Tara Brach - Part 5 - Equanimity - A Heart That is Ready for Anything

Episode Date: March 15, 2014

2014-03-12 - Part 5 - Equanimity - A Heart that is Ready for Anything - Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy.

This class is the last of a five-part series. Each one of them has been recorded. You can get them on podcasts, download them. And it's a series on the different qualities of love that we experience. And we started with loving kindness, which is the quality of the heart that gets expressed when we encounter beauty, when we encounter goodness, the mystery. The second class was compassion.

and the third was forgiveness, both of which arise naturally, a kind of tenderness when we experience the suffering that's within and around us. And then we explore joy, which is when we're open to the 10,000 joys and sorrows, when we have that openness that really includes all that's there, there's a quality of inner freedom that's expressed as joy. So this class is on equanimity. and equanimity is the last of what are called the Brahma Vaharas or the divine abodes, the resting places. And often when I begin with equanimity, what people ask me or kind of respond with is that this is the one that doesn't sound so juicy or so sexy or so fun, you know, it's okay, equanimity.

And what does that have to do with love? and if you really look closely at each of the other classes and explorations, equanimity is the very grounds of any expression of love. It's the groundwork. Economities, the freedom or balance, our openness we experience when we're mindfully present. And that is what allows us, when we're not judging or resisting anything,

that's what gives us this quality. of openness that lets some different flavors of love flow through. So with equanimity, there's no opposing or controlling or demanding of reality. And when I was thinking about that, I got reminded of a cartoon that's recently kind of gone viral where you have a demonstration going on in the mall and it's being led with a monk who has a megaphone and he's saying, what do we want? Mindfulness. When do we want? When do we want it now, you know. He's so demanding.

Anyway, so that's not equanimity. So equanimity really gives us this capacity to respond to the world that's in front of us in a way that is full with heart. And one of my favorite descriptions

of it is a heart that's ready for anything. A heart that's ready for anything. It's a heart that is so open and steady and trusting of life that it can respond in a beautiful way to what's in front of us. One of the meditations that I've always been drawn to is called duck meditation, and I'd like to share that one with you. Now we are ready to look at something pretty special. It is a duck riding the ocean 100 feet beyond the surface.

hundred feet beyond the surf. As he cuddles in the swells, there's a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he's part of it. He can rest while the Atlantic heaves because he rests in the Atlantic. Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is, and neither do you. But he realizes it somewhere, and what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it. Duck meditation. He reports, poses in the immediate as if it were infinity, which it is. That is religion and the duck has it. How about you? Duck meditation. So I like the wisdom in that, that the given of our situation is that there are continual waves that we encounter. And if there's such a thing as choice, we can either fight them

in some way judge them, not like them, feel oppressed by them or we can sit down in them we can open to what is with a quality of grace and a quality of presence. So when we talk about equanimity and think of it in terms of our body and our nervous system just like love and joy,

it's our natural state to be in equanimity when we're at rest. When we're not carried away by fight, flight, or freeze, that is our natural state. And it correlates to the parasympathetic nervous system. There's a kind of a replenishment that's going on. It's restorative. And the brain waves correspond to a relaxed, open focus.

The brain is not in a kind of narrow, tense, fixated place of trying to get somewhere or defend or achieve. There's an openness. But there's a lot of misunderstandings about the state of equanimity. I think the biggest one is that it's in some form a kind of passivity, which it's not at all. It's not being resigned.

It's not being dead or unresponsive. I remember one point seeing a little quip that a coach was working with one of his players who had pretty much flunked everything academically, and he asked him, what is it with you, son? Is it apathy or indifference? And the response was,

I don't know and I don't care. So it's not a withdrawal. Equanimity is not a withdrawal, because that's subtle aversion. It's not about, it's not any withdrawal from social activism. In fact, I consider equanimity is the ground of all effective transformation.

We can look at the, spiritual leaders that have inspired so many of us, whether it's Dalai Lama, who is just here recently, Ansang Suu Kyi, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. I think of Nelson Mandela because when you think of him being jailed for two plus decades and not reacting to his jailers, in fact befriending them, stepping beyond anger and vengeance to this place where he could actually lead the country from apartheid, from all this hatred to the beginnings of a multiracial democracy, that is equanimity in service of freedom, his non-reactivity, that he had a vaster view than an ego that had to react to his particular circumstances.

The essence of equanimity is when our identity is not confined to a sense of separate egoic self. So this is a big thing and it's a deep thing. In other words, equanimity is not easy because most of our living moments, we have a narrative about a self who's encountering something that's going to be difficult or who's trying to prove something or has been offended. and if we're living inside that idea of who we are, we're not going to feel equanimity. So equanimity arises in the moments

that in some way we've woken up out of that confined identity and we sense a larger belonging to the Atlantic, you know, to the world, to each other, to the earth. There's a lot of ways to feel that enlarged identity. But our predicament is this, that we are designed to have strong conditioning to feel separate and to be reactive. We're designed to have a very active limbic system. And what that means is that every day, if we really watch closely,

our day is filled with pleasantness and unpleasantness, and we're constantly on some level going after more comfort and pleasure and some way tensing against what we're afraid of. and we do it in ways through our planning and our worrying, and we do it in the moments of just flinching of the ways we constantly readjust how we're sitting, are moving. An illustration of this. This is a man that's responding to a request for information on an insurance form, and I think this shows a lot about our way of being in the world.

He says in response to your request from information, and block three of the accident form, I put in poor planning as the cause of my accident. You said I should explain more fully. I trust the following will be sufficient. I'm a brick layer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a six-story building.

When I completed my work, I discovered I had 500 pounds of brick left. Rather than carry them down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel attached to the side of the building. Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the brick onto it.

Then I went back to the ground and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the 500 pounds of bricks. You can visualize this, right? You will note in block number 11 of the form that I weigh 135 pounds. Due to my surprise of being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mine and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming down.

This explains the fractured skull. Slowing slightly, I continued my ascent, stopping when the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep in the pulley. Fortunately, by this time I'd regain my presence of mine, was able to hold tightly to the rope in spite of my pain. At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel now. I'll weight approximately 50 pounds. I refer you again to my weight in block number 11. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building.

In the vicinity of the third floor, I again met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the fractured ankle. The counter with the barrel slowed me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell onto the bricks. Fortunately, only my toes are cracked. I'm sorry to report, however, that as I lay there on the bricks in pain and unable to stand and watch the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my presence of mine and let go of the rope. This is reactivity.

So it's a great story, and we do this in small ways through the day. We forget the bigger picture, and we're in immediate reactivity. So a huge part of practice on the spiritual path is when we get caught up the waves, how do we regain a sense of presence? And I'm sure each one of you can think of a situation today or in the last few days where you got reactive and behaved in ways you wished you hadn't, or at least internally proliferated in ways you wished you maybe didn't, right? How do we find our balance again? Because those are moments that rather than living, rather than being in that quality of presence where we can respond with care and intelligence,

those are moments when we're in trance. So we look then at, we're going to look tonight at two ways of coming back into balance with duck meditation and one of them is how do you sit down on the waves when they're happening rather than react to the waves, how do you just be here? And the others, how do we remember We're part of the Atlantic. Because there is a remembering that's possible on this path that can change everything. There's an understanding that widens our view in our body and our sense of energy and beingness opens up.

Okay, so part one. Mindfulness is our training and sitting down in the waves. And the elements, just to remind yourself of the elements of mindfulness, this. One element is that it's purposeful, that we start sensing the triggers and then we get on purpose in those moments. On purpose, I'm going to pay attention. This is part of the rewiring of the brain that's completely doable. Just the way we're wired to kind of forget and contract and get lost, we can train ourselves to remember. So there's a purposefulness. And then the first element that we really, when we think,

of what is mindfulness, there is a recognition of what's happening in the moment. And as training in equanimity, you might begin to do that by mentally whispering what you're noticing. Fear, anxiety, jealousy, obsessing. Okay? Just mental whisper. So rather than being lost in what's happening, there's a part of you that's witnessing or beholding or recognizing that's bigger than the reaction. Okay, so on purpose and the naming what's going on. And then the other, we call these kind of the wings, like you're recognizing what's happening.

The other is to purposely allow it. Now, my language for that saying yes, that in some way we're agreeing, and it's not like we're saying, I love this, I want this to keep happening. It's like we're saying, this is reality, this is the wave of this moment. So we're acknowledging, in an honest way, the reality of the moment.

Yes. Name it and say yes. Now, for there to be a full-blown equanimity, that yes needs to be embodied, where you're not only allowing the wave to be there, but you're opening to the felt sense of it. That takes practice. We can often do a precursory kind of yes,

like, okay, yes to this anxiety, but it's not like we sit down into it. Do you know what I mean, where we really feel it in our bodies? So these are the basic elements and the challenge, and that we encounter this over and over again when we're practicing, whether it's in a sitting practice or when we're out, you know, in the field, is that there's what's called Impali, the language of the Buddha, the paponcha. And paponcha means proliferation. That before we know it, it's not just anxiety, but it has just tumbled into a whole constellation of changing thoughts and feelings. So we're

not just dealing with a simple, oh, I think I feel the squeeze of anxiety, it's much more fast-moving and changing and tumbling than that. So, for example, you are trying to get to a doctor's appointment and there's traffic, right? So it's not just a feeling of anxiety and you name it and you open to it. What happens is, well, you start thinking about being late and then you get angry at yourself or having not made enough times. You're feeling that kind of anger squeeze. And then you have the thought that maybe they'll put the person that's next in the schedule in front of you and then you'll be later and then you'll be late for the carpool. And oh my God, I've been the only parent that's late for the carpool and

their shame and a feeling of not a good not good enough and so cycling through thoughts and feelings and landing up with a very identified egoic state of a self that doesn't have enough time is oppressed and failing is that kind of thing familiar to anyone I mean that that's what happens so how do we do duck meditation when we're on the way to the doctor and and late, are in any situation you might be thinking about. How do we at some point let the naming become clear enough, become purposeful enough, become committed enough that we really say yes and let the body be an anchor? If you can stay long enough in the body, some freedom starts to happen. Now here's why. Papancha, our proliferation, is driven by thought.

No thought, no papansha. Emotions on their own, supposedly 1.5 minutes that they arise and pass, but it's the thoughts, oh, that other patient might go before, oh, I'm going to be late for the carpal, oh, other parents, it's that that keeps triggering the biochemistry of mood that then trips off more feelings, so we get caught. If you can become purposeful and say, say, oh, this is what's happening. You get a little space from the thinking. And if you can be purposeful and say yes and come in your body, if that sustains some, some space starts opening up. There's a little more freedom. Now, just to say that it's often the reason it's difficult to stay in the ways is because they're very unpleasant. Most of us have well-trained

ways of exiting when we feel that restlessness or edginess or, you know, the angst. And so what keeps us there, what convinces us to say, okay, I'm going to stay anyway, is there something in each one of you that has a kind of wisdom that knows that it's only by staying, learning to stay, that there's going to be any freedom. So there's some intuition that convinces us, and then we gain more and more what the psychologists call affect tolerance, and what you might consider just more space for what's happening. But the greatest support in staying, and this is perhaps the technique that I think is the

most important to remember, is when the waves are difficult, add in a gesture of kindness. If you want to come back to equanimity, the reason you're leaving the waves is because of aversion. There's a hardening, there's a tensing against, a gesture of kindness, which could be just, oh, this is hard. Or as I often do, it's okay, sweetheart. Just some message inward that reminds me in some way that there's love, there's goodness, there's kindness, helps to soften and decondition that patterning of leaving the waves flapping away. Okay? So in time, and here's the magic of it, like any practice, you will get more and more the knack

of noticing, oh, Papancha's happening, on purpose, name what's happening, say yes, stay, stay, stay, and find a space that is incredibly precious. The space that you find is really, as I mentioned, it's that heart that's ready for anything. And it's, well, maybe I'll read you this. This is what one woman wrote from doing this training and this practice for a number of years and then how it served her when she had very little time left to live. Because isn't that it? How do we find equanimity when we're facing the greatest losses?

Like even when we're anxious about being late, we're really anxious about loss. We're going to lose something. We're going to lose esteem. We're going to lose a sense of being okay. We're going to lose time. Lose life. Okay, this is what she writes. My days are short and as I grow weaker,

I experience so much gratitude for my meditation. not only the joy and ease it brought, but the hard parts, for every bored and restless sitting, and every fearful fantasy, and every pain and ache I sat through, and every itch I didn't scratch, was a training for kindness, a training for the muscle for bearing witness,

for the trusting spirit that carries me now as I face my death. So this training to sit down in the waves is the training that really allows us to open to the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows that actually happen in our lives. So we're not always the egoic self that's trying to control and rushing away or trying to get to the finish line or defending. Let's just take a moment. We'll practice a little bit together of this little taste of duck meditation and then move on. So taking these moments to bring yourself right here, really experiencing the breath and the body in the

present moment, you might reflect on a situation that's stressful, one that you'd like to have more equanimity in. And see if you can imagine being there. Just let yourself go to the situation so that you're kind of aware of what triggers you. That might mean bringing to mind a person's face or the room you're in. And if you notice you've come up with a situation that's not just stressful but traumatizing, then take a few full breaths and pick a different one because it's not going to be useful in a few minute exploration to dive into trauma. Something that just triggers you, gets you annoyed, gets kind of triggers kind of an addictive, got to have something a different way, got to consume.

about a blame. And just notice when you're in that situation, what are the thoughts going through your mind? What are you believing about yourself or the other person or life? And what are you feeling in your body? What's the energy in your body? If you could just mentally whisper and name it. Like on purpose, just name it. And let the whisper be gentle. So you begin to be the awareness that's observing too. What's going to be? going on, just to name it and see if you can say yes to the waves that are there. Just let go of the thoughts for a while and see if your intention can be to sit down in the waves and if it helps to put your hand on your heart or offer some kindness as you do that,

let this be your experiment. Can you sit down in the waves, set aside the thoughts, the beliefs, and reconnect with the spirit? space of presence, just breathing, feeling, presence. Sense a bit more of this possibility, this heart that's ready for anything, that there's more space, more access to the intelligence and kindness of your being. When you can slow it all down, when you can mentally whisper to yourself what's happening, naming it, saying yes, being with the feelings. Taking a few breaths if you'd like, and just knowing that when we're caught in the thick, we often don't have time to slow it all down.

But we can practice when we do have time with what comes up and start to get the knack of stepping out of thoughts and stepping into our body. So taking a few breaths and coming back, opening your eyes. I'd like to share a story of someone who learned this lesson in a way that I thought was very informative. This is a woman at a retreat, and one of the things we teach at retreats is how to bring mindfulness into walking. So there's a walking meditation practice that's really, really beautiful. And it's a way of staying awake in your body and not thinking of walking as just, I'm trying to get somewhere, but these moments count too.

But she didn't really like it. She was having difficulty with walking meditation, and asked if she could just do sitting practice through it. and one of the teachers that she was working with said instead of that why don't you stop sitting altogether and do just walking meditation all morning so she moaned and negotiated and then agreed on the teacher suggested all day they agreed on half the day so here's her note describing what happened okay

she says long walking meditation all morning assignment completed thank you now I can meditate while moving I thought I might discover why I've been so resistant to it, but no circumstances taught me something else instead. I chose to walk in the annex walking room because it's small, beautiful, and usually quiet. Today, however, it was noisy as hell. There was some guy in there walking as the little engine that could wearing noisy boots. Well, I thought, surely he'll be gone when the walking period ends. No such luck. This madman pounded his way through an hour and a half, except when he paused to drink or remove a noisy

layer of clothing. I tried META. Surely he must have a lot of pain to be so driven. Then I realized I wanted to kill the SOB. I stood there noting hate, hate. Later I stood in the middle of the room and wept, tears, tears. Then I got to the point that I realized that whatever problem he had was his, not mine, and after that I got quiet, and he was just sound. And so I walked and breathed, and he paced and pounded, and pretty soon it was. was all the same to me, his noise, my breath, the movement of my body. After an hour and a half he left and it was incredibly quiet, which was different, but not as much better as I had expected, mostly just different. Thank you. So the teaching really is that we have all sorts of

ideas of how we want life to be and we spend a lot of time trying to make it a certain way and get away from it being the way we don't want it to be. And really what brings us peace and happiness is the quality of presence, not the what's happening. Equanimity is the wisdom that knows it, that just has an openness and lets the life of the moment be as it is. It's the heart that's ready for anything. Now I have different ways of practicing. One way is looking at emails because emails are this incredible world.

of going into one little, you know, black hole and then to another. And it's like you're really disappearing into all different flavors of trance. And can we, and they bring up different, each one will bring up a different universe inside us. So is there a way to just stay, you know, within the midst of it? I'll share with you if I can find it. I think I have it here. One of my favorite of the email stories is a couple from Michigan. They decide to go to Florida to thaw out during a really,

cold winter like this one. So they plan to stay at the very same hotel as they stayed at for their honeymoon 20 years earlier because of hectic schedules he has to go a day ahead. So he goes and he flies on Thursday she flies down to Florida the following day. He checks into the hotel. There's a computer in his room so he decides to send it an email to his wife but he leaves out one letter in the address and accidentally so he sends it out. Doesn't realize he made an error. Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a woman had just returned home from her husband's funeral. He was a minister for many years. He had been called home to glory after a heart attack.

So the widow decided to check her email expecting messages from relatives and friends. And after reading the first message, she fainted. So the widow's son rushed into the room and found his mother on the floor and here's what he saw on the screen. To my loving wife. subject, I've arrived. Date 20th of March, 2014, I know you're surprised to hear from me.

They have computers here now and you're allowed to send emails to loved ones. I've just arrived and been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then. Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. sure is hot down here. So, thus far we've talked about the one major way we come home to equanimity, and that's absolutely coming into the waves of the moment. It's contacting them, not believing our thoughts. Getting the, there's a wonderful phrase I often go to from Sokney-Rimbichet, a bed and teacher that's real but not true. Like this woman's experience, it was real to her, it wasn't true. Well, we might think, well, most of the things we're talking about,

you know, if I get caught in traffic, I'll be late for an appointment. If I don't hand a report in, you know, I'll get judged and fail. They seem more real. But the truth is our reaction is a place of contraction. We're living in an idea of the future and it's distorted. And it's as if something's terribly wrong happening to a self that's separate and in trouble. We're forgetting a much larger picture that if we were in a different space of heart and mind

and remembering, there would be some room for the anxiety that goes through. We'd still be anxious, but we wouldn't be hooked. So step one is to get unhooked, to come down into the waves. But the second piece I mentioned is how can we remember that we're part of the Atlantic? How can there be some remembering that helps us to relax, backs open and have room for the waves. And one of the ways that we remember is that we're not alone.

If we are with each other and sharing what's going on, there's a deep comfort and it's not just because misery loves comfort, it's because we realize it's not so personal, that there are others with us, that we belong to something larger when we realize we all struggle with the same fears and hurts and hopes and feelings of failure. For one man who came home from Iraq from the war was struggling with periods of rage and then numbness, what saved him was being part of a support group with other vets that had come home

that he could keep on saying, others feel this too. That was the mantra, others feel this too, others feel this too. it let him feel compassion towards myself and the others in the Tibetan practice of Tunglin the compassion practice part of what makes it so powerful

is you feel directly the waves of what's going on but then on purpose you remember others that are feeling the same thing and you're remembering a truth it's bigger than this separate cell it's part of the power of 12-step group that it's not my shame, my drinking, it's the addiction that we share together. It makes more room for the pain of it.

We know that if somebody holds hands with a loved one, the level of fear in their body goes down. We know if people hug that there's that oxytocin, the 20-second hug, you know, that actually oxytocin, the sense of well-being starts arising in the body. Connecting makes room for the waves. It helps us to cultivate equanimity. Of course the other examples for many of us are being in nature. That if we're feeling our belonging to the earth and the skies, there's something in that just broadens and gives us depth and vastness that there's room.

So those are some elements of remembering the ocean-ness, but I want to name a couple more. And one of them is the remembering of this two will pass. That if we remember the truth that these waves are always moving, that they're coming and they're going, there's something in that changing world that allows us to rest in a much more vast and peaceful place. Also in a place that's more cherishing. This is Ajan Cha. He says, he holds up a glass and it's his favorite glass.

This is a Thai monk who's a wonderful teacher. And he says, do you see this glass? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over, my elbow knocks it off the shelf,

and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, of course. but when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious. So one of the pathways to this space that allows our heart to shine through the space of equanimity is realizing that these waves really do come and go. It allows us to cherish. I remember with Ticknod Han

at one retreat that I went to with a very dear friend And at the end of the retreat, he taught a certain way of hugging, where we'd first bow to each other and say namaste, which means I see the divine in you. And then we'd hug each other, and with the first breath, you'd say, I'm going to die. You'd mentally recite that. And then with the second breath, you're going to die. And with the third, and we have just these precious moments together. when we remember this ocean is changing waves,

we rest in an ocean-ness that just cherishes the moments. And there's something yet more. That when we remember this changingness, we also touch into something timeless. It's kind of like one Tibetan teacher asked the question, he says, if everything's changing, then what's really true? My great teacher in equanimity right now is my mom. And I've shared with you that she's in hospice,

and she's kind of fading in the sense that her energy is going. She's not in a lot of pain, but she's losing more and more of her being in a form that can do things. And she's very accepting and the waves of coming and going. She's very open to it and very grateful. and appreciative. And one of the big changes I've seen is how she's relating to my father who died 10 years ago. And for the first bunch of years, they had a great, wonderful, loving marriage, and her grief was very pronounced, and there was a bit of an edge of bitterness, like he got taken

too soon. He was 78. Who knows what too soon is? But when she'd remember, there would be love, but there would always be that edge of the loss and the bitterness he got taken from me. And more recently there's been a shift where she'll talk about him and the grief and the sorrow is there. It's not that it's gone away. But I think because she's open so fully to the...

She's coming and going that openness has allowed her to touch into some timeless loving with my father so that now when she talks about him She talks about how cute he was, how sweet he was, how much love they shared, and then just, I think it was three days ago, and she said, and he's with me right this moment, I can feel that right now. For each of us, in the moments when we're truly open to how this life comes and goes, through that openness shines a very timeless quality of presence in love.

That's the possibility of this path, that we open to the changing ways and discover what is timeless and does not die, a love and a presence that's really our home. So maybe what I'll end with tonight, I wasn't sure if I was going to read this or not, but I think it's a beautiful example that I started by saying that equanimity is far from dry. really it's a fertile space of balance and presence that lets what's here shine through. When we're reactive, there's kind of an opakness and our purity can't shine through so well. But when we pause and we notice what's happening, we come into the moment, then that universal intelligence and radiance just can emanate. So this is one woman, Emily Bennington, I'm a very, and that universal intelligence,

her blog. She's a mindfulness practitioner and she shared a story in her own life that I think really shows how this happens. Last night my mother told me she has breast cancer. If you've ever been in a situation like this, she'll recognize the flood of emotions they hit you all at once. Sadness, guilt, anger, future tripping, regret. The initial shock is truly overwhelming. And as it usually does, my mind immediately went to planning most. What needs to happen? What are your treatment options? How soon can we get the lump removed? You get the idea. Thank God for this work, this mindfulness practice,

because despite a complete head spiral, I still had presence enough to ask myself a very important question. What am I noticing now? What am I noticing now? So this is the on-purpose. And in that moment, I was able to see something I would have missed otherwise. my mother didn't want to talk about any of those things as I was weighing her options

lumpectomy with sentinel node biopsy or mastectomy she sat in a high top chair in my kitchen staring blankly into a cup of coffee I was trying to be strong for her sake in mind but it suddenly became clear that wasn't what she needed she was scared and needed to be scared I debated whether to give her a hug which sounds terrible I know

but I was barely holding it together and scurring around, making dinner, pouring over doctor paperwork, and staying busy was my way of avoiding a total collapse. But being present allowed me to shift to her way. I took a breath, walked across the room, and wrapped my arms around her. It was an awkward sideways hug, but it was also a long, necessary one, and then something happened. Slowly she started rocking side to side. like a mother rocks a child, except the child was now the caretaker. It was a sweet, tiny moment I'll never forget,

and one that I surely would have missed were it not for the power of mindfulness. I hope you are also able to appreciate a tiny moment today, and I hope it's as beautiful, even if it's as heartbreaking, at the same time. That's all we have is tiny moments. And the more we have our heart's intention to pause down and be there for them, the more we discover that preciousness, that love, that presence, that really is what makes our life worth living.

So let's close together, just in a simple way, invite you to come into stillness. and as we've explored, just to take a moment to feel that on-purposeness of the heart that simply wants to notice what's really here right now. Just to scan through your body, relax and feel the life in the body. If there's some place in your body, your heart that's calling for your attention, just opening to that and breathing with it. So you're letting yourself be open to the waves of the moment, the sounds and sensations,

the changing feelings, sensing the waves, sensing the ocean. If you're not afraid of the waves, you can really trust and trust in the ocean. Just let the waves be here. If it helps to invite yourself in with a gesture of kindness, with some message to your own heart that's kind, loving, forgiving, feel free. In closing with the poem from poet Dana Faults, settle in the here and now, reach down into the center where the world is not spinning and drink this holy peace. Feel relief flood into every cell, nothing to do, nothing to be but what

you are already. Nothing to receive, but what flows effortlessly from the mystery into form. Nothing to run from or run toward. Just this breath, awareness knowing itself as embodiment. Just this breath. Awareness waking up to truth. Namaste and thank you. 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.