Tara Brach - Path of Transformation

Episode Date: December 29, 2010

2010-12-29 - Awakening arises out of presence with the changing ground of our lives. This talk explores three key gateways to liberating presence: Forgiveness, inner fire (aspiration) and a deep inquiry into the nature of our own mind. This talk was given at the IMCW New Year's Retreat. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

Namaste and good evening. There is one teaching that really is at the center of our practice that you've probably noticed. It's the theme or the stream that moves through, which is that it doesn't matter what is happening. All that matters is how we're relating to it. It really doesn't matter what the diagnosis we get are the, you know, what happens with the job or the relationship.

We will suffer if we relate to the changes in our life with reactivity, and we won't suffer if we arrive right here in presence. And when I say arrive in presence, there are depths of presence. I don't mean like a glancing blow at presence. I mean like we really, really arrive. So Rumi says this. Do you pay regular visits to yourself? Do you pay regular visits to yourself?

Don't argue or answer rationally. Let us die and dying reply. I like the inquiry. Do you make regular visits to yourself? But what does he mean by let us die? in my way of understanding in order to arrive here at home in this moment

there is always a continual releasing or surrendering of the fixation into thoughts we're dying to the trance we're letting go of this conceptual reality this virtual reality that we hang out in the story that we hold tight to give us an orientation

we're dying to the small self that we're identified with in order to arrive in a sense of beingness or wholeness. And it's over and over again. I mean, to really visit ourselves, to really come home into the moment, there's a letting go. One of the first retreats I was at, I think it was a very first retreat,

very early on someone gave that classic kind of zen-like setting of a man is chased by a tiger and he kind of plunges over the edge of a precipice and he's hanging onto this vine and he calls out help

help is anyone there and there's a voice that says yes and he goes God yes help I'll do anything and God says let go and the guy goes is anyone else

there. And of all the jokes I've heard over decades now at these talks, and this one stuck with me, because we will do anything before we'll let go. Anything. We'll take any backdoor we have. You know, we bicycle away from presence. And the more stress, the faster we bicycle. And, you know, we listened last night to Pat's talk.

And it's like, when the, any... energies arise that are difficult. We will try anything we can before we'll just simply stop and let be anything. We're always trying to control things. Have you noticed? Yeah, okay, okay, so I'm not alone in this one. So the path of transformation, which is really what we're exploring together these handful of days, is really about bringing a wise attention.

It's how we pay attention. And what I'd like to explore with you tonight are three essential gateways to presence that I find is kind of a hub that has really served me on my path. And they are brought out very well in an ancient Indian teaching story that I'd like to share. I like to reflect on it periodically. You might remember it from a few years ago. So let me read a little bit to you. And then we'll explore these three gateways.

So this is a story of a young man, Nachiketa, and the way he came to stand face to face with death. And after he lost several friends, he became aware of the brevity of life and the shallowness that comes from pursuing just exclusively worldly pursuits. And he was a son of a rich merchant, and he had a very strong,

reaction when his father was encouraged by the Brahmin priests of the community to make a grand donation to the temple in order to ensure a good rebirth in the afterlife. He was appalled by the idea that virtue and merit could be purchased in a proud public display in town center while everyone in the town looked on. The day arrived and the father says, I give my cattle, my gold, all the value to the priests of the temple. Not just. Kata goes, all you value, ha, what about me, your son? So his father's publicly shamed and offended and Natchikata's father responded angrily, I give you as well, I give you to death. A little family conflict here. So Natchikato's eyes blazed and he replied, I accept and he left.

So Natchikato went to a remote spot in the deepest forest and sat waiting for death to show himself. For three days and three nights he sat there intent and motionless, determined to face death in his spiritual quest. Sitting through hunger, pain, and exhaustion, Nachi Kata came at last to the land of Yama, the king of death, who's also known as the keeper of accounts. There he was greeted by death's three assistants, pestilence, famine, and war, who explained that Lord Yama was away. He's out collecting rent. That's fine, Nautch. Natchie Keta says, I'll wait. When death returned, three days later,

his assistants told him of this most unusual young man who had come seeking him. Welcome to my kingdom. I see you are a man intent on his journey. Alas, I've kept you waiting. I will make up for the three days you waited by offering you a boon. You may choose three blessings for your journey.

During the time of journeying and waiting, Natchikata had entered a luminous state of mind, and he recognized what he most needed to ask for to go on. The first boon Natchikata requested was forgiveness for himself and all he touched. Let my father look upon me with the same joy as the day I was born. Natchikata knew that only by releasing his past, by reconciling with all that was incomplete in his heart, could he continue his journey. So he knew he couldn't put his father out of his heart if he was to continue on word. So

reunion with life is the blessing granted by forgiveness. And the boon of forgiveness left Natchikata's heart open and clear. So Lord Yama gave him this first boon. Your first boon was a wise one, Natchikata. Now what will be your second? Speak. After a moment's

of silent reflection, Natchikata spoke. I asked the blessing of inner fire. Inner fire. Natchie Kata knew that to succeed on his spiritual journey, he would need both ardor and courage to follow the path with his whole being. Sinachikaeda asked for the strength to give himself fully to the quest.

Inner fire is wholehearted energy, spiritual passion, Shakti, the full aliveness of being. Another word is devotion. It's the devotion or passion that lets us really give ourselves to what matters. So again, Lord Yama honored Natchikata's wisdom and blessed him with this inner strength, this devotion. Free from the restrictions of old conflict through forgiveness and filled now with the limitless energy of aspiration, Natchikata had found much of what is necessary

to pass through initiation, through these transformations of awakening. Finally, Lord of Death asked Natchikata to name his last boon. After reflecting, Natchikata looked at death, and said, I ask for that which is immortal. With some surprise, death reminded this audacious young man that he had come to the last boon and he could choose anything. Lord Yama then conjured a visions of what Natchikata might choose instead,

a harem of beautiful maidens to travel with on his journey, a royal golden war chariot with the world's fastest deeds, a palace where Natchikata would be king. Natchikata viewed all these and more. Why not choose among these, urged again, but Natchikato is a determined youth, not easily led astray. And so when he questioned, then he questioned the visions. Well, 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 your third boon. He handed Natchikata a sin. simple yet extraordinary gift, a mirror. If you wish to find the secretive immortality Natchikata, I cannot help you more than this. You yourself 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, Natchikaeta. In this way, you will find what you seek. Whether it is enacted in initiation or in meditation, we too must face

Lord Yama. We must ask who it is that is born and dies. As Natchikata gazed into the sacred mirror, he entered into the profound spiritual questioning that leads to the deathless. When everything he held was released and stripped

away, a pure and timeless heart arose. Natchikata was free. So let's just take a little time together tonight to maybe unfold the elements of the story and really what it begins with is what brings us all to the spiritual path is some form of disenchantment or disillusion where we become aware of change we become aware of the fact that it's fleeting I've spoken

with several of you here that even just recently in the last six months eight months year have in some way more deeply registered, this is happening fast this life. It's a flash. I don't want to waste time. I want to really be here for what matters. So there's a kind of a disillusionment that we're not immortal, we're not going to be here forever. But then it happens in much more disruptive ways where we get that we can't. control things and that brings us to the path. It happens in such big ways in our life. One person here described her mother having a brush with death, mortality, cancer and that, just the wake up and another niece horrible addiction and there's nothing she can do. The pain of that and another

whose job is threatened. It's a scary thing and another whose marriage recently collapsed. And I could go on and on and pretty much name most of us here who have really gotten that it's not in control. These bodies, we can't control them. So many of us here. That's the big one for me. It's just so obvious that I cannot control or predict or in any way direct what happens with this body. And others, including myself, our minds and our memories. You know, it's just out of control. And it happens in small ways, you know, and in large ways, and where this particular retreat, Jonathan got a bug, and all of a sudden he had planned to be fully here.

He got sidelined for a day. I think he'll be back tomorrow. But, you know, it's out of control. And then we see it in our meditations. It doesn't matter what we have as an idea for a good meditation. You know, it just the mind does what it does. This one person said, the mind has no shame.

It just goes where it goes. It does what it does. We obsess. We get anxious. We get restless. It's humbling. One person writes, this life is a test.

It's only a test. If it were a real life, then you would have been told and you would have been given more specific information about where to go and what to do. So, when we face Lord Yama, which is both in the big ways,

we get the diagnosis, you know, life, something big falls apart, are in the day-to-day ways that we see that life is not cooperating. When we face Lord Yama, we have two choices. And one is that we can react. We can continue our strategies of fight and flight and believing our stories, which is right inside that. We can continue to buy into our stories.

Are we can stop? and turn towards refuge, towards true refuge, which is really another way of saying towards presence, towards love. We can relate to what's happening, not react to it. So this story gives us a sense of three of the arctuple capacities that support us in this latter choice of presence, three arctipal capacities that allow us to take refuge in the face of death. and I think when we scrape beneath the surface

every one of us whether we use the word safety or love or whatever every one of us wants to find a way to live from our fullest given this changing living dying world we want to live this life fully

we want to love without holding back we don't want to be in a continual contraction where we're kind of defending against the inevitable. So these three capacities, the first one, the first boon that Nachi Kata asked for was forgiveness. Now, it's much easier when we're very aware of mortality to forgive. Have you noticed with people that have been dying

or if you're with a dying person, a lot of the pettiness falls away, doesn't it? So it's a challenge when we're, when we're caught in this armoring and we're not remembering that we, you know, that we could go in any moment. As I speak about forgiveness, so it's a little bit of a continuation of this afternoon. But you can also use the word acceptance. For some people, forgiveness just doesn't sit right, so I really invite you to go either way. But it has to do with letting go of our resistance to what's happening, our resistance to ourselves to each other, letting go of our

verse of judgments and stories. And there's a very good inquiry we can ask at any moment, which is really, you know, how am I creating separation right now? How am I creating separation from my inner life in this moment? You know, when we ask that, we can find that there's usually some subtle place, some subtle story of how we should be versus how we are. Have you noticed that some? That we have an idea of how we are supposed to be or should be. And there's always a gap between that and how we are. So that makes it so that we're not really at home in the moment. There's a separation. How are we creating separation from another person or from the group? I mean, you know, we can be here in this community,

yet we mostly go around with a story, this kind of that we're in this bubble, and there's a self in here, and then there's the group out there. Any of you have that sense? You don't have to raise your hands if you don't want to, but we go around in that sense. And it's a very deep conditioning to,

and then we have our judgments and our possessiveness of space and our edginess and so on. How we create separation. So the challenge is how do we start seeing our story? How do we stop and go, oh, okay, in this story of a self, an injured self, a striving self, a needy self, others are unreal, they're the ones that's causing trouble. How do we notice it and wake up out of it? It's not easy.

I read you a bit. There are some letters, Dear Abby admitted she was at a loss to answer. this way we blame one person says Dear Abby I have a man I can't trust He cheats so much I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying

is his I like that Dear Abby I've suspected my husband's been fooling around When confronted with the evidence He denied everything and said it would never happen again Dear Abby My mother's mean and short-tempered

I think she's going through mental pause. They go on. So we get upset. And when we get upset, we are programmed. This is the evolutionary conditioning, Pat described, to lash out. In one story, Jake's dying. His wife sat at the bedside. He looks up and says weekly,

I have something I must confess. There's no need to, as wife replied. No, he insisted. I want to die in peace. I slept with your sister. your best friend, her best friend, and your mother. I know she replied, now just rest and let the poison work.

So we're talking about forgiveness and it's not so easy when we feel violated. I want to say again that forgiveness is not indulgence or permission. I mean, you can forgive and absolutely dedicate your life to making sure something doesn't happen again, to making sure that you don't actually

in a way that violates others or others don't. But the truth is, when we're living in resentment and blame, we're in a trance. And this is the point. No matter how right you feel, when you have made someone else wrong or bad, or you're making yourself wrong or bad, your world has contracted and you're living in a trance. A trance is a narrowed reality. when you're in blame you're unable to see

the vulnerability of the other person see I mean see like really get it and you're unable to see the sacred that shines through that being you're just seeing a sliver of their acting out humanity you're seeing how their suffering is getting played out

but you're not knowing that you're just seeing the playing out and judging it similarly with yourself when you're blaming yourself you fix a on the difference between who you think you should be and what's happening, and you're not seeing the vulnerability that's there, and you're forgetting your own goodness. Joko Beck, Zen teacher, she says, our failure to no joy is directly related to our inability to forgive.

So Natchikata knew that to continue on the path, there had to be a letting go of the these stories of blame. And this is something that's true for each of us. We can't force ourselves or will ourselves to forgive, by the way. And when there's been trauma, it's a very slow and it's a lifetime process. But we can be willing. And there's a real difference. You can be willing to engage in that process. And that's all that's needed. If your intention is to forgive, you've already opened the door. The light can start coming through. one man came to retreat and told me the story

of the background of his process he very emotionally abusive father very controlling judgmental berating often absent and as his father got older he was still kind of a bully and cynical but he mellowed some and he liked to be with his grandchildren so he tried to kind of

he made peace a little but he was still pretty demeaning to his son father had a heart attack and he slowed down more and at that point this man's sister said to him can't you be forgiving I mean the guy's getting old he just had a heart attack and this man was outraged at the notion of forgiving his response was he'll never know how much suffering he caused

he'll get away with it this is a big deal because part of our evolutionary inheritance is to get even and to seek revenge I mean, we were wired to. Animals, many mammals do it. You're just getting back. So he came to retreat, and he came with that anger.

And I asked a question I often ask, and if you have a lot of anger, you can explore this yourself. It's not for the purpose of getting rid of anger, by the way. Anger has an intelligent, alive emotion. It's getting identified with the anger that causes trouble. So he asked the question, I ask the question I often do, which is, if you couldn't be believing your stories of his badness, what would you have to feel? I'll say it again for any of you that want to explore this one. If you couldn't believe the story of blame, this person's bad. They did wrong. They screwed me. You know, if you couldn't, what would you have to feel? And for him

it put him into the hurt and the grief of not having a father really that cared or that saw him. And he practiced as we do often here where he put his hand on the hard and he spent for many days. He just brought kindness to that place of hurt over and over again, over and over again. He'd feel the angered his father. Then he'd sense underneath that the pain and the grief, never having a father that would be with him. Hold that with compassion. Went back home and things shifted a bit. He started seeing his father through different eyes where he could actually see that his father's bootstrap personality was because he had been, without a bit of any nurturance in his life and the message he had gotten was it wasn't safe to be

vulnerable and you have to go out and make it and his father had been afraid that he wasn't going to be strong and make it so his father was always trying to toughen him up it was out of fear so he could see him more and there was just the relationship started shifting and when he'd come to be with the grandchildren they had some nice moments too he had another heart attack so then this man was during his recovery, keeping him company. And at one time he was with him reading to him. And his father all of a sudden said, stop, to stop reading. And then he said, I'm sorry, I wasn't there for you. And there were long silence and tears. And then this man heard the words he never thought he'd hear, which is,

you probably don't know how much I love you. The realization this man had was that by forgiving his dad by holding him with compassion. It made it safe enough for his father to contact his vulnerability and his care. He made it safe enough. Now it doesn't always happen that when we go through our own healing process of softening our hearts that another person comes around and that there's some happy ending in that way. But it always happens that when your heart's more free, there's some ripple on some level. In some way it helps. I've had many, many people come to me when somebody's hurt them a lot saying, how can I forgive them? And I almost always say, don't even bother trying right now. The first step is to be with your own wound with compassion,

always to hold ourselves first. The most challenging part of forgiveness, not Chi Cato's journey, you know, he talked about forgiving his father. Most challenging for most of us is forgiving ourselves. And the greatest truths are the ones we always forget. The most central that I run into is that if we've turned on ourselves, we can't love our world. I hear people say, well, I'm compassionate to other people, but not myself. I think it's a mental kind of compassion. for us to have a visceral felt sense of compassion we have to have this life right here

at the center of the circle held in tenderness and yet we add the second arrow and for those of you that are unfamiliar with the language the first arrow is whatever's going on the fear, the hurt, the shame, the sadness the second arrow is I'm bad for this happening it's the blame we add it over and over again

So, partly what helps, and I think Pat spoke to this beautifully last night, is to really get that we're human animals and we were designed to try to protect ourselves and we're designed to aggress and we're designed to blame and we were designed to, you know, to contract into shame. I mean, we were designed these ways. This cartoon, which you won't be able to see, has a mouse in a mouse hole and the mouse is a psychoanalyst. and the cat is on the, you know, kind of being psychoanalyzed. He's leaning against the wall outside the hole. And the mouse is saying, don't worry. Fantasies about devouring the doctor are perfectly normal. I do in my life what I've come to call kind of an impromptu forgiveness scan, and I do it regularly. And by that I mean, on some way there's an inquiry of, have I turned against myself? Am I down on myself in any way?

way right now. And you can do that. You can just, if you want just this moment, and it's, it's very interesting to stop and just ask in some way, have I turned on myself? I know for myself when I asked that, I immediately sense the shape of the ego, the shape of the self. I kind of sense the subtle kinds of egotism, my self-concern. I sense how many moments, most of my computations have been about how do I get more comfortable or how do I finish this project so I'll feel better or I, I, I, I, I, me, me, me. I immediately sense how much focus on self there's been and don't like it. I don't like being self-focused. I sense my irritability. I sense how I've been judgmental. I generally use the word forgiven, forgiven because it helps me.

It's just a it's just the word itself on some level seems kind and it kind. It's like washing away the stickiness of what I've been holding against myself. You might take a moment as I was just suggesting and I just check in and as you check in, so this is the pause. This is where we use the skillful means of stopping. And as you check in you might sense today, has there been any kind of attitude towards yourself you've been carrying around on how you're doing at the retreat? Has there been any second arrows you maybe weren't noticing of kind of not liking yourself for either your self-concern or your maybe being judgmental?

Or maybe you haven't liked yourself for the way you've been handling pain. Maybe you've been feeling like a victim. Maybe you've been obsessing. Is there any way you've been holding anything against yourself today? and even in these moments as you notice it just see if simply the noticing the intention to notice and just forgiven forgiven

not believing it so much seeing can be freeing whether it's a conscious self-blame or an unconscious one it divides us it prevents us from really inhabiting our being, our wholeness. And it certainly prevents us from a tenderness with others. You'll remember from this afternoon

the words, be ground, be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. When we relax, blame, love flowers. So this is the first of the boons, and I think it's a precursor. I don't, in my own life, and soon as I remember, forgiven, forgiven, then the rest of it can open up. The second capacity or boon that Natchikata was requesting and given was inner fire, and that's the love and interest in life that allows us to give ourselves wholeheartedly. The love and interest that really lets us rally our energies and give ourselves to what matters.

You know, some years ago, I was at a Zokhchen retreat, a Tibetan retreat, and in the middle, another Tibetan teacher that wasn't the lead teacher of the retreat, happened to stop in. He was very well known. Some of you might have read the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. He was the author of that. I'm forgetting his name right now. But anyway, he drops in, and he's asked to speak, and he said just a few words. He said this, because I wrote it down.

I don't have many qualities, but I do have the... devotion. It gives me confidence. Devotion is not for the teacher, and he gestured towards himself and our lead teacher. It is to open. Devotion is to express the tenderness and care of one's innermost heart. And he did have devotion, you know, and you could feel it. In fact, when you're with people and you notice, well, what lets you trust someone? It's that sincerity. of heart. When someone's really sincere about what matters, it's a kind of purity or an innocence. It's not twerked by guilt or by duty or trying to impress, not even not trying to meet the notion of a spiritual self. It's just a very pure sincerity. So we all have ways of closing off

our inner fire. I mean, every one of us longs to love fully and live fully and wake up. We all long for that, but we have ways of closing off our inner fire. We get waylaid. Frost says, something we were withholding made us weak until we found it was ourselves. So there's an inquiry with the inner fire, which is really what is between me and giving myself, devoting myself, to this practice of waking up, or to loving relationship, or to creative, expression, whatever really matters, what is between me and really devoting myself? And if you ask that, if you say, well, what's between me and really giving myself to an intimate relationship that I'm in? Like really loving, really going for it. I really giving myself to the

Dharma, to profound inquiry into the nature of truth, living truth. What's stopping me here from giving myself to this retreat? When we ask those things, what we come up with is quite deep, which is fear. Some way, if I devote myself, I'm going to lose control over stuff, or doubt. I can't. I don't have it in me. I won't get what I need. Doubt and fear.

And then what happens is that out of doubt and fear, instead of giving ourselves to loving, to serving, to creating, we take false refuges. We obsess and we plan. This is a roomie. He says, gamble everything for love if you're a true human being. Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses. Isn't that great language? Mean-spirited roadhouses. So we get waylaid, every one of us. We get way-laid. and we know that we can watch ourselves get way laid here by worrying and planning and so on and we can see it at home how many moments do we spend presenting ourselves rather than just being with others you know in some way trying to prove something or cover up something

my illustrative story here a guy's driving driving around the backwoods of Montana, he sees a sign in front of a broken-down shanty-style house, talking dog for sale. He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dogs in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice-looking lab retriever sitting there. You talk, he asks? Yep, the lab replies. After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says, so, what's your story? Lab looks up and says, well, I discovered I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all, they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms of spies and world leaders, because no one figured a

dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running, but the jetting around really tired me out. I knew I wasn't getting any younger, so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, you know, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. Got married. Had a mess of puppies. Now I'm just retired.

Guy's amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. $10, the guy says. $10? This dog's amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap? Because he's a liar.

He never did any of that. So we get waylaid. And we get waylaid and mostly trying to shore up our sense of self because we feel insecure and in some way we need the world to

think good things of us. So the practices that really help us to remember, to not get so waylaid, are remembering our intention. You know, I have to share that Jonathan and I sometimes we'll do our own meditation

but at the end of it we'll spend a little time and check in and last week before the holidays we were checking in on our aspiration for the day. And I was very aware of family coming in and so on. And mine was that, you know, I wanted to step out of my hero child over responsible, busy self and really just be spontaneous with each person and just really open to the loving connection that was there, not be the older sister and all that. So I shared that with him and I said and then it was his turn and he said well I want to get a shitload of stuff

done today that was it you know he so so that's it he's not here but I'll let him know I said this I wasn't sure if I was going to share that one of the ways we get waylaid is we think we're a self-honour away somewhere and that we have a little bit of time and a lot to do we live in that story now you might say, yeah, but it's true. You know, I do have a lot to get done. And, you know, and the reason it was fine for when he and I did this is he did have a lot to get done and it was fine. But it's a chronic, chronic storyline. And until we can start getting that life is short and it's precious, and there is something in this tearing, pausing, savoring, that can free us. that we can't touch the holy if we're on our way somewhere else.

Does that make sense? So the inner fire is that devotion that says, stop, don't get waylaid. Don't wait. Don't wait for your life for something to happen. It's here now. Two ways of practicing, and one is let the practice of aspiration be,

you know, with every sitting, just start and sense, well, what really matters? What's the most important thing? And before meetings and other activities and so on, just to remember. But I also want to mention another level, which is when you hit those out-of-control times where things are falling apart, it's a very, very powerful opportunity to remember your longing. And I want to share a very, very dear friend of mine died a few years of breast cancer and when she first realized to metastasize we metastasized, we met.

And she was very resolved to move through with presence. And she had a lot of inner fire. She really, really wanted to heal into death. And it got very, very difficult. And at times, it got so difficult that she said, I've lost my faith. I don't have faith They don't have, there's not, being present, mindfulness, none of this works.

I just feel like a separate self who's dying, who's filled with grief and who's miserable. And also who's lonely and also who's ashamed of dying. Because it was kind of embarrassing to have a lot of people watch her die. So she didn't share her pain with others. She didn't want to let them down. And she was kind of keeping a spiritual front up. So we met and we started working with it. and I asked her to get in touch with the part of her that was really afraid

because that's what it was and was really lonely and she got in touch with that part. And then this is really the pathway back home. What is that place and you most want, most need? When you start asking, what is that place want or need? You start getting at aspiration, at inner fire again. And for her, she said, well, what it's saying is, please love me.

please love me. And I said, well, what would be the source of that love? Who are you saying it to? And it was her mother who had passed away. And asked her what it would be like? What would it be like of that part that was saying, please love me, felt love? And so she started describing the warmth and the light

and the feeling of being enveloped, feeling that there was a conscious presence that was here, that was outside of her, that was loving her. And I'm sharing this because it's very important to know that there are times in our life that it really needs to feel like an outside presence. There's nothing less good about that or less spiritual. We might ultimately discover

that that outside presence is an emanation of our own awakened heart mind. That doesn't matter in the moment. It needs to feel like an outside presence. Does that make sense? Okay, for her that's what it was. So she said out loud over and over again from her longing, please love me, please love me.

So she was reaching out towards that conscious presence, please love me. And she started feeling it and imagining it. And then she said, please love me one by one to certain friends. And then to the plant that was in the room and to the trees outside. And tell us she described that the whole world was loving her. She was dissolving in love. She was the being that was loving. but it came from that inner fire, that longing, please love me.

As you connect with longing and really inhabit it, you come into belonging. John O'Donohue says, prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. So this is what she was doing. And for the next months and months, she really practiced. She really stayed with that inner fire. And by the way, for her, even as her body's fire was dying, her spiritual fire, became luminous, luminous. And it grew because she just kept coming back to,

what do I really want love? I really want love. It's like, Havis says, ask the friend for love, ask him again. For I have learned that every heart will get what it prays for most. So this is inner fire that we're talking of. And we'll do a bit of a reflection for a moment, if you will, just to close your eyes. because there's not a moment in your life that you can't tap into the what matters. And the more moments that you pause and ask, the more moments of homecoming.

You can practice by just saying, you know, what in this moment matters most. Or you can sense the brevity of life, which is a really powerful, skillful means. You might even right now sense, if you had a few minutes to live. and I do this a lot with myself. If you had a few minutes to live and make it real, that there's just a few minutes. It's not like you're going to be able to go and hang out with certain people

or go to the mountain top or go anywhere. Just right here you have a few minutes. What is it that's most important to realize or trust or experience? What most matters? If you're at the end of your life looking back, what would be most important to know was experienced or realized

or manifested. The longing, whether it's for truth or love, our realization, peace, whatever it is, the longing is the inner fire and that's what energizes and guide you on the path. And so it was with Natchikata that by facing the truth of mortality,

that we just don't have that long. He was able to let go of the blame that divided him from others. He was able to awaken this fire, this devotion that could energize his path so he wouldn't be waylaid. And then we get to the third boon, okay, the third and final boon, where he asked Lord Yama, I want to know that which is deathless, that which is immortal. You know, I know this world that's right, moment to moment changing, but what is it that is deathless? Formless. And Lord Yama said, you must look into the heart of life itself and look into your own being, and he gave him a mirror. Now, when we start looking into ourselves, it doesn't always seem that this is the gateway to the eternal. We look, you know,

what Lily Tomlin said. I always knew I wanted to be somebody, but I guess I should have been more specific. And I remember I first went to the Insight Meditation Society for a, it was a 10-day retreat, and they had a sign up which said, self-knowledge is not good news. So, you know, all the teachings, every tradition says look within. And it sometimes seems like the last place. We have a sense of what I want, what I'm longing for is out there. It's down the road. And it's important to see that, that we don't look in the mirror most moments. Most of the time we're looking towards someone else or something else out there to satisfy us.

We're fixated outwardly. We live in a story about ourselves the kind of person we are and how we look and want to look in other's eyes and then we look towards others. Then we come to the wisdom traditions that have this central inquiry which really is,

who am I? We start checking. Are we this? body. And this body is part of what we are, but are we this body? Are we a product of nervous system and thoughts and feelings? Is that all we are? It's just a product of that. Or of our genetic heritage? Are we an expression of consciousness itself? A spark of the divine, a reflection of the universal heart mind? So there's this inquiry in every tradition. you know, what are we, really? There was a Korean Zen teacher who came to IMS at the end of one of the early three-month retreats, and this was years before I ever went to IMS. But I heard the story. So here they had been spending three months doing these practices that you're doing here, which is, you know, mindfulness of the sensations in the body and mindfulness of the breath and watching the emotions and trying to be with it, not react to it, all that they've been doing.

So he comes and he's asked to give a little speech. And he gets up there and he says, he told them that all the practices they were doing were a waste of time. He said, there's only one practice that's worthwhile. And then he banged his Zen staff and he pointed to him to see himself. And he said, the only worthwhile practice to ask, what is this? What is this?

What is this? What is this essence right here that's, listening. What happens when we start asking, well, what is listening? What is really looking out through these eyes? Romana Maharashi used self-inquiry almost exclusively. Who am I? This is what it means to look into Natchikaitis mirror. Then whatever arises, these passing thoughts, these passing feelings, you know, what's aware of all this? So the Buddha's, in the Buddhist tradition, the fixation on the stories, the fixation on the passing thoughts obscures the radiance of our natural wholeness. When we're fixated, we cannot experience our

wholeness. So looking into the mirrors a way of deconstructing the small self-identity. It doesn't mean that we don't still have an awareness of what's going on in day-to-day living, and we don't have a sense of another and a self, but we are inhabiting a larger consciousness. We can sense what comes and goes, and we can sense the timeless. And this is what the Buddha did under the Bodhi tree. He sensed what came and went,

and he looked into his own mind to sense the radiance of timeless awareness. Srinar Sorgadata says, When the mind is momentarily free from its preoccupations, becomes quiet. If you do not disturb this quiet and stay in it, you find that it is permeated with a light and love. You have never known and yet you recognize it at once as your own true nature. There's nothing more vast. There's nothing more mysterious. There's nothing more loving than your own nature. If it's not, the one that's right here, there's nothing more mysterious, there's nothing more loving

than your own nature. If it's not the one that's right here attending, it doesn't exist. You are the universe waking up to awareness. So we'll practice this last boon in a few moments. But just to say that in the face of living and dying, this is our refuge. When we realize and trust this timeless awareness,

When we know it's home, then we can celebrate the different play of sensations and feelings and thoughts and the life that arises and passes. We can celebrate it. We can sense its beauty and its sorrow and we have space for it because we know our true home. So tonight really what we're exploring is Lord Yama, the impermanence, the out-of-control experience that every one of us knows, this groundlessness, how do we face that and find our truth, our love, our freedom? And the three boons, forgiving, just letting go of blame,

awakening our longing, inhabiting it, and then looking into our own awareness to see who's here. So now I'd like to tell you the end of the story of Natchikata, which I really like. You see a young man bowing to Lord Yama a final time totally at peace. And then as if by magic, the landscape of the kingdom of death

changes to spring rice fields of his native India. And in this last secret, a last secret is revealed to him that death and birth are not separate. Renewal comes by dying. When we efface death and aloneness, when we've realized the formless, we are unafraid to live

and lie flowers under our feet. everywhere we go becomes holy ground. Natchi Keta knew this in his heart and walked off towards his home to embrace his father and start a new life. I think the ending is important because we can very easily think oh it's realizing emptiness and formlessness

and kind of like space out into that and then not honor this ever creative existence, this mysterious existence that's just bursting into form moment by moment. So this is about love and emptiness, realizing the formless and celebrating the form. So let's do the final boon together, just sitting for a moment.

And then we'll close. And this is the boon of really looking into the mirror, looking into our own awareness. And we begin by arriving as we always do in this pause and just honestly connecting with what's happening. Always starting with what's right here. So relax a little into what's happening. Just let your shoulders relax, soften your hands,

just soften the belly. So you feel yourself sitting here, breathing. Let your senses be awake. You might notice the sounds, listening, with that same receptivity, the sensations that are here, receiving whatever emotions or mood is here, sensing the inner weather, feelings in the heart. And in addition to this play of phenomena of sounds and sensations and feelings,

to be aware of the background presence itself, this alert inner stillness that knows, sense the inner space of awareness. that's vast, open, weakful. You can notice the sounds and the silence that's listening. You can notice the sensations and the stillness that's aware, that everything you experience is occurring in a vast openness. This ocean of being timeless, always already here,

the source of being this final gift on the spiritual path of looking into awareness and realizing our true nature our home close with the words of Havis

one day the sun admitted I am just a shadow I wish I could show you the infinite incandescence that had cast my brilliant image. I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being. 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.