Tara Brach - Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love, Part 3 – Joy

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Joy blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding. In this talk, Tara explores: • How the "if-only" mind keeps us leaning forward, chasing happiness in the future, rather than discovering the aliveness and freedom available right here, right now • How the trance of "something is wrong" contracts our hearts, and the deep, compassionate presence that can free us to love life just as it is. • The power of mindful presence—how pausing, softening, and truly receiving this moment allows joy to naturally arise. • How gladdening the mind—through gratitude, love, and wonder—can shift our set point for happiness and awaken a deep trust in the unfolding of life.   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Welcome friends to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste and welcome my friend. These last few weeks we've been doing a course

called the Brahmavaharas, which is the divine abodes. And it really goes through the basic heart spaces that are expressions of our true nature, that we can awaken intentionally. And to begin, this is the third in the series, and you didn't have to listen to the first two, but they're available to. To begin this one, a story that I love that takes place in a monastery, many of these classic teaching stories do.

And in this one, a novice has just joined the monastery, and he's assigned to help the other monks who are copying the canons and the laws of the church by hand. But he notices that they're copying off of copies. And he's worried about this, because he thinks, there could be a mistake and then they just keep going with the mistake. So he goes to the app and describes his concerns and the abbot says, well, we've been doing this for centuries, my son, but you make a good point. So he goes down deep, deep, deep into the vaults and the

cave underneath the monastery where the original manuscript has been saved and he's gone for hours and the novice begins to get worried about him. So he goes after him. And he sees the old abbot crying uncontrollably and banging his head against the wall. And in a choking voice, you know, the young man says, well, what's wrong, father? And choking voice, he says, the word was celebrate. So this has everything to do with tonight's theme, which is joy, which is really the heart celebration of life. And just by way of review, the first week that we explored these expressions of the awakened heart mind, we looked at what's called metta in the Pali, which is loving kindness or loving

presence, which is evoked when we sense the goodness and the beauty that's here, that's natural in our life. And the second class was on compassion, which is the quality of heart and tenderness, that arises when we become aware of the very real vulnerability and suffering. Joy is that openness that includes both. Joy includes the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows, and it's the actual experience of aliveness and openness when we just let ourselves be available to the whole play of existence.

So, in Buddhism when these are taught, these states of heart-mind, often the focus is, if the word is mudita, unsympathetic joy, which is when that openness and aliveness is beholding another person's happiness and just celebrating that. So we'll include that, but also more broadly, the heart mind when we are in joy. And again, just to say that this is a natural capacity, it's in each of us and our wiring to experience joy and it can be cultivated. So I'd like to share a quote that has been with me over the years by Andre Geed, which is, know that joy is rarer, more difficult, more beautiful than sadness, once you make the

this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation. So I want to unpack that a little because those are strong words. Rare. I recently talked to a student who had listened to a number of classic Buddhist talks on Mudita and sympathetic joy and said that in a way that in a way that, they made him depressed because these joy talks had this state that he was supposed to feel if he was really awake, but he just didn't. He said, I'm not like a miserable person, but, you know, I just don't go around with that feeling of celebrating life. And in a way, I thought

that was really important to have him say out loud because so many of us when we hear talks on happiness or joy think in some way, well, I could try real hard to be there, but that's just not where I am. And, you know, are we trying to dial ourselves to a different level of experience? And what if I just don't feel it so much? And so I'd be interested in having you take a pause right here at the beginning and checking in. This is a kind of a close your eyes and reflect for a moment. And just to ask yourself, what is my own experience of joy? Do I experience it much? And I'll use the word happiness interchangeably, the kind of happiness that's very embodied and energetic and alive. You experience

that much. In the last few days, where there are moments of real happiness? We sometimes call it happy for no reason, or it's not hitched to the weather being glorious. But just happy, open, alive. Today, what was it like? And you might notice for some that there were times of happiness but it felt a little hitch to things being good. Others maybe there were moments but it was kind of short-lived. Feel free to open your eyes when you'd like.

To different degrees we get passing states of feeling that openness and aliveness of joy and some not, some have a lot of depression and that happens too. But it's not so common that we have the trait of joy. We might have passing states but it's not so common that it's kind of an enduring, accessible part of our being. More the time there's a sense of a stressed person trying to get somewhere else, you know, trying to get through the day. Can you relate to that?

at least I noticed that. So I read you another favorite, and this is a poem by the poet Haface. What is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint? The saint knows that the spiritual path is a sublime chess game with the divine, and the beloved has made such a fantastic move, that the saint now is continually tripping over joy and bursting out and laughing, and saying, I surrender. Whereas, my dear, I'm afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves.

A thousand serious moves. So there's something in us that kind of knows that we get grim and we are kind of leaning forward looking at what is going to go wrong or what's challenging. It's that thing of life being a problem to solve, you know, rather than a mystery to be lived, that kind of a mindset. And so we get to, back to André Gide with the word obligation. How could joy be an obligation? And my understanding of the word obligation is in the same way that we feel a commitment to really manifesting our full potential, that just as it's part of our full potential to really open to the suffering of the world and feel that kind of tenderness

so that we can respond and be part of our world. It's also part of our commitment to wholeness to open in a way that allows us to feel our love for life. Mary Oliver puts it this way, she says, my work is loving the world. My work is loving the world, they'll read a little bit more. She says, am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished, which is mostly rejoicing since all ingredients are here.

Some years back, one friend in our community here shared a conversation she and another woman had had, they were in a cancer support group together, both had had a cancer support group together, both had gone through pretty serious, you know, they were survivors, but a very scary season of life. And her friend had asked her, what would it be like for you to think that something good was going to happen, rather something good or something, rather than something bad was going to happen, like something good is going to happen tonight or tomorrow? What would it be like to think that?

And my friend said, totally weird, you know, because just wasn't her habit and then her friends said, good, now try it. So take a moment and let's try it together. Okay? So we're pausing together and sensing, okay, today or tonight or tomorrow, these next days, there's something very enriching or enlivening that's possible that can happen. What happens when you adopt? that, nothing good is going to happen. Feel your body, feel your heart. Maybe there's resistance,

maybe there's excitement. The intention here is not to create expectation, which is always binding, but rather to create openness to the infinite possibility that really is a part of reality, to be available. Now, the reason, and you can open your eyes if you'd like, the reason I I'm bringing this up is because in happiness research, and there's a ton of it now, as many of you know, one of the common denominators of those that are deemed happy is a sense of choosing happiness. It's kind of this willingness. It's like, yeah, this is part of who I can be or am, let this be there too. Henri Nuwan, who's a Catholic mystic and writer that I love, he goes further. He says, joy does not simply happen to us.

We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. Why? We're going to explore this more, but we've got a real evolutionary conditioning to go the other way. So we kind of have to reverse it and choose. Which I think is really interesting. It's just part of us waking up, realizing, okay, there's strong conditioning this way, need to more actively choose something. Okay, so let's look closer.

And the inquiry I'd like to invite you into is the question of really what is between me and feeling more joy in my life? And it's a question I'm hoping that you'll engage in with real curiosity, not judgment, as we sense, well, what blocks it? If joy is this feeling of openness and aliveness, it's embodying happiness, it's not mental, what gets in the way? So we need to shine the light of awareness. If we're to wake up out of the trance that keeps us grim, we have to look at it some, which

is what we're doing. And most of the time when we're not feeling that presence and aliveness and openness, we're in a trance of wanting life different. There's this bottom line perception that it shouldn't be like it is, it should be different to be okay. But it takes two forms. Either it should be different because something's missing right now, I need something more to be full, or it needs to be different because something's wrong. So we're just going to take them one by one. And I invite you to listen for where in your

own life the something's missing or something's wrong trance is there, because if you can start noticing it, you can unhook. Okay? All right. So something's missing. My favorite way of thinking about this is if only mind. That we're in in this, when we have a feeling something's missing, there's this delusion that if only I had such and such, then I'd be happy or okay.

And we do if only with real big things, you know, if only I had the right partner or only I had the right job or if only I could have a child, like real big ones, we have this sense that if we have that then we'd be happy. So you might just sense where that is true for you. If only I had, I was really healthy. I mean there are things that you'd think, well yeah, you know, it sounds like it could make someone happy but hang on because what we find out is that if only don't work and I'll get into that in a moment. A lot of our if-onlys come up when we're comparing ourselves

to each other. You know, we see somebody else that is being really successful in a certain way or that has, you know, the perfect family or the perfect body or in some way is meditating and exercising a lot. Well, if only I could do that. I mean, even the really good sounding if-onlys, they can be troublesome, okay? And then we do, if only in a more subtle way, throughout the day, oh, if only I could sleep a little bit longer, if only I could get a seat on the subway, you know, or if only there wasn't traffic, you know, if only I could get this project done, or if only so-and-so would do their part, you know, or if only I could get home before the traffic, or if only

I could have that glass of wine, or another bowl of ice cream. There's these little background if onlys that move us through the day. When we're in if only mind, whether it's for the partner or for the bowl of ice cream or whatever, we're leaning forward, okay? We're not in the one place where we can actually find true happiness and openness and presence. We're leaning forward. And when it's a habit, we're always on our way somewhere else.

We always think we should be doing something else, we think life should be different. And that's a habit that I call it insidious because if it's a habit it means we're going to be at the end of our life and have it, we'll have if only at ourselves right through to the end. So there's if only mind. And then there's the other side of the trance, which is something's wrong. Now with only mind we're leaning forward. If only, we're on our way somewhere else.

When we're in the something's wrong mode, we are pushing away and contracting inward. We're still not available. It's just a different kind of, a different type of pulling away. There's trouble around the corner. We're doing our thousand serious moves, okay? So, what does the something's wrong look like? We're in that mode when we're blaming other people for what they're doing wrong. Like how often do we have a filter and somebody else we're holding with resentment?

You know, I always think of Charlotte Joko back, a Zen teacher who says that our inability to forgive, to drop blame, is going to be. correlated to our inability to feel joy. If our heart space is such that we're feeling resentful, we're just not going to feel joy. So we start looking, well, how much do we go through the trance of something's wrong with you or the world? Then there's the something's wrong with me and the reality is if we're in the trance of unworthiness, any level of aversive self-judgment, We can't embrace each other in our world in a real open-hearted way. It can be mental, but we can't really love life.

Any turning on ourselves. So we need to bring it above the line. And a story of this that I got permission to share from Janet, who's my assistant, who many of you know, as part of our community here. I was driving somewhere and we were talking while I was on the phone. And we were on the phone while I was driving and she was telling me this, kind of catching me up on the status of our, she has like a million projects that she does at once, including getting these talks out there and juggling a lot and she was basically letting me know

that she didn't feel like she was doing justice to all or many projects. There could be more blog posts and so much more to do on the web and refining the site and how she was falling short on many fronts. basically not enough, you know, something's wrong with me. And so I did what I did and said, you just have to know, I just so appreciate what you're doing and you're doing a great job and do you know how many people around the world get these talks and are so grateful, it didn't make a dent. Yeah, but you know, this thing has been waiting for three months and so on.

So, I don't know how it happened but I just started singing to her. I'm not enough. I'm never enough. Something's wrong with me. I can't get things right. Soon she joined in. We even tried harmonizing, I'm never enough. I'm never. You can join in if you want to. Something's wrong with me. You know, we went on and anyway. Then we started laughing and the dopamine started flowing and we weren't, she wasn't in trance. I was, well, we were in a different kind of trance. It was a happy trance, you know. But, but you get the, idea that sometimes it takes a lot to shine the light on it and sometimes we need each others help, but it can be a life habit of being turned on ourselves or each other and blocking

the joy that's possible. So, we have a set point, a happiness set point. Every one of us, this is, you know, science is showing us, research is shown that it gets, it's there, if Would things happen, the if-only's come true, we get a little spike. It might even last five months, we go back. Really? The partner, the lost weight, the job, we go back. We have a down, we lose somebody dear, the thing that we most, the something's wrong we most didn't want to have happen.

We dip, we come back, and that's unless it's super extreme. With super extremes we can really shift. But mostly we have a set point. And what sustains the set point? Our habits of thinking is part of what sustains it, the main thing that I think sustains it. If you think about what you thought about today, what were the main thoughts going through your mind?

Whatever your thinking creates a certain biochemistry in the body. And then that biochemistry then creates more of the looping of, it's a looping of the thoughts. So we sustain a happiness set point because of the kind of things we think about and pay attention to. And if we're honest, a lot of our thinking has to do with planning and worrying and judging, you know, a lot of our thinking is something's wrong or something's missing on some level. So we start noticing how we keep thinking, well, I want this and this, if I can just get this project done, and then I can speak for myself, something gets completed, and it's

no time. I thought that would make me feel better before I'm fixated on the next thing. Man, on a California beach is praying to God, Lord grant me one wish. The sky darkens and there's the booming voice, you've lived a good life, I'll grant you a wish. So he says, please, Lord, build me a bridge to Hawaii so I can drive over whenever I want and see the beauty and alleviate stress. And Lord says, well, that's pretty materialistic. And plus, it's a huge endeavor to get all the steel and the concrete.

How about taking your time and coming up with another wish that's a little more, you know, something that's more from the heart? So the man's kind of pondering this. And he goes, okay, I've got it. I wish I could understand women and know what really, really makes them happy. After a few moments, God says, you want two lanes on that highway or four. The deeper question is understanding happiness itself and really what changes that set point? What allows us to get out of our habits of thinking and our habits of planning

and worrying and judging? Something's wrong, something's missing, and come into presence so we can be available to what's possible. So, what changes the set point is grounded in presence. And it's sometimes described as unconditional presence, the moments that were unconditionally present that we open. Anthony de Mello puts it this way. He says, when there's absolute cooperation with the inevitable. Okay? We just opened how it is. I like Dorothy Hunt saying, the heart space where everything that is is welcome. It's that openness to life that we're training in when we practice mindful awareness. We're training to have things arise inside us and rather than pushing them away or grasping

on just being with moment to moment, that is the power of the training. Now I just want to pause here and say, unconditional presence doesn't mean that we don't seek the partner of our dreams or the job of our dreams or any of our if-onlys. We still are going to go for what we want, what it means. And this is really key, is that we have the capacity to be fully here, that our life isn't dependent on things being a certain way, that we actually know that we actually know that we how to arrive in presence and celebrate the life that's here. If our life is dependent on things being a certain way, we're in trouble. We're just not going to find that freedom, that happiness.

And so there's a deep wisdom in this that everything keeps changing. There's inevitably going to be ups and downs. Our bodies are going to get sick and some of us who are fortunate to get old, they'll get old, and they'll die. We'll lose the beings we love. There's going to be beauty and pleasure and there's going to be pain and suffering. It's all going to be there. And if we want true happiness, we need this capacity to have that open-hearted presence that can be with what is. I'll read you just a little bit from someone who I think just exemplifies.

I found this in Peter Matheson's book. snow leopard. So, in this, Peter Matheson is visiting a llama with crippling arthritis. And this llama lives in a very isolated region of Tibet. And Peter is wondering, well, how could it feel to know you'll never again be able to leave where you are? He's just this isolated place and he can never go traveling, very, very limited life according to most of our views. So he He, through an interpreter, asked this llama that question. You know, and he writes, This holy man of great directness and simplicity,

big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way at the question, indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belong to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky in the snow mountains. The high sun, dancing sheep, and cries, of course I'm happy, it's wonderful, especially when I don't have a choice.

Of course I'm happy. It's wonderful, especially when I have no choice. Matheson says he feels like he's been struck in the chest with the power of this wholehearted acceptance. This is the key to joy. This capacity to open ourselves to how life is in this moment. without condition. Right now, yes.

It's that saying yes, right now. When we do that, when we kind of let go of I need to have this in order for it to be okay, there's a freedom. This is a little playful but I wanted to share J-O-M-O-J-O-M-O, J-M-O, which is the joy of missing out. You know FOMO, right? right? The fear of missing out? This is Jomo. Here's a little poem for you. Jomo. Oh, the joy of missing out when the world begins to shout and rush towards that shining thing, the latest bit of mental bling.

Trying to have it, see it, do it. You simply know you won't go through it. The anxious, clamoring, and need this restless hungry thing to feed. Instead, you feel the loveliness, the plumbliness, the pleasure of your emptiness. You spurn the treasure on the shelf in favor of your peaceful self, without regret, without a doubt, oh, the joy of missing out. So how then do we move from the trance where we're very much wanting the next bit of bling in some way or very much wanting things different to this openness, this presence that's possible. And it begins as we began in this class to notice the trance.

As Janet was doing, noticing, oh, I'm not enough, just beginning to notice, oh, there it's going again, noticing it. I know for myself I catch myself over and over in what I just mentioned, that if I could just get this done, I'll feel better. And I'm curious how many of you have that one going. Just one more thing checked off the list, then I'll be able to relax. Okay, I see hands. I'm not alone. Thank you. So what happens is because it's very familiar and I noticed, I noticed this morning I went for, I do a regular morning hike and then I was taking a hot shower and started planning what I was going to do in the day and realized, I love hot showers.

Why am I planning? I could be enjoying the heat of the water just pouring over my back. It's so conditioned to be leaning forward. So the practice here, the joy practice of presence, is to notice when we're in the trance, whether it's something's wrong or something's missing, the planning. or the judging, and just say right now, this, right here, in some way, reopening and surrendering to how it is right now, right here. And I know for myself that when I do, even when what I come back to is anxiety, because often

the planning is coming out of anxiety. And I then be with the anxiety. I make that U-turn from the mind leaning ahead and planning to just being with anxiety. If I stay with some kindness, probably in about 30 seconds there is a real sense of goodness in that presence, a little more space, a sense of heerness, a sense of, okay, I'm glad I chose to be here. gratification, that's the beginning of the joy, that space and aliveness that's right here. Let's practice this a little. Let's just check in on this part. So in this pause I'd like to

invite you to scan and sense where you might have some if only mind in your life or you're wanting something different and where that may affect a lot of your moments where you find you're very regularly trying to have something more, whether it's getting a project done or whether it's you're waiting and excited about having something, a new possession or a different job or something change in your important relationship or somebody else change and be more who you want them to be. somewhere that you want life different and bring a friendly attention, interest, to seeing, okay, so this is one of the trances that can move through the day.

Could be that you want your health to be different. I want someone to treat you differently. To recognize the trance, see where it comes up, what's it like when you're wanting things differently. See if you can go inside it a little, get familiar. The more you're familiar, the more you'll wake up during the day to it. If you're wanting yourself to be different, you might not sing right now about it, but just sense the voice in the mind that's telling you you should be different. Hear it. The nature of trance is our whole perceptions get narrowed. Notice how that is that when you're really wanting something different, wanting another

person different or yourself different, how your mind is narrowed and your heart has contracted. You might sense how you're not so available, sense how your body feels when you're wanting things different, the dissatisfaction, the anxiety, the unpleasantness of that. To come into full presence, you make that you turn and bring all the disatisfaction, the anxiety, the unpleasantness of that. the attention rather than how you're wanting things to be. Come right to the body and mind, the heart that's right here. Just be the witness and contact the feelings. What's it like inside you?

Notice that you can deepen presence if you add a kindness to it. For some it helps to put the hand on the heart. Just the sense that you're keeping company. Inviting yourself into that presence, that unconditional presence with what's right here, the heart space where everything that is is welcome. You're just letting life be. You can drop any ideas about what's going on even in this exercise and sense, what does it mean to be unconditionally present right in this moment?

This is the yes meditation, saying yes to the feelings and you know. your body, yes to your heart, yes to the life that's right here and take a few full breaths. And if you'd like to open your eyes, please do. If you'd rather meditate with your eyes closed, it's fine. So the first pathway that really is the grounds of joy is just coming right into presence with what's right here. And if you're in the midst of the trance, presence will often have some layers of unpleasantness, the anxiety that was driving you.

Coming right into unconditional presence and the key word is yes. You're saying yes to the life that's here. It's the heart space that everything is welcome in. Now there's a second pathway to joy I want to bring in that I spoke to a little bit earlier. It's sometimes described as gladdening the mind where you're on purpose paying attention. to what will bring up joy. And the reason it's important, because we have such a leaning towards paying attention

to what blocks joy. We have such a leaning towards where problems are, where trouble is, that we're actually countering the negativity bias with gladdening the mind. Does that make sense? It's like we're at the point of evolution where we can evolve our own consciousness

by choosing joy. So, how do we gladden the mind? Now, sometimes it happens spontaneously that something gladdens our mind. There's a day and it's warm and we're feeling the air on our skin and something in us goes, I can feel spring in my veins and we start going, yowie, you know, and it's like, okay, it's there. And then there are many other times that, you know, you just might see somebody, a child in some way, just looking really, really, happy or somebody you love is something great's happened to, and just feel that yay. So there's spontaneous ways that the mind gets gladdened.

There's also a way that we can on purpose gladden our minds. And you can gladden your mind by doing things that you love to do, by going to beautiful places or being with people you love to be with, whatever it is, gardening or listening to certain music. That's one way. Then there's ways of gladdening your mind by reflecting on what you're grateful for. There's so much research now, you know, on the effect on depression and on, you know, really our whole body and mind if you just take the time each day to remember three things you're grateful for. Get a gratitude buddy, you know. All you have to do is e-met, just agree to email. You don't have to be conversant, you don't have to say, I hope you've had

a nice weekend, just three things that you're grateful for and they send it to you. And it's amazing to have that accountability and it changes really the body-mind chemistry. You can gladden the mind with metta, loving kindness by bringing to mind someone you care about and sensing the goodness and what you love and that can bring up warmth and gladden the mind. So the first step in gladdening the mind is to have an experience like that. But there's a second step and this is where I want to spend a few minutes because this is the step that's missed.

That we often will have a lovely experience, like we'll feel the warmth of that spring-like air and go, wow, but we don't pause and let it sink in. Now why is that important? When we have negative experiences, they go right into our implicit memory which shapes our feelings about life. If you have 100 experiences with a dog, 99 of them are good and once you get a bit, which one do you remember? It goes into the implicit memory, but not pleasant experiences so well.

So in order to change a state, a passing state of happiness into a trait, You need to make it stickier. You have to bring it and let it sink in, which means you have to pause for 15 to 30 seconds and really feel it in your body. That's what gives it the stickiness so it then gets remembered of the implicit memory and it's available. This process has been described by my friend Rick Hansen, who's a psychologist and he does it beautifully as installation. You have to install positive states. giving them that stickiness. We're going to practice it a bit. But just to say that there are possibilities throughout all of our lives of moments where we can gladden the mind and

develop the trait of joy, but we tend to miss them. We tend to be so on our way somewhere else. There was a story that this occurred in Washington, D.C. in 2007, I think of often. It took place in a Washington, D.C. Metro station, a cold January morning. There's a man with a violin, and he played six Bach pieces. It took about 45 minutes, and during that time, about 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. And he played continuously. Only six people stopped to listen. About 20 gave money, but they just kept walking at the normal pace. The only...

A few children stopped, but the parents then hurried them along. So, as it turns out, no one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, who, you know, is one of the most famous and great musicians in the world, and he played one of the most intricate pieces ever written on a violin that was worth $3.5 million. He had just played two days before in a theater, in Boston where the seats averaged $100 a seat. And there he was in the subway and everybody's

just rushing by and not listening. And I think it's one of the best social science experiments that I've ever heard because it tells us or it makes us ask ourselves, how much do we miss? How much do you miss each day? Where there's a possibility to have contact with somebody that could warm up your heart or to take in some beauty or some sense of wonder, sense of the mystery of things, where you could pause and really get back and touch with yourself, your own breath and sense a little of that space of presence that is mysterious and is beautiful. We miss a lot. So it's a choice, this choosing for presence and we need to

have the experience and then install it, let it be savored. So we're going to close with a little bit of a practice, but I just wanted to say that if you'll remember we started this talk with that sense of celebrating life. Mary Oliver puts it, my work is loving the world. And this is the potential for each of us. The Buddha said that I would not be teaching this if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible. I wouldn't be teaching this.

So to know that, that we can see it in our children, that possibility of joy, we can see it in ourselves when we get relaxed. We need to attend to the suffering so we can respond to our world with care and we need to attend to the whole beauty and mystery of it all so that we're fully energized and experiencing our full aliveness. So in that spirit, I'd like to invite you to take a moment to, again, adjust how you're sitting and close your eyes. So we begin with just a little gladdening the mind by bringing to mind someone that you love. It's an uncomplicated love. You'd be child or dog, friend and a way to bring that being to mind is just to imagine them when

they're happy, when they're joyful or full of aliveness. Imagine them when they're full of love, when they're showing their affection. It's a simple way to gladden the mind, just to sense that being that you love, their eyes glowing. a lot of affection and aliveness. You might even mentally whisper their name and say thank you. Just feel your heart. Just feel the spreading of warmth. Kind of let it soak into that warmth and the tenderness. You know like water absorbed into a sponge, spread through your whole body, Just letting go of any ideas about anything, just opening to the presence that's here.

The sense of this wakefulness, what it's like if your body is sensing openness? You can relax back some. It's taking a few moments to bring the spirit of yes to whatever is here, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, whether there's numbness, our sensitivity, happy or sad, that yes, that agreeing, absolute cooperation with the inevitable, it's what's here. You might sense how much can I relax with the life that's right here. You might sense what it would be like in this moment to really sense that that heart space where everything that is is welcome. Who would you be? How might that

affect your life? Lama Gendin Rimpashe says, Happiness cannot be found for great effort and wellpower, but it's already there in relaxation and letting go. As soon as you relax the grasping space is here, open and inviting and comfortable. Nothing to do. nothing to force, nothing to want. Everything happens by itself. Happiness is already here in relaxation and letting go. Namaste and thank you for your attention.