Tara Brach - Realizing True Well-Being, Part 2

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two-part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a meaningful life with a heart that is "happy for no reason."   In this talk, Tara explores:  how cultivating a grateful, devoted heart opens us to presence, peace, and joy beyond circumstance. the "infinite field of possibility"—our capacity to incline the mind toward hope, love, and inner freedom. how mindfulness and compassionate action form a virtuous cycle that nurtures deep well-being and belonging. ways that serving others and savoring beauty reconnect us with the sacredness of life and the fullness of who we are. awakening from the trance of unworthiness through practices like metta, gratitude, and receiving love with an open heart.  

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Thank you for joining us. Today's reflection is part two of a series on realizing true well-being. And as I mentioned last week, it just feels really crucial in these times to nurture happiness, balance, open-heartedness, as so much is in the airwaves that is conducive to deepening fear and increasing our armoring and feelings of separateness. And to begin and say, this is not when we talk about happiness, not about self-centeredness,

it's really about nourishing our spirits so we can respond to our world from wholeness. if you think of those you know who have much inner freedom you'll notice they're grateful for their life they're appreciative of life in one story i love kabir was a shoemaker he's known for his good nature his cheerfulness his generosity as care for others in his community and as he worked and moved to the day he always repeated a mantra ram ram ram which is a mantra for remembering the sacred, the divine. Day in and day out, 20 years, and one day, Rom appears. And Kabir says, who are you?

And Ram says, I'm Ram. And Kabir says, why are you here? And Ram says, why am I here? You've been calling me for years now. I've come. What do you want? Kabir, I don't want anything. Ram, what?

Why have you been repeating my name? Kibir, I just love repeating your name. Then for years to come, wherever Kiber would go, he'd be followed by Romm and the sound Kibir, Kibir, Kibir. So there is power to a devoted grateful heart. It inspires even the gods. We're here now, friends, living in this world that has a lot of darkness, a lot of uncertainty, And it feels so important we have to face the difficult realities and stay open to the whole of reality, which means keeping close into our sense of what is precious, what is sacred,

what is beautiful. I love this poem by Rosemary Wahola Traumaer. She writes, I do not turn away from the stories that make me weep. I'm willing to be ferocious to stand up for what I know is true. but I study what is beautiful, what is generous. I offer it my devotion. Even in this moment writing this poem,

I stitch in the pauses and the stumblings. These two are beautiful because they are true. I stitch in the pure potential that steeps in uncertainty. I stitch in silence. I stitch in hope. So I love that poem. there's much suffering in our world, and we need to rally on all levels. And for the sake of freedom of all beings, we need to stitch in wise hope.

It will carry us through these times. So thank you for being here, friends. May you find value in this talk. So a woman in our sangha recently shared a story with me, a friend of hers, had asked her to sense this. She said, what would it feel like to think that something good was going to happen rather than something not so good or even something bad? So she asked her, what would it be like to just think about that,

that something good is about to happen? And so this woman, friend of ours, thought about it, and the response was, it would feel totally weird and uncomfortable. And her friend's response was, good, now try it. So how about we all try that for a moment? Just a sense in your life, this is in your life, what's it like when you reflect on the possibility that something very good is going to be happening?

Just notice, be mindful. What's it like when there's that reflection? something good is going to happen. You can continue to explore that, but just to say that our normal habit is to fixate on something not so good happening. It does feel weird and uncomfortable for many of our nervous systems or body minds. We are so used to tensing. Do you know what I mean? tensing against what's around the corner? Yeah. Yeah. So what we've been doing in this last class and what we'll be doing tonight is exploring what happens when we, instead of our habitual way of something's wrong or something's missing, we very intentionally open our psyches and our hearts to what's sometimes called the

infinite field of possibility. Okay? That any moment, right now, there's an infinite possibility of what can arise and experience. From joy and freedom to getting completely stuck. But any moment, it's all there. It's like this fertile void that's creating this universe over and over again, moment by moment. And what determines our experience is the... way we incline our mind. What's the habit of thoughts and feelings? Do we incline our mind towards

a kind of grimness? Or is there a sense of, don't know, but open to what might happen? No? Okay. Now, I brought up last week what is to me this very, you know, it's a wonderful current in Western psychology called Positive Psychology that many, many people are familiar with. And positive psychology is basically saying for too long, the attention in psychology has been focused just on a kind of disease model and that we forget that it's possible to cultivate a sense of real well-being. It's really possible. And some of the criteria is well-being on a very, what you might call a familiar level,

which is positive emotions, feeling good, feelings of accomplishment. But positive psychology also points to a much more evolved kind of state of well-being, where we have a profound sense of meaning that comes from realizing our belonging to each other and to our world, a very evolved sense of what's possible and sense of really coming home to a sense of fullness and wholeness. And so that's where the intersection is with spiritual paths, with the wisdom traditions, the Buddhist being one of them. In Buddhist psychology, the invitation is, if you come and practice and pay attention to your experience, it is possible to experience profound peace and joy and freedom.

So the Buddha set this up, he kind of gave a very, I think, elegant framing with the four noble truths, which started by saying that every one of us incarnates, these body minds, have a kind of innate duca, which is a dissatisfaction and uneasiness, okay? And the uneasiness is like saying we're stressed. I mean, life is stressful because it's impermanent and changing, and there is a natural tendency in this organism to go, don't like it when it's unpleasant and want more of this, and feel unsafe about that and grasp after it. That's just the tendency.

And that's the first noble truth of this, this duca exists. It's the conditioning of our organism. And the second noble truth is that when we play it out, when we get identified with, I have to have it this way, and I don't want it that way, we suffer. The third noble truth is, but freedom is possible. We don't have to live inside of that small self-identity. And then the fourth noble truth is kind of saying, here's how. Here's how we discover that freedom, that well-being, that's really the evolved end of positive psychology, that real liberation. And in the fourth noble truth, the fourth noble truth has been described as the eightfold path, there are three basic clusters that the Buddha described as what allows us to

live in fullness. And I'm going to kind of explore these clusters in this class. One of the clusters is described as samadhi, which is that we're going to, that we're going to we learn to pay attention moment to moment to what's happening right here. Samadhi includes a concentration that helps to quiet the mind and the mindfulness that opens us. Okay. The second of those clusters is that when we do that, there's a kind of wisdom or attitude or understanding that we tap into. We start seeing that there's no peace if we're chasing after things and wanting them different. We start saying it keeps changing, so go with the flow. And we see that when we have a sincere intention to wake up, to be present, we start coming

home to a sense of fullness. Okay, so cluster number one, learn to pay attention. Cluster number two is the wisdom and understanding that comes from it. The third cluster, and we're going to spend more time on the third cluster tonight, is that from that understanding, our actions in the world become compassionate and wise. So the teaching is that for us to experience full well-being, we end up in this virtuous cycle of these three clusters. We learn to pay attention inwardly. We start waking up our understanding and we start living from that. And we can't leave out that third peace, that our ways of speaking with each other, our ways of engaging in the world, our ways of taking in the world are all essential to feeling the wholeness of who we are. So those are

the three clusters that we will go through. And as I mentioned, they feed each other in a kind of virtuous cycle. Now, an interesting reflection to sense, whether you're in a virtuous cycle of paying attention, kind of waking up to things and living out of that, or whether you're in, and I don't like the word unvirtuous, but a kind of trance cycle, I'm going to give you a little reflection, okay? And that is just to sense, okay, this week, you're going to look at this week and you're first going to just sense, well, what most matters to me? Like if I have to look at my life at the end of my life, looking back, what do I most want to know that I've experienced in my life? What I most want to touch? What most matters in how I live my life? So we begin to sense,

okay, it matters to me, perhaps, that I am present or kind with others. It might matter to me that I really live the moments or that I touch some peace, that I'm not always on my way somewhere else, we might have these different things that we say, oh, this is what matters. And then we look at our week and we say, well, how much did what matters converge with how I spent my moments this week? Did the way I spend my moments serve what mattered? Okay? Now, this is a reflection that helps us sense, are we in a virtuous cycle of awakening to well-being? Or are we in a trance cycle?

We're kind of repeating patterns that keep us, really, from our wholeness. That's just an inquiry. Some people find it helpful, some don't. Is there a mesh between what matters and how I spend my time? It's kind of basic, right? Okay, so we look at the, we'll look at the trance cycle first that I mentioned the three clusters, how we're paying attention, what we're realizing and how we're acting, right? In a trance cycle, we kind of know how it is, that rather than a mindful presence, what's happening?

We're spinning. We're bicycling away from the moment with a busy mind, right? And our mind is either planning or worrying most of the time. And the attitude inside is in some way that this self is threatened, it's got to do something more, something's not okay, and then the actions. There's criticalness, usually. There's kind of a sometimes carelessness. There's certainly a speediness, not much arriving, which then feeds a non-meditative attention. We get busier.

And you see how the cycle goes? So we can see it in particular situations that we might have a lot of, lot of inner tension. You might have this busy mind that's kind of fixating on, I need something to satisfy me or soothe me, and then we'll fixate on either taking in too much food or checking things off the list for many of us. And I certainly, this is one of mine, every time I check off something, my nervous system relax for about 30 seconds. So sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's accumulating. Some of you might remember, this is a reader Rudner. She says, someday, I want to be rich. Some people get so rich, they lose respect

for humanity. That's how rich I want to be. So we, you know, this is the, this is the trance cycle, again, that what happens, we chase after money or we chase after accomplishments, checking things off the list, or we kind of try to soothe ourself and then what happens? That activity then creates a kind of inner state where we end up feeling bad about ourselves and then playing it out some more, right? Or we might see that our internal state, our non-meditative state is that we're having a fight with ourself about how we're aging. You know, for many of us, there's a feeling of being kind of at war with the insults of aging, what's happening to the way we look or for many people the way we think. You know how it is with your memory when it goes,

and you're trying to get a word, and the more anxious or uptight you get like it's gone. And then what happens when you relax? It counts, right. But most of the time, we're at war with what's going on. And so the very thing we want were kind of chasing away. And I did hear a story of two elderly couples were enjoying a kind of friendly conversation. The one, the hostess was in the kitchen. The host was kind of entertaining this other couple. And he was telling them how, he said, you know, I went to this memory clinic and it was fantastic.

And the guests said, you did. Well, and the guy says, well, what was the name of the clinic? Freeze, you know, I could. So, so he, because, you know, they had taught us to all the latest psychological techniques, visualization, association, but the name, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, and then he got an idea, smile broke off over his face. He said, okay, what do you call that flower with the long stem and thorns? And you mean rose?

Yes, that's it. Rose, rose, what was name of X-Lenac? So we use our tricks, you know. So, this trance cycle is basically something most of us are familiar with. We get into a state of mind. That state of mind makes us feel worse about ourselves. We act out of it, which then makes us recycle. Okay?

Now, there's that line I've shared with you that I find so useful, which is that neurons that fire together, wire together. the more we think certain thoughts, the more our mind is inclined to those thoughts and then the feelings that they bring up and we get caught. And what happens, if you think of it, well, what do you most regularly think about? What is the biochemistry that's become your set point? That's what I mean by the trance cycle. It just keeps looping. And we know how Gandhi put it. He described that, you our beliefs create our thoughts, and our thoughts create our moods, and our moods create our actions, and then our actions create our character. Our character creates our destiny. So the big

inquiry, really, for most of us, is about waking up. Way Wu-Wai, who I think is wonderful, says, why are you unhappy? Because 99% of what you do is for yourself, and there isn't one. Interestingly, if you look at what's called positive emotions, our positive emotions arise when we are not fixating on self. Think about it. Gratitude, joy, happiness. It's not like we're ruminating about what's going to help me. How can I get more? What's wrong with? There's more of an openness. There's an outflow. You can think of this positive cycle that wakes us up out of trance in evolutionary terms, that when we're in a trance cycle, there's a fixation on an endangered sense of self. And what's activated is our limbic system, the more

primitive parts of our brain, right? So we're living from those emotions, the fight, flight, emotions and the thoughts that actually keep on activating limbic system. When we move into a well-being cycle. We're actually activating the more recently evolved parts of the brain, the social brain that is responsible, the circuitry that's responsible for a kind of empathy and intuition and sensitivity. We're waking up the parts of the frontal cortex that are able to go metacognitive, that are able to recognize thinking but not be caught in it. We're waking up consciousness. So, science has confirmed what the mystics describe, which is the science puts it in terms of neuroplasticity. It doesn't have to be our destiny that we stay in the same set of thoughts and the same swamp of worry, anxiety, depression.

We don't have to stay in that. We can actually recognize it and train our attention. in a way that wakes us up. So we're going to look at how we do that. And last class, we explored the trainings in metta, our loving, kindness, and gratitude. And tonight we actually did a meta meditation. What are we doing with the meta? You know, it's, there's a kind of beauty to it that we're simply directing our attention to goodness. It's not a polyamination thing, it's almost like because we're so conditioned to fixate on what's wrong, we are intentionally widening our way of noticing and bringing our attention to the beauty and the mystery

and the sweetness and what we can feel astonishment and wonder about. So META does it with each other, the gratitude practice, what do you love, what's, what do you appreciate, I shared in the last, our last time here, that there's so much research that shows that if you just each day spend a little time reflecting, okay, so what really do I appreciate? It gladdens the heart in a way that can change your biochemistry, change your set point. It works. So these are the inner trainings. Remember, I mentioned the three clumps. This is the, this is this samadhi and the mindfulness. This is the inner trainings. Then we explore, well, how do we have our outward expression? Our way of moving through the day

in some way help to evolve us, help to awaken our hearts and minds, help to bring us to bring us to well-being. And I've always loved a line from E.B. White, he says, I wake up each morning torn between the desire to serve and the desire to savor. Those are two good options, aren't they? So if we look at those two, and the reason I like those two is it really speaks to being engaged in our world in a way that's serving, it's like breathing out, it's like offering out, but also engage in a way that takes in, that lets us be touched. Okay, savoring. So start with serving, and you might remember Albert Schweitzer said, the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. And it's not some moralistic injunction

that you should serve. Why does it make us happen? Why does it make us happen? What is it when we are with someone and in some way our touch or our words comforts them? What is it that makes us feel so good? Or when we, in somewhere, involved with a project and we realize, oh, this is helping people. This is bringing more ease to people's minds or more happiness. Or we just smile at somebody on the street or in the elevator and you can feel that in some way that shifted something. What is it that makes us feel good? And I often say it's marbled because in some way we're all on a, you know, a kind of

a good self project, you know, it makes us feel better about who we are in some way. But I think there's something deeper, which is that when we serve, we come home to, we're inhabiting more the truth of who we really are, which is in relatedness that we belong. serving because we're serving the wholeness of what we are, the unfolding to wholeness. So serving gives us meaning in some way. And I want to share with you a story that I found really powerful. The woman is Jan Adrian, who's a, she founded healing journeys, which is healing and support for those touched by cancer.

and she, oh, maybe a year or so ago, blogged something, and she said that she had a chest x-ray done because they were trying to see if the cancer had metastasized to her lungs. And the doctor called and said there was a nodule that on the lung, and so she's going to have to have a CT scan. So this is serious business. She goes in on Wednesday to get the CT scan, and is told the results, as often they say,

will be ready the next day. The next day comes, and her anxiety is over the top. I mean, she can't concentrate. She felt like crying all day. And she's ruminating. What if it is, what if the cancer is metastasized? And on some level, she feels like, you know, everything I've done, all the exercise and all the ways I've been thinking and feeling, you know, and eating everything, it was all a big waste. And she felt like she just would not have. have the energy to handle another round. So she calls the doctor's office twice and she's promised that he'll call back and he doesn't. Okay. Thursday night she starts reading and meditating and then she remembers her prayer, which is make me an instrument. Use me. Okay. So that's been

her prayer. Make me an instrument. Use me. And then there's this, she has this kind of flash, what if having cancer again was the way I could be most useful as an inspiration to others? And again, this has been part of her life work, so this is a very real thing. What if this is just part of it? And then she writes, it's more important to me that my life be meaningful rather than easy to include whatever arises as part of the package, not bad or good, but trust that all things work together for good. In other words, whatever's going on is a part of it.

It's meant to be. So she said that that reflection gave her some peace and calm. And the next day, Friday, she calls the office, and it turns out her doctor left for a two-week vacation. She told the doctor on call would get in touch with her. And so finally, the end of the day, she got the results and was told the nodule was nothing to worry about. It was stable.

It had been there. And she was glad. And she celebrated. And she says, I prefer not to, you know, be sick. And she was glad she didn't get the results immediately because it put her in touch with an inner knowing, I'll be okay no matter what. I'm not just a body. Someday this body won't go on and I will still be okay. And she said, I like being reminded of that periodically. So there is something very powerful, this happiness that it's sometimes called Happy for No Reason, that doesn't have anything to do with things going our way on a personal level. There's a sense of if we can know our belonging, if we can feel some meaning,

some connection, some love with life, with earth, with others, with spirit, then we have the space to allow this life to unfold as it is and to serve and be part of the whole. So we'll just do brief reflection on this, if you will. So really talking about how our actions in the world, what in the Buddhist traditions called reverence for life, our way of serving the world, can really deepen our sense of belonging and meaning and inner freedom. So let this pause be kind of an invitation to arrive and feel your breath and feel your breath at your heart. So if you're breathing in and just letting you're, your heart be touched by the breath, breathing out and feeling your heart open, relax open,

letting go. And in the space of presence, too, sense one person that you know that is having a difficult time, one person that you would like to feel that you can help in some way, that you can serve. And let this person be right here with you. so that as you might even feel with your breath, and this is part of a compassion practice, Tonglin, that you could breathe in and let yourself feel and be touched by whatever the difficulty is that that person's going through,

as if you're inside, they're being, looking through their eyes, feeling with their heart, breathing in and letting yourself be touched. And with the out breath, just sending out care, letting whatever suffering they're in be held in a very large, large space of awareness with the out breath. You might sense, what is life like for this person?

What's really difficult? What is this person afraid of? Feeling hurt by? And in the deepest way, what does this person most need? As if you could still feel this person as part of your heart, also sense that you can offer to this person in some way energetically or with touch or with words. something that will nourish, comfort, and help. It may be simply saying, I sense your suffering

and I care. I care about your suffering. Or as Ticknat Han says, darling, I care about the suffering. It might be that you imagine holding that person in your arms or touching them on the cheek in some way letting them know your love. And as you do, as you offer something, sense this person receiving it. Imagine their response. And then just as an investigation, just sense who you are when you're serving, reaching out, offering love and care to another. What's your sense of your own being? So this is one, when we say serve and savor, on the Bodhisattva path, which is Bodhi is an awakening and satfa being. The serving is not coming out of I am going to to help you. It's not a separating kind of experience. It's not, doesn't have pity. It's serving

because you and I are of the same nature that we all experience this vulnerability. And that by offering care, we are coming home to that vastness of caring presence. And it's freeing. And when they put electrodes on monks and check out what happens when they are sending out care, feeling suffering and sending out care, actually it's not a depressing thing. It's not like their systems, you know, wash through with some sort of a real deep kind of sinking feeling. Rather, the parts of the brain that light up actually have happiness to them, not I'm

happier suffering, but a sense of openness and light and expansiveness rather than self-centeredness and darkness. So serving wakes us up to our wholeness and so just taking in. You know, I, some years ago, a friend of mine who worked in a, some sort of an institution that really provided care for those who are severely disabled, described working there and it was a very good institution. I mean, it was very sensitive in many ways, but he had a shock. He was, was one day he was sitting next to one of the patients, and the patient looked at him in the eye and he said, you're the sick ones. And the guy went, and the patient said it again, because you're the sick ones. We know how to take in love. You don't. And he actually reflected on it

and realized that you can get roll-locked in being the helper. And that, you know, he started asking and the question of himself and others, how many of us really, you know, people will hear people say, oh, I love you, but how many of us in a visceral way let that in? You might ask yourself that. You know, how much in your friendships or family, whatever, do you really, in a very heart way, feel that wash and that deliciousness of feeling, ah, this being cares about me? There's more and more again, studies showing that this capacity to feel loved is an intrinsic part of well-being. As this brain has evolved, it's not just giving out care. It's actually taking in care. It's just like taking in food. Can we take in and metabolize and digest food? Can we do it with love?

One of my favorite stories, a certain Bektashi-Durvish was respected for his piety and appearance of virtue. And whenever anyone asked him how he'd become so holy, he answered, I know what is in the Quran. And so one day he had just given this reply to an inquire in the coffee house when some real kind of some newcomer kind of arrogant said, okay, what gives? What's in the Quran? You know? And this is his response. He said, in the Quran are two pressed flowers and a letter from my friend Abdullah. One of the meanings of the word metta, which is for loving kindness, is friendliness.

It's this being in this swim, this breathing in and out of real care and gentleness that brings things alive for us, giving and receiving. So our next little reflection, as you might imagine, is going to be on this, just to, again, take a moment and to sense what's true for you in this. And as you come into stillness,

just feel your breath and sense the receiving of the breath. So as you breathe in, as if a balloon is opening to receive, just open to receive and sense the breath coming to your cells, coming to the spaces between the cells, and letting the breath out

or releasing and letting go. But bring special attention to the in-breath. This is sometimes called prana, a life force in a Sanskrit. Can you just receive this basic, subtle life energy that is moment-to-moment nourishing this living being? Feel like you're receiving love when you're receiving the breath. Like that delicious. You might sense light, aliveness, warmth, gentleness, that you're receiving love as you're receiving the breath. And you're letting it wash through you and bathe every part of your being. The out breath is just releasing, letting go.

And then opening to receive again. You might continue to feel the breath as you bring to mind someone who you trust cares about you. Now, for some of us, we might feel like we're not sure we trust. anybody really cares, but come as close as you can and see that person's eyes and face and how they look when they are communicating in some way appreciation and care. And just as you did with the breath, see if energetically, you can really let that care in. Let it wash through you. Feel how that person's heart space is including you.

Feel that you can dissolve a little, let go of the... edges some into belonging. You might experiment and bring someone else to mind that, you know, appreciate you. See that person's eyes, communicating care, their face, their smile. And again, see if there's that receptivity. And if not, then just to be mindful, okay, so there's some defendedness, some fear or mistrust, but let mindfulness include that. It's useful to know. It's useful to know, it. It's the beginning of releasing the defendedness is to see it. We don't usually pay attention to this. Can you let in this person's love? For some, you might explore bringing to mind a Buddha or bodhisattva of compassion, Jesus, Mary, a figure that perhaps is an embodiment of love and

compassion, the Dalai Lama, somebody that expresses that very unconditional loving and imagine and sense that person looking at you, communicating care. Can you let it in? And gently coming back to simply feeling the breath and feeling this earth's atmosphere, imagining the spring, feeling that life itself is, nourishing, embracing, supporting you, moment to moment, belonging to this life. We have just a little bit more to like to explore with you, but to say that you can cultivate your capacity to savor by purposely pausing. And when something is lovely or beautiful, our pleasant, our wondrous, like the moon that we've been seeing these last few nights,

or this amazing spring, stop and intentionally recognize, ah, lovely, pause, savor, makes the difference. So I've been describing these three clusters that we have done the inner training sum of the metta, our loving kindness, the gratitude. We begin to express more and more serving and savoring. What happens is it deepens our wisdom, our attitude towards life, one that, an attitude that really in a very profound way can reflect well-being. Because ultimately, the teaching is, it doesn't matter what's happening. It's how we're relating to it. If your well-being is hitched to life going a certain way, your memory work in a certain way, your body being in a certain state, your partner acting a certain way, that's going to be conditional happiness. If you want the happiness

of what's called Sukha, happiness for no reason. It's going to come down to an attitude. And for a lot of us, we have to have life happen to us and kind of do some letting go to discover that, oh, I'm happy anyway. And that's actually been very much my own experience in the last three years in particular, that for a very long time, my spikes in happiness, were always hitched to being outdoors and being really physical and getting endorphin highs and merging with nature in the midst of those highs. And piece by piece, because of going through all sorts of physical sickness, the things that I did that really were my main lines to feeling really charged up and good, I couldn't do.

I mean, I could not bike anymore. Biking was out of the way. I couldn't ski. I couldn't hike up hills. I can't do that now. So I would have thought that my happiness level would go down, but I've been amazed to find that it's gone up. So that rather than, let's say, you know, you might imagine you can bike and switch

a little and go up and down all the hells and do all this stuff. But if your mind is in some way caught up in this thing of, I'm going to push myself or comparing myself to others are in some way, there's relationship tensions that enter. It doesn't matter what you're doing. You're going to always be in that place. The happy set point will keep you. What I found for myself is that as things got taken away,

what mattered was the quality of presence I had and what I had left I could do. And so even the days, sometimes days I can't even walk on the river, all I can do is walk around our property. around the edge of the woods, but I go very slowly and I pause. And if the presence, if that kind of inner silence, that space is awake, it's just as exquisite. It's just as sacred as if I had hiked up and down the ten hells and God and Mindorfans going and then sat and been buzzed. It's just as good. And so I'm sharing that because we can lose it all. And

presence is here. And so maybe a final story to share with you tonight that I've always loved is Ihtach Perlman, whose famous concert at the Lincoln Center in New York City, many of you know, he was stricken with polio as a child. And so he would, each time he'd perform, he'd walk very slowly and painfully across the stage and he'd set himself and in a chair and put his crutches on the floor and it was a whole kind of ritual that the audience would know and sit kind of reverently as he went through it. Well, this time, he picked up his instrument and something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars on the violin, one of the strings broke, and you could hear it snap. It went off like gunfire in the room. So I'm reading now. We figured that he would have to get up and put on his

clasps again and pick up the crutches and get another violin, but he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes, and then signaled for the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off, and he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it's impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that and you know that, but that night, Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounds like he was detuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room, and then people

rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. He smiled, wiped a sweat from this brow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet pensive reverent tone, you know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left. Isn't that really the whole path that we're on, that we know it's all changing? It's creating and dissolving, and that we can't hold on to anything. So the freedom comes as we start resting in a larger and larger sense of beingness, that we're not hitched to the small self having to have things a certain way,

but rather we're beginning to get more and more familiar with the sense of belonging, that we belong to each other, and we belong to this living, magical earth, and we belong to awareness, to spirit. And when you know and trust you belong to the ocean, you're not afraid of the waves. You're not. That belonging gives room for whatever's here, whatever is happening, whatever's here. So we'll close tonight. Simple pause, belonging to the moment, if you will. The freedom from this trance, the freedom to experience our well-being begins with this pause where we start belonging to the life that's right here. Just to feel this breath, feel your intention to be right here, tender, open, present. Let your senses be awake,

aware of the sounds, where of the sensations that are here, so that you're belonging to the aliveness that's right in this moment-to-moment experience, belonging to the tenderness of heart that's here, and belonging to this vast inner space of presence that's aware of all that's arising and passing. Closing with a poem from Mary Oliver,

she says, oh, to love what is lovely and will not last. Oh, to love what is lovely and will not last. What a task to ask of anything or anyone. Yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One fall day I heard above me and above the sting of the wind a sound, I did not know when my look shot upward. It was a flock of snow geese, swinging. it faster than the ones we usually see and being the color snow catching the sun so they were in part at least golden i held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us

the geese flew on i've never seen them again maybe i will some day somewhere maybe i won't it doesn't matter what matters is that when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly. Namaste.