Tara Brach - Part 4 - Living From Presence - Introductory Series

Episode Date: November 3, 2010

2010-11-03 - Part 4 - Living from Presence - Our human potential is to express the wings of presence--mindfulness and lovingkindness--through all facets of daiy living. This talk explores the practices that enable us to both serve and savor this precious life. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

I'd like to invite you to just close your eyes and let's just take a moment to tune in together. Let these moments be ones of coming home, right, to your experience here. I'd like to invite you to take a few full breaths, very conscious full breath, inhaling deeply, maybe holding the breath for a moment, and slowly letting go. So the in-breath is opening to receive, and the out-breath are relaxing, letting go. So even as the breath is in its natural rhythm, you can sense a collecting of your attention. See if you can relax with the breath. Noticing if you scan through the body, if there's any habitual tightness or clenching, see if you can soften a little.

Let your senses be awake. Wear of the sounds around you. There of the sensations in your body without any judgment of whatever mood or emotion might be here. It's feeling your intention for the evening, whatever language it is that intend in some way to be present and awake. So welcome to our final class in this series on meditation, this introduction to meditation. What we've basically been exploring is how to cultivate mindfulness, how to sense this power of presence. to awaken our natural wisdom and compassion.

And we've been doing this as a kind of training that brings mindfulness first to this aliveness that's sitting right here, this awareness of sensation, and then how to bring mindfulness to the emotions that we sometimes call the inner weather systems that we live with, how to bring mindfulness to thinking, how to notice when we've been off in thoughts. And in a deep way, how this mindfulness can awaken us from what I often call this trance

that we spend huge swaths of time in and bring us here. So you might even just to start this moment, sense, if you want to just close your eyes, just mentally say the word here, here. And sense the possibility. of being awake, aware of your body and sensations, aware of whatever thoughts might have been drifting through or still here, feelings, so that as you open your eyes, there's more of a consciousness of presence itself,

which is the gift of practice. one of the challenges as we enter the world of meditation is that we encounter a lot of different strategies. And you might have noticed through these weeks or if you've been exposed through books and other classes. And this is true even in the mindfulness and vipassana tradition, that you'll be instructed to pay attention to the breath perhaps or maybe to listen to sound mind. you might be guided to bring your attention to thoughts of loving kindness or thoughts of forgiveness. You might be guided to investigate your emotions in a certain way. Or maybe to do nothing and just rest and choiceless awareness, but there's all these different

approaches. And you might go to one particular class and a meditation teacher will teach you a style, let's say be with the breath, just really focus on the breath and come away thinking, okay, that's meditation, you know. And what's so interesting to me is that the Buddha, supposedly, taught 84,000 skillful means, which are strategies for bringing our attention into presence. And that's a lot, 84,000. But what it really means is that this art of meditation,

which is really what we're all investigating involves customizing the practice and what we can bring our attention to is two wings or two grounds of practice that they can be for us really the kind of foundation of what we do and then know that beyond that we're going to be adjusting with different skillful means.

And when I say two wings, I hope maybe for some that's a familiar phrase, these wings of the bird that we need both to fly and be free. One wing is mindfulness. So one wing of the bird is this, and it's described very simply as this attention, moment to moment without judgment to what's happening. So one wing is mindfulness.

And mindfulness is supported by, being with the breath or quieting the mind in different ways and the other wing is kindness or compassion that if we are to be fully present because these are the wings of presence there needs to be a quality of open-heartedness of of care towards what we're experiencing the gift of these two wings of presence of being mindful and kind towards what's happening is that they allow us to relax back into what I often call natural awareness. And natural awareness isn't something we cultivate. We actually are coming home to what already we are, what's here. And maybe

as a way of experimenting, again, close your eyes for a second. Let me just have you check in. Try for these next few moments not to be aware. Don't be aware. Okay. Okay, that's probably enough. Anyone successful? What we find out so quickly is awareness is just happening. It's just what we are. We don't have to do anything to cultivate awareness. In a sense, it's the not doing. I think of it more as, and I love the phrase from the Zen tradition,

the backward step that were relaxed, relaxing back into what's here, but what is often obscured because we are off in this discursiveness of mind, this never-ending storytelling mind, so we don't notice awareness. There's a paradox in meditation practice that some of you probably have happened upon, which is that we need to practice. We need to be purposeful and attentive. We need to do that. But we're actually practicing so that we can relax back into awareness. We're practicing relaxing. One of my favorite kind of illustrations,

Swami Satchananda, who's no longer alive, a wonderful Hindu teacher, was once asked by a student, do I have to be a Hindu to practice yoga? And the response from Swami Saterinaanda was, no, not a Hindu, I'm an undo. You know, I am an undo. And I thought that was perfect, you know,

that we're not doing something. In a sense, there's an undoing of our habitual busyness and our ways of getting lost so that we can reopen to that awareness that's really here to that listening, that silence that just listening inside

or that awareness that's looking through these eyes right now that's taking in this world. And the more familiar we become with this natural awareness, with that silence and stillness and presence, the less we believe and get identified in the stories

that have us feeling deficient are separate from each other, the less we believe that. So it takes practice. There's a kind of purposefulness in undoing our habits that keep fear alive. Okay? We have habits that keep fear alive.

Forgive me for stealing the phrase. But isn't it true? I mean, don't we have habitual thoughts that just keep us uptight and behaviors that, then end up making us feel afraid of in some way being wrong or bad. So we stoke it. We stoke fear and we stoke discontent. And so we need to practice undoing. I'd like to share a story that I really like. And this comes from Seligman, who's the father of positive psychology.

He says almost everything I've done that involve big changes in life has happened in a flash. said this happened when my daughter Nikki and I were gardening and she was just five. I should confess that when I garden, I'm goal-directed and time-urgent. He says, Nikki was throwing weeds in the air and dancing around and I yelled at her. She came back to me and said, Daddy, do you remember before I was five, I whined all the time, I whined every day? Did you notice that since my fifth birthday, I haven't whined at all? I said, yes, Nikki. Well, Daddy, that was because on my birthday, I decided I wasn't going to whine anymore.

It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being so grumpy. What I find powerful about is in the way it speaks to what the scientists are describing as neuroplasticity, that in the same way that we can exercise our muscles and get to. stronger, we can exercise our attention, the ways we pay attention in a way that create new neuro pathways and allow us to be happy. We've heard of these set points for happiness that it said that there are actually biological set points that we tend to keep coming back to the same level of happiness or anxiety. It can be changed.

So that is really the invitation of the Buddha, that if you learn to pay attention, and in a way you're learning to pay attention to undo the ways that we keep ourselves uptight, but if you learn to pay attention, you can discover a happiness and a freedom that is beyond what we might imagine. So tonight, what I'd like to explore is the way the Buddhists describe it, really bringing this presence into all facets of our life. How do we stop compartmentalizing, which we often do on the spiritual path so that we might meditate and have a certain experience, but then go out and play out our same neurotic self, that is harmful to us and harmful to others? how do we actually be more present as we move through our life? And the beginning of that possibility, and the first place I'd like to spend a little time,

is how do we at home develop the kind of daily practice that really nourishes us? So it's not a church on Sunday or class on Wednesday ritual. How do we develop a practice? And I bring this up because it's kind of, of the pink elephant in the room that whenever you hear about meditation and about Buddhism and the spiritual path, you'll hear the importance of practice. And yet how many of us in our heart of hearts feel like in some way not enough? I'm not doing it enough. You don't

have to do a hand raise on this one. So on one level, we hear that it's like any other form of mastery, you know, whether it's piano, any of the great arts, you know, the fine arts, dancing, tennis, whatever we really want mastery and we have to put our 10,000 hours, right? And so similarly with meditation, this training of the mind that can actually allow us to relax back into a very open, happy, clear, lucid place takes the 10,000 hours plus. So what happens is, I think Rumi says it beautifully, he asked that question, do you make regular visits to yourself? And we, when we're honest, can recognize that, well, no, I don't deepen my attention and listen inwardly all that much.

So I'll give you a few tips of what's worked for me and many people I've worked with on having a practice. that doesn't feel like an obligation or it doesn't feel forced. And the first of those tips is to commit yourself to practicing. And when I say practicing, I mean formal practice. There's the informal practices to be awake all the time as we're walking and working and talking and so on. But formal practices when we create a period of time dedicated to coming home. home right here. And typically it's a sitting practice because when our bodies become still,

it's conducive to our minds quieting, but it doesn't have to be sitting practice. You could have your formal practice walking or standing, lying down if you need to. So the first tip is to say, no matter what, I'm going to practice every day, no matter what. And there's a backdoor to that, which is it doesn't matter how long. Now that is something that everyone here, everyone who's listening can do. Because, and I'll give you my own self as an example, I lived in an ashram, a spiritual community for 10, 11 years, and it wasn't so hard to practice every day because I had 60 other people meeting in the mornings for several hours practicing. I left the ashram community and then got pregnant and had a child right away.

It changed how easy. I mean, you know, having an infant and being on your own, it was a little different. So that's when I made this commitment. I said no matter what, but I had my back door, it didn't matter how long. And many days, you know, I'd nurse Narayan, hand them over to my husband,

and I'd go and sit for a while. But some days, it just didn't work out that way. And I remember I'd be at the very end of the day, and I'd kind of sit down on the edge of my bed, and I'd just kind of sit quietly, and I'd say, you know, may I be blessed, may all beings be blessed, and then I go to bed.

And that was it. You know, I'd just sit quietly for a moment, just being, and then say a prayer and go to bed. It worked because it created this rhythm and all of nature as rhythms of knowing that at some point I was in some way intentionally coming home. It's a gift to the,

the soul to create that space to start developing that intimacy, that listening inwardly. So that's the first piece, is in some way commit yourself. Now, it helps to have a regular time. It helps to have a spot that's beautiful in some way to you. It may be just a corner of the room where you have some flowers or a picture that's beautiful or a candle, whatever. but to create something that has a sense of the sacred. But as I said, be flexible if that's what helps. It helps to sit for 20 minutes versus two minutes just because there's the kind of the law of physics.

There will be some saddling. It's a little bit of a trick because if you say, okay, no matter what, you sit down and then something and you'll say, well, maybe I'll stay an extra few minutes, even if you thought you were just going to sit for a little. So that's the first piece. The second is when you come to formal practice, just reflect for a moment on your intention. You know, what is it that really matters to you?

Because even if, for instance, right now, you just took a moment and said, okay, you know, why am I participating in this series on meditation or why am I here tonight in this room? And if you really check in and you just give yourself a few moments until you feel a kind of sincerity like, oh, I'm wanting to practice because I want to be more open-hearted in my life. I want to love without holding back.

I want to be able to relax so I can enjoy this life and not kind of race to the finish line or whatever it is. When you feel that sincerity, that itself is, part of homecoming, remembering what matters. One of my favorite little cartoons I used to have posted was of a cemetery, and under one of the gravestones, there's a, well, there's a bubble that's

coming up out of the gravestone. And it's, the caption underneath is, Ed finally decided what he wanted to do with his life. And then it says, he pushed the late bloomer envelope beyond all records. So you have this dead guy coming, finally realizing his intention. So we don't have to wait. You know, it's like the sooner we get in touch with what matters. It's kind of, I think it was Thoreau said that we spend our life fishing, not really knowing what we're fishing for. Know what matters. A few other ways of supporting yourself, which is it helps to sit with other people. if you have anybody other than coming to class anybody to sit with there's something about that support of being with community that really makes a difference it makes a really big difference if you commit yourself to not judging what happens one friend says you put your

tush on the cushion you take what you get whatever happens you know all your your only responsibility is to make the time and just be there with the intention of presence To have a wise attitude is to be very friendly towards your practice, very relaxed about it, just curious, curious. There can be tension. And one of the stories, and there's a lot of Zen stories, describes a student who goes to the monastery, and he asks the abbot,

I really want to get enlightened, how long will it take me? Okay? So the abbot's response is 10 years. And then the guy says, well, what if I worked really, really hard? And the abbot said, 20 years. The guy said, wait a minute, you just said 10 years. And then the abbot says, for you, 30 years, you know. So you get the idea that striving is not the way.

I mean, as I mentioned in that describing that paradox, the paradoxes were very purposeful and deliberate in this practice about relaxing back into presence. There's a wonderful line from the Zen Patriarchs that says that our freedom comes when we are without anxiety about non-perfection. And I mentioned this recently, that if you can get even a glimmer of that, that we're conditioned through our day and even through each meditation sitting to have our minds go all over the place, to not be anxious about it. So that's a bit about creating the space for formal practice. And I'd like to now shift and say, okay, how do we bring that presence, that mindfulness and kindness into our day? And to begin with, share a little story.

This is describing the English once they had colonized India. They established their businesses and they wanted some recreation. And so they decided to build a golf course in Calcutta. But it proved to have a unique obstacle, which is monkeys from a nearby habitat would drop out of the trees, scurry across the course, and seize the golf balls. The monkey would play with the balls, tossing them here and there, and at first the golfers tried to control the monkeys, okay? So their first strategy is to build high fences around the fairways and the greens. This approach, which seemed initially to hold much promise, didn't work out because fences. aren't workable with ambitious monkeys.

They just would come and climb over the fences and then the golfers tried luring the monkeys away from the course. But the monkeys found nothing as amusing as watching humans go wild whenever their little white balls were disturbed. So in desperation, the British began trapping and relocating the monkeys. But it seemed like they'd broadcast to their relatives and the more monkeys they'd take away and more would appear.

So finally the golfers gave into reality and they created a rather novel ground rule for this course in Calcutta, that golfers in Calcutta were obliged to play the ball wherever the monkeys dropped it. In a way, that describes a bit of how we are learning to move through our day, that stuff happens and it does not cooperate with the way we want it. I mean, if you're on the beltway, the monkeys are dropping the ball unpredictably, and it's almost predictable what's going to happen actually there. Every bit of our life is this way.

We have things go off with our bodies and with other people's bodies that we love. We have things flare up in relationships that are just out of our hands, out of our control. Things happen politically that are beyond our control. The monkeys drop the ball. How are we going to play with it? Right?

I mean, isn't that true right? now? Okay. I'm not trying to be... I'm not trying to make a statement beyond the fact that we have to deal with what's happening and what comes up in us. We have to find a way. So what is wise? How do we be mindful when we get stirred up or stirred down? So again, one of the phrases I love is that we're learning to cultivate a heart that is ready for everyone. everything, that we can respond to whatever arises with a quality of balance and wisdom. And there are the two wings that we then bring to daily life, and I'm going to take them one at a time. When stuff gets stirred up, the first wing is the wing of mindful presence,

that we actually contact our experience. In other words, we don't get lost in all our commentary and judgment. We say, okay, how am I feeling? I mean, I felt distraught. today. You know, I was bothered. So how to not spin off too much but say, okay, distressed, upset, afraid, you know, fear, and how to just feel it and be with it and breathe with it. A great practice, a great strategy in daily life when you find you've kind of not, the monkeys drop the ball and you're in heavy reaction, has got a sequence. to it. First you pause. Stop the action.

Take three full breaths, three full breaths, intentionally see if you can relax and then notice what's going on inside you. I had to do that a lot today. Pause. Just stop. Three full breaths and just relax the body a little,

the shoulders, the hands, and then just notice, oh, upset, irritated, anxious, afraid. You can just name it if you like or just feel it. It's a powerful way to come out of trance. And it's something that's really doable to pause and breathe and notice what's going on.

A lot of times. Use your body as an anchor through the day. When we sit and meditate, sometimes you use the body as an anchor, sometimes the breath, sometimes sounds. When you move through the day, feel your body, keep coming back to your body, feel your hands, it'll help you then respond to your life from more presence. So that's the first tip of moving through the day and really waking up,

not being in that trance. The second is see if you can do one thing at a time. That is radical. I know you know that. We're usually doing one thing and planning the next and barely aware of our bodies. especially if it doesn't require a lot of thinking. See if you can do what you're doing and be in your body with it. I invite you to check out taking a shower and really taking a shower mindfully because it's wonderful. It's one of the things that has more pleasure to it, and so it's worth being mindful for.

I mean, get in that shower and notice the temperature and notice the feeling of the, what are cascading over your body and the sense of, of pressure of the water, the smooth or flowing or whatever the sensations are, notice the sounds of the water. Feel yourself there. When you're walking from your car to your door or walking from the subway or whatever you're doing, feel yourself stepping on the earth. Feel your body and feel your breathing. When you're eating, see if you can just eat. Like really taste what's there. We often at retreats do a raisin meditation where we just one raisin at a time and you

kind of roll it on your tongue and feel the flavors and then feel the sensations of chewing, swallowing. Another Zen story in a Zen monastery, a novice monk found the abbot in the diner room eating and reading the newspaper. So he was kind of upset. He said, you know, but you've told us over and over again when you do one thing, when you eat, just eat, when you read, just read. And the monk said, yes. And when you eat and read, just eat and read. So it's not rigid. I mean, just, but see what's possible. Another tip, pause and savor when things are pleasant. If you've been noticing this fall and the smells and the, we've little past peak here in Washington, but just noticing the colors and just pause and be aware of taking it in.

Consciously pause and savor what's here. There's an amazing thing when we learn to stop trying to get there and be here. There's a woman who has been taking a course in a prison outside of Charlottesville, a number of our friends here in Washington who are in the Charlottesville area, teach in the women's prison there. And she's in for life. She killed her husband in self-defense after he had attacked her repeatedly and threatened to kill her. So she's in for life. And here's what she writes. She says, mindfulness works wherever a person lives, however a person lives. There's stress in every life. The trick is to see the life around the stress. I look out

my slit of a window and see the prettiest stars I've ever seen. because I can really see now. Why was I here for 15 years before I realized I couldn't detect yellow flowers under the low-pressure sodium lamps in the courtyard? That's easy. I never bothered to slow down and pay attention to be mindful,

to realize that it is still okay. I am still okay even if all my best laid plans fall through. It's hard here to not play plans for when I go home. It's harder to face the realization, that when I go home might not actually ever get here. Those days make me have to be okay with today. As a Christian, I know I was never promised tomorrow. As a mindful person, I can see that this sky is pretty. This grass is green. If this is the only sidewalk I will ever get to walk on, I'm at a place where I can appreciate that it is not always a bad sidewalk. I have joy in pointing out Orion, the hunter, when I leave

my meditation group on Wednesday night. So you understand then that it really doesn't matter what's going on in our life. The deepest teaching is what matters is how we relate to it and how we relate to our moments. And the gift of mindfulness is you can through the day pause. You can savor. And when it's difficult, you can pause and bring a tremendous kind of kindness. That's a moment. That's the option. You can either fight what's happening, you can blame people, you can blame yourself, or you can say, this is painful, this is difficult. Can I, and I described the other day, put your hand on your heart, that's the gesture, can I offer kindness inwardly? So we learn to take refuge in presence. That's the first wing. And the second wing, and I'm beginning to kind

of point to that in the last thing I said, is learning how to take refuge in love. And in our connection with each other and this life. This is the second wing that we can draw on in daily life. So I'll say the first main way we draw on it is that most of us find we really can't do it alone. One of my favorite little things I saw in a Buddhist magazine, they had a kind of goofy Buddhist personals. And they had one where it said,

tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself. And it's kind of one of the, it's kind of one of the misunderstandings of spiritual life that we're going off into a cave and we're kind of going to meditate ourselves into enlightenment. I have found that some of the most profound awakening I've had is in relating with another and realizing, oh, we're not really separate. It's really the same awareness.

I mean, yes, these bodies appear and act differently, but there is a profound sense of belonging with each other and being sourced in the same presence. And that is more truth than when we're sitting in the cave and feeling kind of some rapture and sensing a self-waking up. We're not a self-waking up. Waking up is happening through these body minds, and we can discover it and celebrate it with each other.

So the word, the polyword sangha, which is really the community of those who are waking up together, is a powerful part of the spiritual path. Annie Lamott says, my mind is like a bad neighborhood. I try not to go there alone. And that's why we meditate together, you know. What many people find, and certainly in the Washington area,

we have Kaliana Mita groups and that's spiritual friends groups. And there are 20, 30 of such groups, eight people in a group, and they meet every other week sometimes, different forms. But the point is having a few people that you get together with regularly to meditate, but also to explore, well, how do we bring? these teachings to addiction because so many are struggling with addiction. Are to intimacy

challenges. Are to whatever is going on in our life that's difficult. How do we do it? Well, exploring it with others is part of the waking up. There's a Sufi story of a master, a Sufi master who's beloved by many

and he goes to his favorite coffee house always surrounded by students. People are drawn to his radio, and compassionate nature. And one man asked, well, how did you become so holy? And the response of this master was, I know what is in the Quran. And so finally, somebody,

they say that somebody that didn't come off and it was kind of arrogant said, okay, what gives? So what's in the Quran? And the response was, two pressed flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah. The Buddha was asked by, Ananda, his devoted follower,

isn't it true that good friends are half the holy life? He said, no, no, they're the whole of the holy life. And I sometimes feel like if we made friendliness and friendship, the center of our practice, like truly, this friendliness to our own being and to each other, if that was our commitment, that that would be freedom. that the you know I talked about this backward step that we relax back

into who we are when there's a sense of love it just relax us it's like sunshine and ice cubes just melting in the sun so as we explore in this informal way daily life how do we bring it alive the last piece that we'll pay attention to

is then if relationships matter so much how do we become more awake in our relationships? Because we go to sleep. How many of us have repeated the same patterns over and over again for decades? For decades been the one to get needy and ask for too much or for decades been the one to kind of push others away. So how do we wake up? And in the Buddhist tradition and in other of the wise, the wisdom traditions, there's really a commitment to training our hearts and minds while we're with each other, how we speak, how we relate. It comes down to a reverence for life, for truly cherishing and sensing, as Thomas

Meriden put, the sacred that shines through every being. I sometimes think that just this word namaste, many of you know it, means I see the divine in you. You know, in the West, we'll see somebody and we'll say, hey, hi, how are you? You know, that's the West. And then in much of Asia, it's Namaste, much of India. And what a difference of a greeting. You know, I see the divine in you. What if that was really our practice?

It's the same question as the friendliness question. What if we really sought to sense the sacred that shines through all beings, knowing that we all have conditioning that can very much obscure that light but it doesn't mean it's not there. So this training is really how to be awake enough. I think of it sometimes to see past the mask. Like we all have a mask

where we're in some way trying to present something or protect something. And if we can begin to meditate, we sit quietly in the morning, we begin to get past our own mask and we're not so much believing our own story of a limited, separate self. You know, we see past those thoughts that we've been believing. And there's some homecoming to, okay, there's a sincere heart here,

and there's a presence here. And we do the same thing with each other, that we stop enough, we pause and we pay attention, so we see who else is here, behind their actions what's really going on. Robert Roberto de Vincenso. I'm not saying the name right. Vincasno. Great Argentino golfer.

He once won a tournament and after receiving a check and smiling for the cameras, prepared to leave. He was relatively new at this, so he walked alone into the parking lot and was approached by a young woman who congratulated him

and told him that her son, her young son, was near to death. Was at a hospital? and near to death and that she didn't know how to pay the doctor's bills and the hospital bills. And he was known as a gentleman. He was very, very touched by her story, took a pen, endorsed the day's winnings to her and said, make some good days for the baby. Gave her the check. Well, a couple of weeks later, he's at another country club. And one of the officials came over and said, some of the boys at the parking lot that last tournament told me what happened with that young woman

you met and he nodded well said the official i have news for you she's a phony she has no sick baby no children at all she fleeced you my friend you mean there's no baby who's dying said roberto that's right said the official why that's the best news i've heard all week so it's so interesting what's our first reaction to situations you know and the possibility and i think this really is a practice allows us to come home to our deepest intention, what we most care about. So there's training. There's a training for this living in a way that's virtuous and kind, not because we're trying to be a good person. The training is so that we can do the undo some of the fear and the habits that keep us from being who we really are. It's a homecoming to

who we really are. We get distracted. I was reading a book by Gary Boyle, a wonderful book called Tattoos on the Heart. It describes gangs in a very murderous part of L.A. and really some of the profound pain and shame and hatred and violence. Gregory Boyle is a Catholic priest who's worked with these gang members, males and females, for many years. He describes one encounter where a woman comes into him and starts in a little bit she's kind of wandering and he, you know, in her talk and he's really, really busy. He's got to go and lead some ceremony and he's late. But she's kind of meandering and kind of talking slowly and all over the place. And all of a sudden she looks at him and she's telling him about her addiction and just, kind of the horrors of her life. And all of a sudden, she looks at them and says, I am a disgrace. I am a disgrace. And he said, everything stopped. And he said, all of a sudden, my shame met hers, because I had mistaken her to be an interruption. I had mistaken her to be an interruption.

How many times are we on our way and busy and in some way take our conversation with someone else, our encounter to be in the way. There's a beautiful saying that to be kind, we must swerve regularly from our path. Our path being that kind of goal-oriented, as Seligman describes in the gardening, you know, trying to get something done, get somewhere else.

To be kind, we must swerve regularly from our path. So the teaching here in bringing mindfulness alive in daily life and taking refuge, this second wing in love, is to be willing to pause and see who's here, to not perceive others as an interruption, nor to perceive others as something,

part of our agenda that we're trying to get something from. Can we instead drop our agenda and see who's here? To look into these eyes and see, well, who's really here? Who's looking back? So there are two specific trainings, and these are the last pieces I'd like to share tonight, on how when we pause and pay attention with each other, we can really arrive in some understanding.

And the first of these trainings, and they are trainings, are where we actually look to see the vulnerability. In a way, the question is, what does this person? need. Thoreau said that the greatest miracle is to look through another's eyes for even a moment. Can we pause and sense what it's like for another person? And since I'm telling stories tonight a bit, one of the best that illustrates for me this practice is written by a Raya Mountain dancer. She writes about a meditation workshop that she's just finished teaching and at the end of it, end of a long day, a small, thin woman in an oversized park introduces herself as Isabel and asks Aria Mountain Dreamer, can I do this meditation alone on my own? Yes, I said, I'm sure you can,

although many people find it easier to establish a meditation practice with the help of a group. It's just hard to keep up the discipline on your own. But what will it give me? What will I get if I do this every day? Her tone took on a whining quality, and I felt my irritation rise as she continued. How fast will it work? Will I feel a difference after a week?

How will I know it's working? This is exactly the kind of thing I detested. The quest for the quick fix, the desire for guaranteed outcomes, the simple answer. Do this and you will get that. My sons were waiting for me, and I wanted to go home.

I took a deep breath. I looked directly at Isabel, and set my knapsack down on the floor. I tried to slow down my words, thinking that maybe if I spoke slower, I would feel more patient. Well, I said, meditation is more processed

than a goal-oriented activity. It can help you become more aware of what's going on within and around you, and this can help reduce stress. My best advice is to try it and be patient with yourself. I picked up my bag and started to button my coat. I really did have to leave, and I wanted to get out while I was feeling

virtuous for not snapping her head off. But as I started to move away, Isabel suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm with surprising strength. But what I want to know, she said, her voice rising in a crescendo that bordered on real panic, is will it help me find God? If I meditate, well, I have an experience of something or someone out there listening, something really with me. A wave of desperation swept out from her through me, and I was surprised to find my eyes. filling with tears. This woman wasn't looking for an easy answer or a guaranteed formula because she was lazy. She didn't want a simple plan because she was unable or unwilling to think critically about what would work. She wanted something she knew would

work and work quickly because she was hanging on by her fingernails. She wanted something that would work in a week because she was afraid that she simply wasn't going to make it through months are years. I put my hand gently over Isabelle's where it gripped my arm. It's okay, Isabel. We all feel desperate at times, I said. Nobody does it by themselves. We all need help. Her hand relaxed a little beneath mine and she started to cry. We talked for a while longer. There is no them. There is only us. When I left, I did not leave one of them. I said goodbye to one of us, a human being doing the best she can, searching for the home for which all of our hearts long.

In our moving through our day, the habitual trance is me here, world out there. It's very much me and them. So it's a profound and radical thing to pause and to have the intention to rediscover the sense of our belonging together to look through another's eyes. So I'd like to do a brief

reflection on this. And this is really the practice of the Buddhist practice of compassion. Karuna is the word in Pali. Taking these moments as you sit, you might close your eyes and find the way of sitting that allows you

to feel alert so you're sitting upright. But then see, what you can relax, see if you can relax your body a bit. Wherever you habitually tighten it might be the shoulders, the hands, softening the belly, perhaps as a way

of helping you to collect the attention taking a few full breaths. To bring to mind now someone in your life who you know is having a difficult time and sense you can bring them right here, right close in, see that you can see them and see what their

eyes look like and face looks like. and sense the circumstances of their life, what he or she's going through. This is the deepening of attention that you're actually pausing and attending, being in relationship with this person's experience some, sense what might be disappointing or frightening, or there might be a sense of failure, hurt.

And as you lean in with your attention, you might imagine experiencing this person's life from the inside out. And what does the world look like through this person's eyes right now? What is this person's heart like? How is this person experiencing life? So that even as you breathe in, you might let yourself feel with the in breath that you're touching and being touched by this person's experience.

And with the out breath, sense, space, openness, let it go. You're letting yourself experience this person's experience. so that even as you again abide in your own body and awareness, you can sense what is this person most need? What is the communication or gesture from you that might in some way touch this being in a helpful healing manner? And then imagine just offering what you can. It may be words or touch.

It may be energetic, but in some way offering your love, your presence, your care. Dick Nott Han, wonderful teacher of mindfulness, says that one of the most beautiful things we can offer to another is just simply the words, darling, I care about the suffering, letting someone know that you're there with them,

that you understand and see what's happening, that you care. As you imagine offering care to this person, sense them receiving it and what that's like. practice of offering compassion to someone can be linked with the breath. You can continue to breathe in and feel yourself touched by that person's experience. Feel that pain or disappointment, that hurt, that fear,

and breathing out, sensing that you can let it go into the space of awareness of love, that with the out breath you are offering to that person, that love, that care. being touched and offering your care. The alchemy of compassion is these basic components of allowing yourself to be present enough to really feel another person's experience, the sense what it's like for that person. And in that presence, that naturally will create

a kind of tenderness and responsiveness of your heart. Compassion is not just caring, there's actually an action component that when they do brain scans and look at the parts of the brain that are activated, when somebody's doing a compassion practice, it includes the motor cortex. So there's not just a feeling of tenderness and care. There's actually an urge to be of help. Hence a reaching out. We offer our care. So that's the first of the trainings. And they're described really as bodhisattva trainings, the trainings of an awakening being

that really bring this alive in our daily life to pause, to sense who's here, what's going on for this being? What does this person need? And to offer our kindness, our care. The second training is described as met to our loving kindness that we're pausing and not just seeing the vulnerability and the need, but seeing the beauty and the goodness and responding to that.

And that is a powerful practice because most people we know are not going around feeling connected to their own goodness. Most people are living more in a story of the what's wrong with me than the goodness, right? So when you start moving through life and pausing and sensing, Oh, wow, look who's here. And in some way, being a mirror of those qualities that you see, it helps a person to come home to themselves, to trust who they are more.

We serve each other in that way. It's one of the most beautiful qualities of Sangha, our community, that we remind ourselves when we forget. We remind each other when we forget, and we all forget. We need each other to remember again. another story for you rachel naomi raman who's a wonderful teacher writer and healer describes how her grandfather died when she was seven years old and she had never lived in a world without him in it before and it was hard for her he says he looked at me as no one else

had and called me by a special name nashumela which means little beloved soul there was no one left to call me this anymore. At first I was afraid that without him to see me and tell God who I was, I might disappear. But slowly over time, I came to understand that in some mysterious way, I'd learned to see myself through his eyes and that once blessed, we are blessed forever. Many years later, when in her extreme old age, my mother surprisingly began to light candles and talk to God herself, I told her about these blessings and what they had meant to me. She had smiled at me, I have blessed you every day of your life, Rachel, she told me. I just never had the wisdom to do it out loud. How often do we come to realize that we love someone, but we haven't

really said, I love you recently, are in some way expressed that love with a more pure and direct quality of tenderness? We hold back. So this practice of metta, our love, loving kindness is a practice where we inwardly reflect on the goodness, our own goodness, each other, and we offer blessings. And that primes us so that we can actually move through daily life and sometimes out loud, sometimes energetically, become that kind of a mirror for each other. Because our programming is to look for what's wrong, it's an active training to start moving through the day and look for the beauty in each other. Thomas Merton says it's saints are not what they are because they're sanctity makes them admirable to others, he says,

but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else. I think that's so cool. This gift of sainhood makes it possible for us to admire everyone else. What if we could move around and really see who's there? So we do our final meditation of the evening on loving kindness, on this meta practice, And just as an entree to say, there's a description of Buddhism that the heart of Buddhism is compassion and the heart of compassion is compassion for ourselves. That the biggest truths are the ones we forget. And one of those biggest truths are, if we don't love the life that's within us,

we cannot truly embrace the life around us. if we don't come to start seeing that sacredness right here in this very aliveness and heart the one who's sitting right here who's listening who's attending we're not going to truly be able to see it elsewhere and that doesn't mean in our meditation practice in the practice we're about to do we always start by bringing the loving kindness to ourselves you're going to have to customize this one too and find out what's the easiest way for you to wake up that sense of care in the heart. That's the goal of the metta or loving kindness practice. Wake up the heart. And you might find sometimes it's easier to start by thinking of another person

or you might find it's really helpful to start right with moi. So let's begin again as you did before be conscious about how you're sitting so that the posture itself allows you to feel a sense of presence. let yourself be at home in this moment. Just aware of the feeling of the breath, relaxing with the breath. One of the images that's very conducive to waking up the heart is the image of a smile. So you might let yourself imagine the sky filled with a smile,

the big curve of a smile, and let that sense of a smile settle into the mind, filling your mind. It's as if there's a big curve, of light and openness, space, the thoughts can flow inside the space that's created, ideas, images, but there's an openness in the mind and then let that smile, that curve spread through the eyes, softening the eyes, corners of the eyes up a little, and then letting the sense of a smile spread through the mouth so you relax the jaw. And let there be, it's called

the half-smile of the Buddha, very slight but real smile at the mouth. Feel the inside of the mouse smiling. So the eyes are soft, smile at the mouth, and then feel the heart and sense a smile there, smiling into the heart, not to cover over anything, but to create space for what's there. Sensing the space of the smile as if it could radiate out and widening circles, just relaxing the body, the shoulders can relax. The hand's soft. The chest is open. Belly soft. Again, the eyes are smiling and the mouth, the mouth, the chest, the heart, smiling. Bringing to mind someone that you trust really cares about you, someone that knows you and cares about you. Since that person right here,

here. And since the look in that person's eyes when they're regarding you with that real friendliness, that appreciation, might be someone that's alive and close to or someone that's not alive. It could be your dog. It doesn't have to be a person. But a being that regards you with tremendous affection and appreciation. As if you could look through the eyes, of that being, just see the goodness that that being perceives and resting in your own body and heart, feel that person's love washing over you. Feel your appreciation for the loving connection. You might even mentally whisper, thank you. Just feel the bond. Feel your wishes for that person are being. May you be happy. May you be peaceful. You feel safe and at ease.

May you feel filled with loving presence, held and loving presence. May you be free. And bringing your attention to your own being right now. Feel the being that's sitting right here. And take some moments to allow yourself to reflect on the goodness of your own living being, your own heart. You might reflect on qualities that you like, your humor or your curiosity, your honesty, your care for others.

I might reflect on the deepest presence that's here, just the goodness of presence itself, of awakeness and openness and tenderness. You might reflect on your intention that waking up matters, that loving without holding back matters, that you have that sincerity of intention and the goodness in that, your intention is to help, to revere life, feel that reverence. So appreciating the being that's right here and sending messages of loving kindness to your

own being. I'll offer some of the more traditional messages as I just did before, but you can feel free to customize them, to offer to your own being what most nourishes your heart. May I be filled with loving presence. in loving presence. Maybe, may I be filled with loving kindness, held in loving kindness. May I be happy?

As you offer the phrase, imagine and feel that possibility of each blessing. May I be peaceful, feel safe and at ease, imagining it, feeling it. May this heart and mind awaken and be free.

And again, may I be filled with loving presence, presence, held in loving presence. Just to imagine that, feel that, sincerely offer that blessings yourself. May I be happy? May I be peaceful, safe and at ease. May this heart and mind awaken and be free. Taking some moments to bring to mind someone that you'd like to offer your healing blessings to. You'd like to offer the wishes of loving kindness. Somebody in your life. And again, as we did earlier, bring the sense of that person right here close in so that you can see and feel his or her energy right here.

And in this deep pause and attentiveness, sense this person's goodness. What it is that you love or appreciate about this person. You might sense the qualities, how this person is when they're amused or humored, their intelligence, the quality of mind, the way they express themselves when they're feeling very loving or generous. Just sense the sacredness that shines through the light that lives through this person, the awareness, the beingness. So that as you sense what you appreciate, there's a visceral experience in the heart of really caring, offering the blessings of loving kindness, just as you did for yourself. You could send the message and blessing,

may you be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence. And imagine that person feeling that love around and within them. May you feel my love now? Sense that. Sense the possibility of that person feeling, receiving, experiencing your love right now. May you be happy. May you be peaceful, feeling safe and at ease. May your heart and mind awaken and be free. Sensing the space of heart is vast and edgeless so that everybody, all living beings,

are really included in this care, in this field, sensing that you're offering your blessings to all beings, that you could hold the earth or mother in your lap and sense all beings everywhere in this heart that all beings might be filled with loving presence and held in loving presence, that all beings might realize that loving presence as their very source.

I read you the words of Thomas Merton. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts, where neither sin or knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war, for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big

problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. So a few more words before closing. started by saying we're really exploring these two wings of training our attention and one wing is the wing of mindfulness of noticing what's happening and we practice in a formal way and then we move through the day and learn to pause and breathe and attend and feel our bodies and then we train these ways of taking refuge in the heart where we bring that directly into our relationships where we pause and what would it be like in this world if people could really with each other take the moments to sense well what is life like for this person?

What do you need? Or take the moment to sense, wow, to see that beauty, the light in that person's eyes. And in some way be a mirror for that. So this is the training that we begin to learn to live from loving presence and to express that through the day. And I love the reminder from E. White when he says,

I wake up each morning torn between the desire to serve and the desire to savor. So we also pause and we remember what is precious and delicious in this moment over and over. Ultimately, and I use the word refuge a lot, we're learning to take refuge in presence. We're learning this undoing of old habits is an undoing of our habits of being lost in our thinking

and being goal-oriented in the sense of trying to check things off the list so that we're not racing to the finish line, we're really cherishing this moment. Because if we spend today, how we spend today is how we spend our life. And if today is a day where most of our moments are distracted, our worry moments, our planning moments, and we're not really contacting the life inside us or with each other, then that is the sorrow of our life.

We've skimmed the surface. This path of practice is an invitation. It's an invitation to go, you can go very, very deep on the spiritual path. And it comes out of intention just to remember what matters. Every day, what matters? So we learn to take true refuge. You know, we learn to pause and say, wait a minute, come back, and to live this moment from a place of presence,

to respond to our life with this heart that is ready for anything and everything, because it all happens. And we have the capacity to respond with a tremendous amount of spontaneity, a tremendous amount of creativity, and love. So I close with a final poem that I like a lot. this is called Bugs in a Bowl by David Budbell. Truly, that's his name. He says, I say that's right. Up the sides and back down, round and round over and over again. Sit in the bottom of the bowl, head in your hands, cry and moan, or look around. See your fellow bugs. Say, hi, how you doing?

Say, nice bowl. I know that's not like a lot of gravitoc. to it. But in a way, I wanted to close a little bit in this spirit of, you know, it doesn't have to be grim. We sometimes think spiritual practice is this grim thing, and it really comes out of a love for life. So it's with that that I wish you the blessings that you might take the moments to come home to presence and to live from that love of aliveness. Thank you and 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.