Tara Brach - Part 3: Three Blessings - Looking Into the Mirror

Episode Date: April 3, 2013

2013-04-03 - Part 3: Three Blessings - Looking In the Mirror - The third gift on the journey of awakening is the mirror. In this talk we explore how to look back into our own minds and discover the timeless, radiant presence that is our essence. It is this realization of our Beingness that enables us to live these lives with wisdom, love and wonder. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

So welcome to spring and to April. And I'll tell you in a story NPR ran in April, beginning April, it's called the slow internet movement. It was reported that hipster cities like Portland, Oregon, were sprouting internet cafes that only offered dial-up access to the web. And these cafes give customers slow pores and slow. slow internet and you can order your coffee and spend four hours checking your email, all for 99 cents an hour.

So it's in honor of, you know, a lot of sacred pauses, you know, with dial-up and you can feel your breath and, you know. So reading about this you might go, yay, you know, sanity. We're getting in, gives you a chance to really get in touch with your body and your intention. Ah, the slow internet movement. of course, found out that it was, this story came out in April 1. So, as they say, speed still rules the day. But reading this, it reminded me of this very cute cartoon

where you have God sitting in heaven reading little notes from his feedback box. And everyone says something like, not enough time in the day. I wish I had more time, can't fit everything in, need more time in the day." And God says, jeesh, you know, I know it'll do different next time. Not enough time. So it's really interesting to explore what is it behind this trance of always feeling that we have to move faster, get more done, there's not enough time?

What is it? You know, there's some sense if I don't do enough, if I'm not prepared, something bad will happen. And, you know, there's something missing right now, I need something more. And if we really tune in, you can sense that that's being generated from our survival brain. It's that perception, mortality, vulnerability, something is wrong with us that keeps driving us. us to kind of race against death, race against loss. So I think about that and you can see it in the mammals that are like a squirrel, you know, like a squirrel, you know, it's just squirling around, vigilant.

You know, squirrels do not walk mindfully on this earth, you know, it's not like they're, it's not like they're, you know, kind of taking a stroll. it's the internet movement. It's like it has to be fast and speedy because we need more. We need to get somewhere faster. We're racing against death, loss. I bring this up because this is, we're tonight,

this is the last class of a three-part series. And I am basing it around a classic teaching story, the Natchikata story, about a young man who did the opposite of run away from, death. In fact, he had a conflict with his father. In this argument, his father basically said go to hell. He was sending him off. And this young man, instead of going into his own reactivity, went and sought out Lord Yama, who is the king of death. And by turning towards the king of death and in his patience and willingness to learn, Lord Yama said, okay, I'll grant you

three gifts. And the first two gifts we have done in the prior evenings that we explored this. And the first gift that Nachi Keta asked for was the gift of forgiveness because Nachi Keta basically knew that he couldn't discover freedom if his heart was closed off to his father. So that was the first one. He basically understood that forgiveness is the beginning of the path, letting go of the armoring around our hearts. The second gift that he asked for was the term was inner fire, which I think is a great way of languaging it. And inner fire is connecting with the sincerity of our heart that really aspires to love and live

well, that aspires to wake up from a trance and really be who we can be. that deep passion that we often forget because we get waylaid and we have other kind of distractions that make us think that we need to accomplish this and do that and so on and we forget what really matters to us. That was a second gift. Now the third gift that Natchie K.T asked for, I'm going to read to you a little bit from one version of this story that I think is beautiful in Jack Cornfield's book after the ecstasy, the laundry. And in this version, Anachi Keda looks at death and says, you know, the third gift I want, he says,

I ask for that which is immortal. So with some surprise, death reminded this audacious young man that he had come to the last boon and that he could choose anything. Lord Yamba then conjured up visions of what Natchi Keta might choose instead, a harem of beautiful maidens travel with on his journey, a royal golden war chariot with the world's fastest steeds, a palace where Natchikato would be king. Natchikato viewed all of this and more.

Why not choose among these, death urged again? But Natchikato was a determined youth, not easily led astray. And so he questioned the visions. Will not all of these things that you have shown me return soon enough to your own kingdom, Lord Yama? The Lord of Death smiled at Natchikata's understanding and answered, Yes, it's true. Then I asked to know that which is immortal.

At this Lord Yama said, I will grant you your third boon, and he handed Natchikata a simple yet extraordinary gift, a mirror. If you wish to find the secret of immortality, Natchiketa, I cannot help you more than this. You must look directly into yourself. Then you must repeatedly ask yourself the greatest of all human questions. Who am I? Look beyond your body and thoughts, Natchikata.

In this way, you will find what you seek. And so it is with all of us that we, really must ask, who is it that lives and who is it that dies? So as Natchikata, this is the part of the conclusion, gazed into the sacred mirror, he entered the profound spiritual questioning that leads to the deathless. When everything he held was released and stripped away, a pure and timeless heart arose. Natchiketa was free. So the mirror is a description of how we turn and really in a very sincere and deep way look

to see who we are. We look into our own awareness. And I think it's interesting to consider what happens when we look into a real mirror, kind of mirror that many of us look into each day, what happens? We might look and we might see, have all sorts of reactions maybe how our body or face looking older and what happens is because the body exists in time, it does age and change. So we start noticing these changes, we start noticing the physicality that just keeps on looking different.

But what stays the same as our consciousness? The consciousness is not in time. That which is looking through our eyes is the timeless. We can sense that. We can sense also that consciousness or awareness isn't something we have to go find. A reflection I do as often as I can remember is just to invite you for the next, let's say, 10 seconds, just to close your eyes and try not to be aware. Just for 10 seconds, try not to be aware.

Okay, that's enough. Opening your eyes, is anybody able to manage that? So, what happens is that we recognize it's always here, this awareness, it's always registering cognizant awake in that way of knowing. And yet we rarely pay attention to awareness, what we usually do as we move through the day in our daily life, is our attention is fixated outward. It might be fixated outward on the world outside this body or fixated outward on our mental screen of thoughts, but it's fixated, not aware of that consciousness itself.

So as we investigate, and Aldous Huxley put it well, he described the brain as a reducing valve of attention. So the brain's primary functions to block out too much information. It is a reducing valve. It organizes and selects what's going to be useful for survival, what allows us to thrive, And it keeps fixating on whatever will endanger us or give us advantage. That's the way we're designed. So if we go back to that squirrel, it's not reflecting on consciousness

and its basic oneness with the dog that's chasing it. It's not reflecting mindfully on the nature of the fear and where it's coming from. It's fixated on where's the next tree that I'm going to squirrel myself up on, right? You know, we are survival creatures. And if you reflect on today, or any day, really, how you move through the day, how many moments the mind is fixated on trying to figure something out, worrying and planning, we're trying to trying to navigate. And if you reflect on how many of our thoughts are about the ups and downs of the self's experience, how I'm doing, they're very self-centered thoughts, right? I mean,

most of our thoughts have us right there in the middle of it as the important creature. And so one cartoon has it perfectly says, guys at the bar telling a bartender, I'm nothing. Yet I'm all that I can think about. This brain just keeps resurrecting this sense of this self, this doing self, this wanting self, this fearing self. So we forget the awareness that's looking through. I just want to say being self-centered isn't bad. It just isn't satisfying because we're not including the wholeness of things.

Wee-woo-Wai, great poet says, why are you unhappy? Because 99% of what you do is for yourself. And there isn't one. Now, we might grasp it conceptually. Okay, there's no centralized thing that's a self. But for most of us, the self-sense is pretty consistently there and gritty and feels real. and even single-celled creatures have some perception of a kind of a self inside here and a world out there. So we're pretty rigged to have that. And our families, we're born into families that keep giving us the storyline of who we are and a culture that tells us who we are, all the stories that reinforce this idea that there's this kind of self thing.

that is moving through time and that others are out there as part of the scene that we're involved with. So, and you see it through, you know, the religions with all the stories of how we emerge. And here we have at Sunday School they're teaching how God created everything, including human beings.

And little Johnny seemed intent when they told them how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs. Later in the week, his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill and she said, Johnny, what's the matter? Little Johnny responded, I have a pain in my side. I think I'm going to have a wife. So this self-sense is a real experience. It's not what we really think it is and it's not the wholeness or truth of who we are, but it's

a real experience. So we have a wiring to perceive it that way, the selfness, but we also have the qualities of heart, mind to perceive what we are beyond that self-sense. And one of the ways, one of the reflections I think is real helpful, again you may close your eyes for this one. And this is a brief one. Just to sense, just to be part of this inquiry. And you might imagine you're looking through a kind of photo. photo album of your life. Or you're looking at it, there's a movie of your life and you're

going to stop at certain scenes. So there you are. Let's start you in kindergarten and just notice what you look like and maybe what mattered to you, your view of the world. And then we'll hop way forward to being a senior in high school. And again, your body, what was important, where your attention would go to. the moods that were predominant perhaps. And who were you when you started your first job? Would you look like? What was your attention going to?

What mattered? Beliefs, ideas, moving into when you perhaps fill in love. Strong draw to another person, overwhelming draw. Sense of yourself. What mattered? Your way of viewing life. Perhaps if you had a child of children, What was like having your first child?

Sense of yourself, who you were, what you were doing, what mattered. Maybe a time of great insecurity or loss. It's kind of like looking in a mirror and seeing all these changing versions of yourself. But really looking and saying, well, who are you? Consider how your bodies change, your worldview, your moods, your sense of what's important, your pleasures. Now ask yourself in every time and place through each of these moments, each of these years, what about me has been unchanging? What has always been here? Can you sense that there's always been and is right now a consciousness, a presence that knows,

a space of awareness that perceives what's happening? Here's how Tibetan teacher Sogiel Rumpeshay put it. He says, if everything changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? If we can begin to realize this mystery within our own existence, our relationship to this changing world shifts. And this is what Natchi Keta intuited when he asked to know what was immortal. This is what led him to ask for this realization of timeless presence, that there's something

behind this changing world. You can open your eyes if you'd like. Rachel Remen, who's a wonderful writer and physician and teacher and wise woman, tells a story that to me really illustrates a bit of what we're pointing at with this guided reflection. And she describes how for the last 10 years of his life, Tim's father had Alzheimer's disease. And despite the devoted care of Tim's mother, he had slowly deteriorated until he had become a sort of walking vegetable. He was unable to speak and was fed, clothed, and cared for, as if he was a very young child.

One Sunday, while Tim's mother was out doing the shopping, his brother, then 15, and himself, 17, watched football as their father sat nearby in a chair. Suddenly he slumped forward and fell to the floor. Both sons realized immediately that something was terribly wrong. His color was gray and his breath uneven and rasping. Frightened, Tim's brother told him to call 911. Before he could respond, a voice he had not heard in 10 years, a voice he could barely remember interrupted.

Don't call 911, son. Tell your mother that I love her. Tell her that I'm all right. And Tim's father died. So Tim's now a cardiologist, he describes that because his father died unexpectedly at home, the law required that they have an autopsy. He said, my father's brain was almost entirely destroyed by his disease. For many years, I've asked myself, how could he speak?

Who are we really? I've never found the slightest help from any medical knowledge. Much of life cannot be explained. It can only be witnessed. So we have this sense of a self that's moving through time that has a body and personalities and so on and we need the egoic self to navigate and survive. It's part of our beingness and there's more. One of my friends, Stephen Josephs, who's a coach and a wonderful writer and teacher himself,

says that we can still function as an apparent self-entity while enjoying the parallel reality of our infinite vast presence. We need both realms. When the cop pulls us over, we still need to show them our license, not simply point to the sky. Somebody showed me on the same theme of needing to know we're embodied and in this world and also made of this timeless awareness.

there's a picture of this guy meditating. One of his arms is in a kind of a cast, and the two monks in the background are talking about him. Apparently it happened while trying to hear the sound of one hand clapping. So living in both realms. So the meditation of the mirror, of turning our attention and looking inward, is really a turning towards a mystery.

There's nothing solid to live. land on, we're turning towards consciousness itself. And it doesn't, it seems like it should be inviting, okay, we're going to turn towards this radiant, timeless presence. But it doesn't always seem that way when we actually practice and we will be practicing together soon. Lily Tomlin said this. She said, I always knew I wanted to be somebody, but I guess I should have been more specific. It's like, what do we find when we start looking in there? Well, at the Insight Meditation Society where I've practiced many years and also taught,

there's a little sign saying self-knowledge is not necessarily good news. So we look within and what do we see? And it might not be vast luminous awareness. It may be that at first what we see is obsession, mental obsession, we might see confusion, we might see kind of a reactivity where we're craving something or afraid of something, we'll see all our wants and our dislikes. So the initial encounters often that we're fixating on thoughts and stories about what's happening inside us or washed around by emotions.

So what is happening is we're seeing the surface activity. If you think of an ocean, our attention when we turn inward is first kind of fixated on the surface activity, the sets of waves, especially more caught in a strong reaction, we fixate on the emotions and the thoughts. That's quite natural. So the inquiry is as that settles, which the surface does settle at times, how can we really look within in a way that reveals the vastness? and the depth and the mystery that's here.

How can we do that? And the first of the elements I want to mention is a kind of understanding that we are in our meditation when we're looking in the mirror, the intention is to shift from objects seeing the emotion, seeing the sensations. The way we normally practice,

that's often our instruction. be aware of the waves, we're shifting from objects to aware of the ocean itself. We're going from object to subject. And that's a big shift. And one of the, so rather than what we're looking at, we're looking at what's looking. And one of the metaphors I find most helpful is if you think of yourself in a movie theater and usually the projector is projecting on the screen and we're watching, you know, the projector is projecting on the screen and we're watching the screen. And that's the way we move through life.

We're kind of watching the screen. Again, whether it's the outer world or the screen inside our mind. So what happens when we begin to look in the mirror is that we shift from looking at the screen where we're, you know, lost in the action. We begin to quiet down some. So you know how when you're in the movie and sometimes things are going a little slower and you sense that you're in a movie theory, you kind of remember, like there's something beyond the movie that you're fixated on? Well, we slow down, you know, the thoughts some, we start having gaps between the thoughts and we realize, oh, there's more than the storyline I've been hanging out in. That's the beginning. And then we actually begin to look back and notice, oh, everything

we've been looking at is light, the shining out from a projector, this kind of, clear shining light and it's colored by forms on the film. Yet it's intrinsically pure light. It's intrinsically pure light. So we begin to look from the screen back into that light of awareness, back into the awareness itself. So that's the understanding, just this is the practice. We're going from looking out to looking inward. Then there's the attitude as we begin to practice this. And attitude's the key thing, because if it becomes this idea that we're trying to accomplish something or make something happen or that if we're, if we have any depth to our meditation practice, we're going to be able to, like Nachi Keda and the Buddha who turned and looked

into his own mind, we're going to discover that freedom of awareness itself. Then we're just setting up another kind of place where we can strive and feel a sense of deficiency. So the attitude is one of being curious and friendly. It's got to be lighthearted. I mean, it's a light touch. You look back out of interest and say, okay, so what's it like? What's here? And to also recognize that whether I'm leading you here in a class or you get the instructions elsewhere, that this particular practice of looking into awareness might not be a good match at the time that you're doing it. It might not be in the season of your life the best place to pay attention or even in the moment you might be so stirred up

that it's just better to practice something simple that helps to quiet the mind. So the approach is to be very light to kind of have an interest to know that you're going to learn what you learn and to not judge and just to relax and perhaps try again another time if the mind feels too busy. The atmosphere that best serves is to first take some time to quiet the mind. Before, we can't really look into awareness if there's waves that are really activated. So the beginning of the practice is as we do here. Feel the breath, come into the body, keep coming back from thoughts and remembering what's right here until there is some quieting. The last piece is what is it that really would motivate us to look into the mirror

and just to sense for yourself, well, what would really motivate me? For Natchikata, there was a deep intuition that beyond the appearance of things, there is something, some essence to what we are that's timeless and radiant and really allows us to feel the wholeness of our being. This is Rilka, he says, you see, I want a lot, perhaps I want everything,

the darkness that comes with every infinite fall and the shivering blaze of every step up, You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. You have not grown old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret. So let's practice a little. Let's explore it.

setting yourself in a way of sitting that just allows you to be awake and alert and at ease. So knowing that we're going to be exploring this looking into the mirror kind of practice, just feel, again, as I talked about attitude, just sense the possibility of just bringing a curiosity, a friendliness, an open-mindedness. You can take what works and put aside the rest. And most important, just feel your own sincerity of intention and bringing your attention to what's right here, feeling the aliveness in the body.

You might take some moments to perhaps relax the shoulders, softening, softening the hands. So you can feel the hands, feel the life of the body. feel the life of the hands, let the chest be open, and then relaxing and softening the belly so you can feel the breath, receive deep in the torso, and very gently resting with the breath, feeling the inflow and the outflow, sensing the possibility of a real receptivity, a kind of yielding with the inflow, letting go with the outflow, letting your senses be wide awake, feeling the breath and feeling this whole field of sensations that the breath's happening in.

Aware of the sounds, the light sounds in the room, soft sounds here and the more distant sounds. So you can sense in the foreground this whole play of sound and sensation, feelings and breath. And also be aware in the background of this alert inner stillness, the beingness, the presence that's aware. You might be aware of listening and you might also turn the attention inward and ask who is listening, what is listening? Just gently turning to sense that, glancing back, who is listening?

What is listening? And then just let go into whatever you sense, just be that presence. Be that presence, be the silence that's listening, the stillness that's aware of sensation. You might find the mind just noticing sounds or sensations. Who's listening? Who's aware? Who am I? Just inquiring and looking back into that which is aware.

Just glancing back and then just relaxing into it. driving, Dana Fault says, go in and in, be the space between two cells, the vast resounding silence in which spirit dwells. You may notice again and again that the attention fixates on the different waves of experience, sounds, sensations, feelings. And when you sense that this practice is quite simple, just to ask who's aware right now? Who's aware of the sound, this sensation, this thought? And gently turn and look back into your own awareness. Who am I? Turn, look, and then just let go and be whatever you see. Just be that presence, beingness. Rumi describes this mystery of our beingness in this way. He says one matter,

one energy, one light emanating endlessly emanating all things, one bright turning diamond, one, one, one, ground yourself, strip yourself down to blind loving silence. Ground yourself. strip yourself down to blind loving silence. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the light with its own ageless eyes. Stay there until you see you are gazing at the light with its own ageless eyes. When we ask this question, who am I? What's aware? When we look back, what do we find? The Tibetan teaching is that the supreme seeing is a seeing of no thing.

There's nowhere to land. There's no center, there's no boundary. There are three qualities that we can find to describe this beingness. And one is that it's completely empty of any solid entity. It's completely open. Can you sense as you turn to look into awareness that there's nowhere to land? It's just empty openness,

edgeless space. And yet this empty openness is awake. It's alert. There's cognizance. That's the second quality. So the first quality is this openness and yet this space is awake. It's awake space, cognizant.

And the third quality is that its activity is love, that its response to whatever is encountered when we're resting in this open cognizance is tenderness, warmth, love, open, cognizant, loving. In the face of living and dying, this is our refuge. It's what allows us to celebrate life and touch freedom. I'm just gently opening your eyes, I want to tell you about the end of the story for Natchiketa. So Natchikata looks into the mirror as we are looking into the mirror. And at the end of the story, we see the young man bowing to Lord Yama a final time, totally at peace.

Then as if by magic the landscape of the kingdom of death changes to the spring rice fields of his native India. in this a last secret is revealed to him. Death and birth are not separate. Renewal comes by dying. When we have faced death and aloneness, we've realized the formless. We are unafraid to live and life flowers under our feet. Everywhere we go becomes holy ground.

Natchie Keta knew this in his heart and walked off toward his home to embrace his father and start a new life. So that's, in a way, a very easy to forget teaching, that we think we're opening to the formless and we're just going to dissolve into some oneness, but what actually happens is we open to the wholeness of our being and we can re-enter this life.

We can engage with our moments with a wholehearted nest. with a creativity. The Tibetans call this that we become a child of wonder. We walk on this earth and we walk through our lives, aware of the vastness and mystery of who we are and absolutely

celebrating our moments. We like Natchikai to enter the spring so we can really have wonder at the blossoms and so we can really step on this earth in awareness And so we can really, in a very deep way, have this capacity of curiosity and awe and love.

So the spiritual path, the teaching is really when we face death completely open to the losses, we can live fully and respond with a quality of acceptance and love that is completely unconditional. story I thought I'd share with you that was told by a surgeon Richard Seltzer describes a man who in a sense had this understanding of vastness and brought it into his moments in a very beautiful way. This is what he writes. He says, I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish.

A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon, he's talking about himself, had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh. I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they? I asked myself, he and this wry mouth I've made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. A young woman speaks.

Will my mouth always be like this? She asks, yes, I say it will. It's because the nerve was cut. She nods and is silent, but the young man smiles. I like it, he says. It's kind of cute. All at once I know who he is. I understand and lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God.

And mindful, he spends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers to show her that their kiss still works. So I share this story and the broader story of Natchikata because we too are part of this awakening, where every one of us is facing Lord Yama, whether we wish we were or not, we are. And we have that choice to encounter the losses, encounter this changing life with that quality of presence and know that it's only by letting go of the blame and the armor.

It's only by contacting what really matters to us. and ultimately by looking into our own minds that we discover this freedom where we realize this vastness and beauty of the awakened heart. And then we get to live our lives as a child of wonder. We get to take these steps in the springtime fully awake and here for our life. So it's in that spirit I'd like to just have a final closing meditation if you will.

There are many ways to practice forgiveness, which is really to let go of whatever armors our heart. For right now, just to sense if there's any way that you're holding against yourself, anything from today or recently. And you might just simply have the intention to soften, to be kind, to offer love to your own being. Sometimes just saying the words, forgiven, forgiven. or sometimes I just say it's okay sweetheart, sometimes just touching your heart with your hand and just through that gesture that offering that that gentleness and care that is

really an invitation to be forgiving and kind towards ourselves just see if you can soften a little towards yourself the first gift that which opens us to the path is this softening of the armoring in whatever form it is. The second gift is to remember what we care about, remember what we love. Just take a moment as we did at the beginning of our meditation. Just a sense what is it that matters to you. If you were at the end of your life looking back, what would matter about how you live this moment?

Just this moment, what would matter? Let yourself open and presence to this moment. See how deeply you can say yes to the life that's right here. The feelings and sensations in the body, the mood of your heart, the sounds and the life surround you. Opening and opening and sensing in the background that presence or beingness, that silence that's listening. Just the light of awareness that's here.

We close with the loving kindness prayer. May all beings recognize the loving presence that is their essence. May all beings come to trust and live from loving presence. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org.

Thank you very much.