the deepest realizations is that this happy for no reason, this is this sense of well-being, is much more deep and profound and satisfying than any of the temporary feelings of happiness from the ups and downs. And I just taught a retreat last week and one of the men at retreat had an experience I wanted to share with you because it really touched me. He had just discovered meditation maybe eight months earlier and he had been sitting cross-legged a lot and he had been really feeling this possibility of

getting very calm and making friends with the breath and having kind of a pathway to his own inner stillness and very excited about the retreat. He was an athlete and about a week before the retreat he did something that injured one of his knees so when he came to retreat he couldn't sit cross-legged and even just sitting and the walking practice he had some pain. Well he was really devastated. He went from being really up on meditation to feeling really kind of victimized by his body and events and by the situation. And so he was kind of railing against his, you know, the fate that had fallen him. And gradually over about four days he started contacting presence in all these surprising

little ways he would have never known. They weren't necessarily because he was sitting cross-legged on the earth, you know, in the ways he had, he was clearly slowing down like we all were at retreat, but it was kind of when he'd be sipping the tea and tasting the flavor of the herbal tea he was drinking, or looking at a window and watching the breeze in the trees, or when he was walking very slowly, and he actually felt the contact with the earth. So he started really touching an increased sense of peace and well-being in all these small moments and when we met he said, you know, I'm really trusting this path more because

I realize it doesn't matter so much what's happening. See that I'm not taking this as an encumbrance so personally. It's kind of like whatever happens I can be with it and be. be okay. And that to me was a shift from the earlier happiness he was having that was more temporary, hitched to the ups and downs, and what we call Sukha where you start sensing, oh, you can find that presence and well-being in presence itself. Life doesn't have to be a certain way. The Tibetans call this the lion's roar because it speaks. to this deep confidence that we can handle what comes our way.

And when we're not tensing against the future, I mean think of how many moments you're moving through your life but actually tensing against what's to come. And then imagine that when you have that sense that, well, whatever comes, there's an awareness here that can work with that. That confidence lets you actually live your moments. Find that well-being in the moment. So this is the wisdom of true happiness. And if you witness your life, you've probably seen that things go up and you feel good,

and things go down, you feel bad and if you are hitching your happiness to things being a certain way, it's a setup for suffering. Basically, mortality is inevitable. inevitable, sickness is inevitable. So we have to kind of in a way listen I think to the advice of Anthony de Mello, a Christian mystic who put it this way. He said, enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable. Isn't that good? Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable, with the gains and the losses, the successes and the failures, the pleasantness and the unpleasantness that every one of us experiences.

And it's what I often call really saying yes unconditionally to what's here right in the moment. Now just a side note because when I say that often people's minds go to, well, does that mean I'm going to say yes to the way people violate each other? Am I saying yes to racism? Am I saying yes to environmental degradation? No, we're saying yes to our moment's experience which might include the outreach we feel. But if we say yes in this moment, if we have presence in this moment, we can respond to our world with intelligence.

Yes is what lets us come to that centered place of well-being so we actually have a resourcefulness. So let's look more closely at what allows us to get to yes. You know, many of you are familiar with the getting to yes idea. What helps us to transform our relationship with experience? Because when we are requiring and expecting experience to meet our demand and it's a certain way to be happy, it won't work. So how do we shift our relationship so that we're really able to... say yes. And I'd like to do is share with you a story I share when I get the chance because,

just because this one really touches me, it was written up by Peter Matheson in the Snow Leopard. Some of you might have read it and he's visiting in the Snow Leopard with a llama who's got crippling arthritis and lives in a very isolated region of Tibet and he wonders how it feels for this llama knowing he'll never ever be able to go anywhere again. And that's where he is, he's stuck. So here he is, he's having an interview, he's being translated and this, the holy man that he's with is this, this, he's got a lot of directness and simplicity and he's got these big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way and this makes Peter all

the more curious and he says he's got twisted legs and he indicates his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness as if they belong to all of us. He casts his eyes wide to the sky and snow mountains, the high sun and the dancing sheep. And when Peter asks him, are you happy? Can you be happy with your circumstances? He says this, he says, of course I'm happy. It's wonderful.

especially when I have no choice. Beautiful. Of course I'm happy. It's wonderful, especially when I have no choice. This is a heart that's saying yes to how it is. He has made peace with the inevitable. Dorothy Hunt, the poet, writes this, and you may just close your eyes and just listen to these words.

Peace is this moment without thinking 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. This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome. So for each of us on our path, this unfolding to Sukha, to this unconditioned happiness, asked that we learn how to move from fighting our lives, fighting what's here, feeling judgment towards what's here, demanding it be different, to this deep cellular capacity to say, yes, yes, yes. yes to this, yes to this moment, exactly how it is.

And so we're going to practice that a little together. First, I find that one of the best models of how to get to yes is what we explore regularly together is that wherever we're stuck saying no, we bring mindfulness and compassion. And we can do it with the acronym rain as we often do. Where we begin, let's say we're stuck, we're at war with something, somebody's treating us in a way who really makes us angry and we're all tensed up and filled with blame. So we ask the question, okay, what's happening inside me right now? That's the R of rain.

We recognize what's happening. Oh, blame, blame, blame, okay? That's the R of rain. And then we ask, can I view it this? That's the A of rain. Can I allow this? That's the beginning of yes. Okay?

That's the A of rain. And then I, we investigate, well what's really happening inside? And then we go deeper and investigate with the eye of rain. So we're really contacting it because you can't say yes to something you've only glanced over. Oh, the blame, squeeze, feeling the pressure, feeling the bitterness. That's the eye. And then the end of rain, nurture, can we be with this with love?

Can we hold it kindly? And what we find is that when we recognize and allow and investigate and nurture, that after that, and I call this after the rain, because just as with the real rain there's fruit after the rain, after we've brought that mindfulness and compassion, and we've brought that mindfulness and compassion, we find we're not so identified with our reactivity. We're no longer the victimized self or the angry self. We're not so caught in that storyline. We're resting in a larger space. There's more heart, more compassion. We're in that yes place. There's also more happiness. So I'll give you an example of getting to yes for me. And this is, I would say,

the example that probably is the process I go through the most regularly of moving from a kind of a habitual stuck place to a more open place of happy for no reason. And the theme is, and this has gone on for decades, which is my if only mind says, well if only I really work hard and prepare a lot and do a good job on whatever I'm doing next, then I can relax and enjoy and be okay. Okay? So this keeps me... And the other side of it, the what's wrong side is

and if I don't do a really good job, then I'll be letting people down, I'll be falling short and I'll feel crummy and I won't be happy. So that's the conundrum, you know. So some years ago, a few years ago, I really looked closely and realize that it didn't matter how well I ever did because there was always another thing

I could screw up. But you get the idea that I could keep preparing and being tense about things and mulling over that problem with that problem mentality and didn't matter what happened. The doing never delivered. The if only mind never worked out. Amongst Dharma teachers they say you're only as good as your last talk. You know, then you have to start all from zero again. But the real sad thing is that when there's always preparing for the next thing, that

means missing out on the life that's here, not really finding that well-being of presence. So my practice on that one is whether I'm speeding through the day or meditating or on a walk I notice when my mind starts spinning like that, oh here's what I have to get done and here's, you know, what can happen if I don't. So I pause. This always starts with a pause. To interrupt the war, you have to pause. To get to yes you have to pause.

So I pause and I say what's happening? I know, planning, anxious. Can I be with this? Keep pausing, okay, let be, let be. Then the eye of rain, well what's really happening? And if I go deeper, I usually sense that grasping and the fear and the need to do well to be liked and happy and it's kind of a clutching in the chest. Breathe with it and then the end of rain, nurture, it's okay, sweetheart.

Or sometimes I'll just say this belongs, it's okay. It's just some gesture of kindness. That leads to after the rain where I notice I'm no longer the same. self in the story, that self that has to do this, this and this for things to be okay. I'm resting in this more being, just being. There's tenderness, there's openness. But I've stepped out of the storyline and the more I do that, the more quickly I move from the old habit of a striving self trying to do things, you know, in a certain way to

a kind of presence that actually I can continue to prepare for a talk but I'm coming from a much more deep sense of ease and well-being. Does that make sense? This is just a small example of getting to yes and it's important to know that it's healthy to pursue our work and our relationships and try to get things we want in life and up-level relationships and so on. just where are we doing this from? Are we chronically on some treadmill? Or do we know how to pause and come home to a sense of ease and well-being so we can celebrate more, feel

the mystery more? You know, my husband and I, Jonathan, have a kind of a little mini-practice where we'll notice when we're together if we're acting like we're on our way to the next thing, know if we're kind of busy and checking things off the list. And one of us will usually say, no, this is it. There's no, just this is it. The other one will go and then we'll just keep talking about, this is it, no, no, no, this is it, and just keep coming right into the moment because so quickly we're on our way somewhere else.

The present heart had to get there. So a lot of people will ask, but isn't it? that present heart, isn't that happiness or well-being self-centered? And so as part of the last piece of this talk, I want to say that when we are not grasping after happiness but rather getting to yes, coming into that presence, it's actually the opposite of self-centered. And we're feeling well-being, we're not so defended. We're not so focused on ourselves.

In fact, there's a real sense of kind of appreciation and goodwill towards others. There's a story of a traveler who meets a wise woman at the edge of a town and the traveler asked the woman, well, what kind of people live in this town? And she said, well, what were the people like back home? And he said, eh, you know, like they're untrustworthy, they're greedy, nasty, you know, dishonest, ill-tempered. And she said, you know, you'll find people here likewise. Well, sometime later another visitor comes by and encounters the same woman and asks the

same question and she says, well, what were the people like back home? And he says, well, basically good-hearted, you know. sympathetic, generous, kind, you'll find the people here likewise. It's a habit of heart. You know, if our habit is to feel there's a problem or something's wrong, we're going to think something's wrong with ourselves and each other and everybody. It's a habit of heart. If there's a basic sense of well-being, there's some trust there.

We get that, yes, people will act in all sorts of ways and when they're wounded, they'll act in ways that cause wounding. But there's some sense of the goodness that's possible and we're available to it. We're available to the goodness and we're available to what we miss in our own lives. When we're in that state of being at war, we miss the beauty, we miss the sweetness. In a story about a Uruguayan political prisoner, I'll read you, this is Eduardo Galliano. He says, the prisoners may not talk without permission or whistle, smiles, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners, nor may they make or receive drawings of pregnant women, couples,

butterflies, stars, or birds. Pretty heavy. So one Sunday, the Dacco Perez, schoolteacher tortured in jail for having ideological ideas, is visited by his daughter Malay age five. She brings him a drawing of birds. The guards destroy it at the entrance of the jail. On the following Sunday, Malay brings him a drawing of trees. Now trees are not forbidden and the drawing gets through.

The Dadaqo praises her work and asks about the colored circle, scattered in the treetops, many small circles half hidden amongst the branches. Are they oranges? What fruit is it? The child puts her finger to her mouth, shh, and she whispers in his ears, Selly, don't you see their eyes? They're the eyes of the birds I've smuggled in for you. So there's a way in which when we have this basic quality of presence and of well-being that were available or the apertures not so narrowed. And a deep way where there's a kind of creativity that becomes possible in our lives.

There's a story I heard about the violinist Stock Pearlman that may or may not be completely accurate but the message in it is one that is worth us taking in. And as many of you know, he had polio when he was a young child and at each performance he makes a very slow entrance and has to remove the braces, you know, put down his crutches and remove the braces on his legs and play. And in 1995 he did this in Lincoln Center only after the first few bars of what he was playing one of the strings broke the violin and so everybody could hear it crack and And they didn't know what he was going to do, what he put on his braces and go across the

stage and find another violin. But here's what happened. He closed his eyes and he paused and then he signaled for the conductor to begin again and he re-entered the concerto with this unimaginable passion and purity and some could sense him modulating and reconfiguring the piece as he was so immersed in it playing with the just the strings that weren't broken and there was this odd silence when he was done and then of course this amazing outburst of applause and he smiled and spoke, wasn't boastfully, it was kind of in a reverent tone.

Here's what he said. He said, you know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left, how much music you can make with what you have left. much music you can make with what you have left. Each one of us, each one of us that's listening right now has this capacity of heart and awareness to really savor our world and creatively engage with our world. And it's so easy to have an idea of, well, when this is happening it's good and when that is happening it's bad and miss out on the moments and really not tap into that

creativity and well-being. You know when we really pay attention, like if you really watch the moments you're happy and I invite you to do it to really get interested. Like when you're feeling well-being, happiness, when there's beauty or kindness and something's going on, notice what's really making you happy and what you're really making you happy and And what you'll find is it's not the thing itself that's happening. It's not the beautiful sunset that's going on in the moment or it's not the smell of the honeysuckle or the child's laugh, but it's the quality of presence in the background that you're

offering to the experience that enables the happiness. It's really about presence. This is a poem by Naomi Scheibnott. and after the poem we're going to do a reflection together. She says, by the way, she's a Palestinian poet and if you haven't heard of her she's awesome. Naomi Shaib N.Y.E. It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there's something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have the pieces to pick up. to hold in your hands like ticket stubs or change. But happiness floats. It doesn't need you to hold it down, it doesn't need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing and disappears when it wants to. You're happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful treehouse and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own. too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches and love even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and the scratched records. Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands and it flows out of you into everything you touch. You are not responsible, you take no credit as the night sky takes no credit for the moon but continues to hold it and to share it and in that way be known. Okay, let's explore a little bit together about this presence, just getting to yes and

then we'll close. And if you need to shift your position around or whatever for this reflection, please feel free. So bring yourself right here, taking a few full breaths and letting the breath be natural. Allow yourself to rest in a kind of a witnessing place, that wise witness, looking at your life. And you might ask that question, what is between me and being happy? And look just at today or yesterday, the day before, recent times, what is between me and

being happy? Or being as happy as possible? And as you look, you might notice if there's some something in your life that feels missing. That's your habit to sense this is missing. I'm waiting for this to fall into place and then I'll be happy. Maybe there's that if only like I want to be able to have a child or a real intimacy with my partner or more meaningful work.

Or maybe what's getting in the way is the sense that something's wrong, that there's conflict in a relationship, or maybe your body is sick, or you're feeling that you've failed in some big way, what is it that right now you'd like to bring more attention to, that might be a habitual way that you are blocked from happiness? choosing something, some situation in your life that brings up difficult emotions, and you might even have in your mind a situation that really illustrates what's going on. The point of reflecting and getting to yes is not to get rid of painful emotions but to transform our relationship to them.

That is what Sukha is about. installing positive emotions but changing our relationship to our life. So like that Lama in Tibet we can say of course there's well-being or happiness especially because we don't have a choice on what happens. We don't have a choice that our body gets sick. There's failure and success in every life and loss in every life. So bringing up a situation where we're where you get caught in a reactivity that prevents well-being. And the beginning is to ask that simple question, well what's happening inside me? So you can recognize the R of Rain.

What's happening inside me? Anger, fear, sadness, discouragement. The second question is, can I be with us? That's the A allowing, just let it be for now. I let it be for now. So we recognize and allow what's right here. And the third question to investigate is, well, what's really happening inside me? Can we contact maybe there's a feeling or a belief that I'll never be loved, I'll never

succeed, maybe there's a belief I'll never be happy. When we ask what's really happening we have to mostly check in our body so feel your throat, your chest, your belly, you could bring your full attention and you might even wherever you feel the most put your hand there or simply put your hand on your heart right now because this helps to begin the nurturing, the end of rain. Can I be with this with love? Can you notice what's going on inside you and offer kindness to that place? what happens if you offer some message of care.

It could be as simple as I care about this suffering or it's okay sweetheart or this belongs to it's okay and if it's hard to offer it to yourself you might imagine a loved one or a spiritual figure, their energy coming through your hand right to your heart offering kindness. See if you can let it in, really imagine. imagine, visualize and sense a flow of kind caring energy coming right into the place that most needs it, the place that feels most hurt or misunderstood, the place that feels that something's missing or wrong, just offer care.

The moments after rain, what I call after the rain, when you sense really your own experience of being right now, when there's a loving presence that has emerged, when there's care offered inwardly, it's like who are you now? And can you sense the shift in identity from that small self that was kind of stuck in the story and in the reactivity and this consciousness that's right here that's witnessing and caring and present. And what happens if you really rest in that presence? Can you sense the well-being that comes when you inhabit an enlarged sense of being?

You might ask yourself, who am I when nothing is missing, when nothing is wrong? And for these last few moments you might let the sense of a smile spread through your eyes. A slight smile at the mouth. Let a smile spread through the heart. Just relax with what's right here, sensing the freedom of the heart when there's just a yes to the moment-to-moment experience. This is Sukha, happy for no reason. And a closing poem by Lama Gendon Rimpichet which really expresses this capacity.

Happiness cannot be found through great effort and wellpower, but it is already there in relaxation and letting go. Don't strain yourself, there's nothing to do. Let the game happen on its own, springing up and falling back without changing anything and all will vanish and reappear without end. Only our searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It is like a rainbow which you run after without ever catching it, although it does not exist. It has always been there and accompanies you every instant. Don't believe in the reality of good and bad experiences. They're like rainbows. Waiting to grasp the

graspable, you exhaust yourself in vain. As soon as you relax this grasping, space is there, open, inviting, and easeful. Nothing to do, nothing to force, nothing to want. Everything happens by itself. Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but is already there in relaxation and letting go.