Tara Brach - Part 2 - The Jewel in the Lotus: Cultivating Compassion (2018-11-07)

Episode Date: November 9, 2018

Part 2 - The Jewel in the Lotus: Cultivating Compassion (2018-11-07) - The compassion that arises from mindful awareness can heal our inner wounds, interpersonal conflict and the suffering in our world. These two talks focus on cultivating self-compassion and compassion for others. They look at the blocks to compassion and accessible powerful practices that awaken the full wisdom and tenderness of our hearts. Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With gratitude and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. There's an old Jewish expression that goes, love thy neighbor even if he plays the trombone. And it's really the benign intention of most paths in some way to care about each other. And I know so many of us are aware that the stark contrast of especially here in the United States these last weeks, months, longer, the level of hostility and the emotions swirling were the day after the midterm. So it was a lot, a lot broiling. And I think for many underneath it all, is a lot of the middle of all. the longing for a more compassionate world. I know that's the truth for me. And I'm really glad that

in this particular gathering, we're going to be exploring that some more. We, the last class, explored part one of a two-part series on compassion. And the first class was really exploring how we wake up that caring for our inner life. And in looking at how we wake it up for each other, we still have to keep coming back over and over again to embracing what's right here because we can't widen the circles if we're in any way turned against the being right here. So we'll be looking at that and we'll be looking at really how we can open to the full potential of our heart, this compassion. And I really loved, I put this on Facebook today, what Van Jones said,

this was his kind of wisdom offering for the day after midterm elections. He said, it's in the convergence of spiritual people becoming active and active people becoming spiritual that the hope of humanity rests. That feels so true. So last weekend I was giving a talk at the Mindful Leader Conference and I asked a question I'd like to ask you all here, which is in let's say this last decade of your life,

I'm assuming everybody's over 10 here, right? In the last decade of your life, have you noticed your own consciousness waking up? Do you feel like awareness is waking up inside you? And can you raise your hand if you have noticed that you feel more aware, more conscious? Most of us. Second question. Do you feel that consciousness is evolving in the species over time, in the human species over time?

Can I see by hands? Less hands and a little more tentative, but still some hands went up. When I reflect on that for myself, awareness just keeps on waking up through this body mind and there's just some basic intuition that I couldn't be alone in it. So if it's waking up through me, even if we have little mini ups and downs, when I say many, it could be for decades in terms of our human trajectory,

there seems to be some really good evidence that we're waking up. And I do think that this particular juncture in time, and when I say that, I mean maybe this last 20 years, is remarkable in how many people are intentionally training their heart and mind. That's remarkable that we can change the structure and function of our brain by learning how to pay attention. We're evolving ourselves. And the key to that evolving is compassion.

the archetype of the bodhisattva is the archetype of the fully awakened human and the expression of wisdom in the bodhisattva is a loving heart. That's the way it's the flavor of the awakened mind is a loving heart. So in that sense I am an optimist, the kind of broad sense of that sense of that. that waking up is happening. I don't know if it'll be in time to save the planet or this or that. I wouldn't weigh in on that level. But awakening feels like it's happening.

And I'm aware just in a more particular way, thinking about the different hate crimes over the last five years or so, and how after killings, let's say, Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church, or after killings, Sikudwara or Muslim Temple or the Amish School, remember, the Amish School, and in most recently Tree of Life Synagogue, each time, perhaps the most powerful thing was congregations of people expressing their hearts' forgiveness each time. I know this round, there was a Facebook posting of the Jewish nurse who treated the man who did the killings at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and I'll just read what he said. He's the emergency

room nurse. He said, I wanted him to feel compassion. I chose to show him empathy. I felt the best way to honor his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong, to have that caring heart. So we have this capacity for compassion, and when we get hijacked, and I think you know what I mean by hijacked. You know, when our hate and fear and anger takes over, humans can be horrifically cruel and ignorant and dangerous, greedy. We see it in the large scale in terms of wars and oppression, racial oppression, all the different layers, all the different kinds of oppressiveness, the violence in that. We see it in the way we're destroying our earth. this is when we have our limbic hijack and we can see it close up in our own daily lives

how it doesn't take much for us to hurt each other when we feel in some way disregarded or disagreed with not paid attention to in some way someone's not doing their share we can very easily shut down this potential for compassion and and harden our hearts. And that happens even when we're not in major emotional reactivity. And if you just think of today or some point in the last few days, you can just notice how during the stretches of time when our minds are obsessing or worrying, when we're just kind of moving through in some self-centered way trying to make ourselves,

more comfortable pursuing our own pleasures. We just don't notice, really, where another person might be having a hard time. We just don't notice. One man described being at the dentist and right before the procedure, the dentist asked him if he wanted helium. And the guy said, well, will it help with the pain? And then I said, no, won't do that. But when you scream, it's hilarious. That was, my husband Jonathan gave me that joke. But it really reminds me so much of how many moments of the day, it's not that we're in a reactivity of some sort, we're just distracted and not noticing each other.

So the bodhisattva ideal, and by that I mean the evolved heart mind of the bodhisattva is really the potential of every one of us right here, each of us that's listening, that there is this capacity to live our lives with this remembrance of we're connected, we belong, and acting out of that, acting out of the care that comes from that. And the energy of the bodhisattva path, and that is what gives us energy towards developing our potential is a conscious intention towards it, that we keep on growing our intentions so that after we reflect together right now, there's a degree more conscious intentionality, may I awaken compassion? Not because it's a good idea, but because it's

like the fullness of who we are. One of my favorite Dalai Lama stories is when at one point he said, you know, I can't say I always express bodiceita, that's the awakened heart mind, he said, but I care about it. And what he was communicating was I care about caring, even though sometimes my heart's just not there. I care about caring. So if we can write this moment sense that yeah, we get closed down a lot. And I think the more trauma in our lives, the more our limbic system takes over and to be really forgiving and accepting about that. All we have to have to keep awakening to our full potential is this conscious intention. It's called in Buddhism the Bodhisattva aspiration. And the Dalai Lama, every day, reflect.

on the Bodhisatt faspiration. And there's different languages for, or terms for how it's expressed. My favorite version is this. And it's like a prayer. The intention's like a prayer. It says, may whatever circumstances arise in this life, may they serve to awaken this heart and mind. Take a moment, if you will, just to close your eyes.

Let's just explore this together. This is an intention that's beyond any particular religion or faith. This is the intention to really be all that we are. You might, for a moment, scan your life and sense where there are difficult circumstances right now, something that's hard for you. It might be something going on with your health. It might be a relationship going south in some way, where there's conflict, loss.

Maybe somebody else that's having a hard time. It can be feeling of failure in your life at work or elsewhere. And exploring this aspiration, this conscious intention, May these circumstances serve to awaken compassion. May they awaken my heart and mind. And just notice what happens when you feel very sincerely, may this serve to awaken compassion. What happens?

And you might turn it into an inquiry, just to investigate that. So how might these circumstances awaken me? How might they awaken compassion and wisdom? The power of the aspiration really comes down to sincerity. If you can feel a bit in you right now, hey, I really mean this. This matters. So we begin to look then at, so how does compassion awaken?

How does it work? And really the basic dynamic is that when we, we register suffering, we get tender and want to help. But there's a few subtle pieces to this that are important and the first one is that in some way there's enough mindfulness to register, oh, this person's having a hard time. There's enough mindfulness to register, oh, I'm having a hard time. Some of you might remember one of my favorite phrases is from Ruby Sales. who's a civil rights activist, a theologian, and wise woman.

And she offers the question, where does it hurt? So we have to begin, if we want to wake up compassion, we have to begin with that mindfulness that is attuning and saying, okay, so where does it hurt? What's going on? That's the first piece. There's a willingness to be touched by the suffering. and when that's there

then our body does this thing where the mirror neurons are activated and they're sensing what's going on and the vagal nerve gets activated and we get kind of a warmth and opening in our body and there's this tender care

and it's marked by an urge to relieve suffering so these are the different ingredients of compassion this urge to relieve suffering and in its fullness there's oxytocin's starts flowing in the body, which means there's a kind of affiliative feeling. In contrast

to empathy, if it's just empathy we can burn out. Many people say, I get overwhelmed. I'm empathetic but I get overwhelmed. Well, empathy is not compassion. And there's an important distinction. Compassion includes that mindfulness that sees where it hurts, but doesn't get identified, we're enough above the line, we're above the line of awareness that we can see what's happening but not be caught in it. And if you can see what's going on where it hurts, be touched by it but not possessed, then the caring comes up and the affiliative feelings and the ability to reach out. And rather than burnout from empathy, you have with compassion a very integrated brain and a feeling of warmth and connection.

So we're going to look more closely at how we cultivate that and the two main blocks that we're going to look at and they're very related. What stops us from having that full bloom of compassion for ourselves or for others, the first big thing is when we perceive threat. As soon as you perceive threat, right away way quicker than the more recently evolved part of the brain, the reptilian brain goes into fight-flight-freeze. It happens quickly.

So we get angry or hurt or afraid and contract and we get cut off from the parts of the brain that are responsible for compassion. So that's one way that we get blocked when we perceive threat. And we're going to talk about how to move from being blocked to opening up, but that's one. And the other is a subset of that, which is when we perceive others as different, we don't feel as much compassion. And this has been super well researched.

It's related to the fact that for millions of years we roamed the earth as small groups and other small groups were threats to us. And so we got to learn very much the difference between us and them. Our nervous system was entrained to seek out difference and then to perceive that which looks different and acts different and speaks different and all that is an unreal other as a bad guy as a threat. All the compassion circuitry does not get activated then. Does that make sense? Difference.

which is really, really important because we're no longer going around in little bands of isolated bands, you know, having to offend against enemies. But it's alive and will in our nervous system. Evolution changes us, but not fast, as the actual cultural and societal changes. So here we are this totally intermingling world where, you know, the 99-point whatever percent of us

is exactly the same. and yet we are fixated on difference. So what happens? When we think someone's different, because our compassion circuitries cut off, we can harm them. It explains how it's possible that the Buddhists in Myanmar can be committing such horrific atrocities against the Rohingya. They are considered different.

Of course, we talk mostly about the dominant and non-dominic culture, how difference has to do with race, our religion. It also has to do with class. In fact, from Berkeley Greater Good Center, Dacher Keltner did this research describing how the more wealthy, the less empathetic to those in need. It's researched out. And then perhaps the greatest blindness in terms of difference

and where we cause the most pervasive torment is speciesism, Non-human animals are different. Therefore, they don't activate our compassion circuitry as quickly. So we're going to talk about how to move out of the hijack when we're caught in a reactivity towards another because of a threat and how to move towards compassion and also how to widen the circle when we have gotten caught and trapped in perceiving difference.

and our hearts not including others. The reason it's so important, our hearts are not free if there's any part of this living world we're excluding. The hope of our humanity is that activists will get spiritual, will go for this all-inclusive,

all-inclusive compassion. And those that are waking up their hearts will know to bring it into the world actively. So the movement is going from unreal other to real other, whether the person's unreal because they're threatening us or they're unreal because they feel different and having them become real. And of course, as a sideline, we get mixed up as to what is a real being

or not a real being all the time. One woman says, I bumped into a mannequin in the store and I said, oh, I'm sorry. And then I said, oh, I thought you were a person. And then I realized I was still talking to the mannequin, which reminded me of another story of a guy who comes late to a meeting, and on his way in, he sees a clown in front of the building. So when he's at his meeting, he says, he tells the group,

you know, I saw a clown out front. And one person at the meeting said, well, was it a real clown or somebody dressing up as a clown? which I thought was the same idea. Okay, enough of my silly examples. So let's look at when we get hijacked, and I'm going to invite each of you, because really the only reason to explore this

is if we take this, us awakening bodhisatt, as we take this right into our life, and we look at, okay, so where am I creating separation? Where can I awaken compassion? We have to practice it. So I'm going to ask each of you to think of a place where you feel like you get hijacked and where you'd like to have more compassion, get you thinking ahead of time.

One of the great understandings is that the heart of Buddhism is compassion, the heart of compassion is compassion for ourselves. So keep in mind that if you get hijacked and you feel threatened or angry at somebody else and you want to feel more compassion towards them. Before you can feel more compassion to them, you have to make what I call the U-turn and come back and bring compassion to whatever is going on inside you.

That's the basic understanding that we're going to be practicing with. The image that helps me over and over again when I get hijacked or I feel separate from others comes from a kind of a story I've shared before. Some of you'll remember about this monstrous statue of the Buddha. It was one of the largest statues anywhere that plaster clay statue of the Buddha near Bangkok.

And when they wanted to relocate the statue because of a highway coming through, they started to lift it with a crane, but it started cracking. So that night, one of the head monk went to check on the Buddha, and he saw the crack, and he kind of peered a little flashlight into the crack to see the infrastructure, and what shined back was the luminosity of gold. So he took piece off and another piece off, and it turned out that this huge statue was the largest

solid gold statue in all that part of Southeast Asia. And what the monks believe is that centuries earlier, they had covered the statue with plaster and clay so it would make it through difficult times, through invading armies and through changing governments and so on. And they said that that was very much in the way that we put on all our defensive coverings, our ego structures, to help us get through difficult times.

and that the tragedy only is this, that we start to believe we're the ego coverings and we forget the gold. When our compassion is shut down, it's because we've forgotten the gold. We're fixated on somebody's ego coverings. Or when we're turned on ourselves, we've forgotten the gold. We've forgotten that the only reason that we're acting in ways we don't like

is because we're vulnerable. So the pathway to reopen the heart is to see the vulnerability and remember the gold. And I'd like to give you an example of this and then I'm going to ask you to practice a little bit. And the example I thought I'd share was one of the times that my heart was most shut down and it was during a divorce that I went through 27 years ago.

And we had been in a spiritual community together, and so we anticipated when we broke up, we both had this idealistic notion of how we would navigate, and we were both totally shocked and humbled by the fact that we completely regressed, and we ended up saying things that were horrible and that we regretted. And, you know, in a way, we got really nasty. We both felt threatened by the situation and acted out. in ways that felt really ugly to us. And so I remember being at retreat and feeling grief that I betrayed my heart, that here I was

caught in this. I was shut down and caught in this antagonistical divorce. It was exactly what I thought I would never get caught in. But when I tried to open my heart, all I could think of was, yeah, but he's being so unfair and he's so disrespectful and he's so belligerent and he's not coming through with everything. he agreed on with Narayan. My son, you know, it's just like all the reasons I was in the narrative that was keeping my heart really tight. So he was the bad guy and I was just seeing the plaster clay and forgetting the golden Buddha.

So the teachings that have always saved me and can save all of us is, okay, just start right where you are. This is the place to make the you turn. What's going on, you know? And so I started getting in touch with what was going on, and under the anger was the sense of powerlessness and the sense of sorrow that my son wasn't having this perfect, idyllic kind of parental unit holding him and feeling hurt in my own ways. And I just started bringing kindness to those things, to the powerlessness and the sadness and the hurt.

and after a while my heart started feeling more tender and I could feel in that tenderness the golden side of me and then I started being able to think of my to be X and actually see underneath the plaster and clay how difficult it was for him I was the one that wanted the divorce you know his disappointment at losing his family all the tensions around custody, he was having a hard time and he felt rejected.

So when I could see that and see his vulnerability, it was easier to remember the gold. I could remember just how great he was as a dad with his son and how great he was with animals and with plants and all the other things that have made it so that if we fast forward, He's my brother, he's my family, he's a friend, we're still really. We love each other. But at that time it was so powerful to realize how to make that you turn, how to be kind towards my reaction, and then I could see the vulnerability in him, and then I could see the gold and things could soften.

It was like on some level I had to start by saying, well, where does it hurt to me? And then I could look at him and say, well, where does it hurt for you? So that's the process I'd like you to explore if you're willing. And maybe to begin you might, if you need to shift how you're sitting a little bit and then close your eyes, and bring to mind a situation where you do feel stuck in some sort of a conflict or blame, where you feel your heart's closed to someone,

but not a traumatic situation, It won't help you to try to go for the real deep core wounded places of woundedness. The place where you'd like to open your heart more. I call this practice the reign of compassion because we will be using the acronym rain as we try to unhook ourselves and open again. Let yourself go to the most difficult part of the situation with another person. You can stop the, you know, if you're looking at frames of a picture, you can stop where you feel most triggered, seeing the person's face, their expression, what they're saying.

We begin by recognizing just what's going on. Just simply, okay, I'm stuck, I'm angry, I'm reacting. It doesn't have to be real detailed. But you're recognizing, okay, sometimes you might say I'm under the line, I'm in trance, some reacting. That's the R of rain. Recognize. And allow means just let that be for now. Don't try to change it, don't judge it. With the allow we pause and make space for what's here so we can deepen our attention. Recognize and allow. Then the invitations to bring some interest and begin to investigate. You might sense what's the worst part about

this and just open into your body, your throat, your chest, your belly and just feel the feelings that are there. You're feeling into the vulnerability, investigating it in your body. As you do, you might let your face take the expression that's most epitomizes what the vulnerability's feeling. And don't be shy. Experiment with your face, even your posture. Just let your posture in your face express what's going on inside you. And if you could read your face from the inside, maybe there's a word that expresses the emotion you're feeling. Hurt.

Powerless, fear. Let it come stronger in the body now. Feel the most vulnerable place in you. You might sense what from the past is, what this is familiar about this. And most deeply sensing, where does it hurt the most? Where am I feeling this? Investigating that vulnerability and asking, what is this place most need?

What is it most need? Is it acceptance, understanding, love, compassion, tenderness, being held? What does it need? That's the I, investigate, and for end, nurture, see if you can now inhabit your most awake heart. your Bodhisattva self as if you're or your future self, that what you're evolving into, so that you can offer inwardly what's needed. And you might put your hand on your heart as a way to sense that you're that space of compassion offering inward some care. What's the message, the words, that most might comfort this part of you? Sometimes it's simple like it's okay. Are you belong? You're part of me. I'm here. I'm not leaving. I'm sorry and I love you. What's the message? See if you can let that vulnerable place feel bathed in care and if it's

not your own care you might sense care coming from someone you love, that you trust, a spiritual being, but feel care and compassion bathing that vulnerable place. And just simply rest in the presence that's here. You're the holder and the held, the space, that tender space of compassion that's holding everything. And since the difference between your own sense of your being now and when you were feeling most stuck, just the enlargement. and from this larger space, this more the awakened bodhisattva space,

sense your deepest intention in regarding the other. What's your intention in moving forward in this relationship? Your deepest intention. You can begin to look at that person and recognize and allow what you see in that person, how they're appearing, how they're behaving, just make some space for it. Asking that critical question as you investigate now, where does it hurt? Can you see underneath the plaster clay to that fear and security, the inner child that's hurt, the unmet needs that might make this person self-centered

or rejecting or angry or hurtful? Where does it hurt? And since now the nurturing from that Bodhisattva place, that awakened heart-mind, that you in some way can communicate care, that you can sense other possibilities, new choices, and how to respond to this person. More creativity, more kindness. So from this Bodhisattva place, you can see the vulnerability

and see the goals, see how this person too wants to love and be loved. It says, Thomas Merton says, life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable. It is true. Taking a few moments,

take some nice, long, deep breaths when you're ready, coming back. And knowing that this was a very brief compassion practice, but you can take the same practice and spend more time with it. And it comes down to the simple practices of learning to look and see within ourselves, where does it hurt and offering kindness? And then looking at each other, where does it hurt? Offering our care.

And when we do, we start seeing who's behind the plaster clay. We start seeing, as Merton says, that divine shining through the gold. Now, this is an example of when we're hijacked, how we can kind of wake up from it, come above the line, so to speak, to more awareness. What about when the hijack is that we have that societally imposed conditioning that makes us shut down when we perceive difference? One person wrote that we don't, we're not thinking our own thoughts, we're thinking society's thoughts. Like we have these biases, it's not my bias, it's a societal bias that was conditioned into me. But on the Bodhisattva path, if it's really our intention to awaken compassion, then we have to on purpose pay attention to where we're biased and where we're closing down.

And so there are many different ways that we go below the line and As I mentioned, we do it in, especially the United States, we have such a horrific generational trauma around from slavery onward and still here, institutionalized racism. We see it in classism. We see it in all the different isms. One of the great below-the-line places, great blindnesses, and I think humanity is going to look back at this, at the thousands of years of, violating animals from other species. If we were looking at it another planet, if one species on another planet was doing what we do to non-human animals and we sought from a distance, we'd be appalled, but we're desensitized. So meat eaters on this planet average about 7,000

animals in a lifetime. And for me personally, this is the place of seeing bias and overcoming this tendency to create unreal other. This is the one that's actually the hardest for me to talk about. And I wanted to name that with you because I care a lot. It's very emotional in me. It's like sensing a concentration camp in my backyard that is just going on and on and on with all the suffering of animals. And it's hard to talk about because we, as a collective, we're so habituated to othering animals that it's often not that conscious. There's an assumption they're just not as important. They're more important things.

And we're not habituated to seeing the daily violence that goes into our daily diet. Like we don't connect the dots. We don't want to feel bad about ourselves so when the topic comes up there's a defendedness. we feel guilty deep down that we're participating in something wrong, or we're outraged that another person is trying to make us feel morally wrong. So there's a lot of bombs that can go off in this territory of othering. So my hope is that as we, each of us sincerely wants to widen the circles of our heart, that we can explore this two together.

without guilt or shame, but really asking the same questions. Where does it hurt? Can we look at where it hurts for these other animals? And can we see the gold? Can we see the sacredness of life? Share a bit about my own story, my own unfolding in this domain, because I figured I just wanted to be real personal about it in this, in this, in this. class that I became a vegetarian when I was 21, when I joined a spiritual community.

That's almost 45 years ago, I'm 65. And between now and then I've been a vegetarian except for a handful of years when I got sick and I started eating chicken and fish because I thought that was going to help and it didn't. And then I went back to being vegetarian and then I became vegan because the more I learned about the meat industry, the more what I thought was a little. vegetarian and wasn't causing as much harm was actually no different. I remember one time being at a retreat down at this really beautiful center in the Shenandoah. And during our early

morning hours, there's a lot of farmland around. We could hear the sounds of these mother cows lowing. They had just been separated the week earlier from their calves and so they were grieving. And as many of you know in the meat and dairy industry, farmers continually impregnate cows and then they separate from cows and then impregnate them again and separate them. And there's a deep mother-child attachment like in all mammals. So listening to this, I mean, you can imagine sitting in this early morning meditation and that's the sound we're hearing is this grieving cries of mother cows. And it broke my heart and it broke other people. people's hearts. In fact, we started in the afternoon doing a loving-kindness practice for them

and so on. But it was really the first time that I imagined close in, where does it hurt? That these are real beings, sentient beings and they were suffering. Over recent years, as I mentioned, I've learned more and for a while I was eating eggs as being a vegetarian and then I found out that no matter where we get them, organic, free range, etc., when the chickens hatch, when the baby chickens hatch from their eggs, all the males are ground up alive and check it out. That just happens. It's like at all, even the most organic free-range places, that's what they do with the male babies.

They just grind them up alive. And the females, then their beaks are cut because they're, in such squash quarters that they would scratch each other too much of this, so they'd get their beaks cut. So I've never toured an industrial farm or slaughterhouse, but I have watched films, and I do it on purpose because I feel like part of waking up out of bias is learning to look right into where the suffering is that we're not willing to look at. So I've kind of sat through them.

And of course, they're horribly disturbing. Like, if I imagine my dog going through what they're. these other mammals are going through. And in some way, living in a tiny pen so it can't move, and then, you know, being hurted and terrified into a slaughter, like they ground them up and they know what's going on because other animals are being killed right by them. It's inconceivable. So I mentioned that it's so hard for me to talk about because it makes me weep.

And so I have this prayer that more and more will move towards a plant-based diet. Not a rigidity like everyone should be a vegan. It's not that. It's can we collectively open our eyes to suffering and respond by moving in a direction? Some people do it because they really get the effect on planet Earth. It's considered the second biggest environmental hazard. to the earth, the first being fossil fuels. Some do it for health, but for whatever the reason,

it's part of compassion to widen that circle. So we're exploring unreal othering and how to come above the line, wake up out of it, and to know that all unreal othering is interconnected. So whether we're unreal othering, someone in our family because they're not cooperating, are someone who's perceived of difference for their race or their religion. All of it reinforces the same contraction of the heart, disconnection from compassion.

I was reading Dr. A. Bree's Harper and she's the author of Sista Vegan. It's a book about black female vegans. Well, she organized a conference and it's called the Vegan PRAXIS of Black. lives matters. And it's really cool because the whole purpose of the conference is to show anti-racism work goes hand in hand with the dismantling of all oppressive systems, including those that abuse and oppress non-human animals. Dick Gregory says this. He says animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel, and brutal taking of life, we don't have to be part of it.

So we close together with the reflection of how individually and collectively we can deepen our commitment to caring and action, to waking up these hearts. And you might come sitting for this last little practice that we'll do together. And we begin by just remembering that the path of awakening compassion has to be compassionate. In other words, we can't guilt ourselves or blame ourselves because that just deepens the same suffering. Instead, it's that very sincere question, where does it hurt? You might remember the poet Warshonshire, she was born in Kenya and she's a British writer.

So she lived in both a dominant culture, which is kind of earmarked by greed and exploitation, and a non-dominated, violated culture. Here's what she writes. They set my aunt's house on fire. I cried the way women on TV do folding at the middle like a five-pound note. I called the boy who used to love me, tried to say, okay, my voice. I said hello. He said, Warson, what's wrong?

What's happened? I've been praying, and these are what my prayers look like. Dear God, I come from two countries. One is thirsty. The other is on fire. Both need water. Later that night, I held an atlas in my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world,

and whispered, Where does it hurt? It answered everywhere, everywhere. everywhere. So as we close together, we bring that question to our inner life, resting in that bodhisattva heart, asking the life within us, where does it hurt? Taking some moments to feel the natural vulnerability in our being, if it helps to bring a hand to the heart, just offering that presence again. We can't do it too often to feel the vulnerability and sensing as we come into an intimate presence, the gold begins to shine

more fully. Just in these moments, where does it hurt? Offering caring. The gold starts to be more luminous. We bring to mine a dear one, someone in our lives we care about who's struggling, asking that same question, where does it hurt? And feeling that dear one held in this heart space of compassion, we bring our mind to a difficult person, someone who's challenging for us, where does it hurt? And as we begin to sense that that person too is insecure, is troubled, has unmet needs,

they too are included in this heart space. that becomes more and more awake and luminous and boundless with the inclusion. We bring to mind a being of difference. It could be a person that's politically not aligned with you, someone of a different race than you are, religion, or it could be an animal that's not a human. Where does it hurt? so that as we ask that question more and more of this living world belongs in our heart

and we can sense all that's included is filled with this life force, filled with this sacredness. Life is this simple. We're living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or fable. It is true. In the quietness as a way to close, just to feel your own sincere intention to awaken and live from this boundless heart space, this all-inclusive heart of compassion.

Namaste and thank you for your presence. For more talks and meditations, and to learn about my schedule or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com.