Tara Brach - Sheltering In Love - Part 2 (2020-04-01)

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

Sheltering In Love - Part 2 (2020-04-01) - During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path - practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste and welcome. I really am glad to be with you all and maybe invite you to join me from wake up our hearts and minds really together and also sensing how most of us are sheltering in place right now, which is a phenomenal once-in-a-lifetime experience for I'd say all of us. And for most of us really registering, we're in an entirely different world right now. And many feeling the fears, the agitation that really comes with these times. And it feels important to start this way to acknowledge the magnitude of the pain and the loss, because for so many of us, it's quite close in.

I have many friends in my network that are struggling in very immediate ways. family too. And I heard on the news today that one person is dying every eight minutes in New York City right now. So in the U.S. and a good number of countries around the world, this crisis is still ramping up. And we know that. So our hearts are together in holding that, that hugeness of the suffering. I also want to acknowledge something else, which is is a sense of possibility, a sense of potential when life falls apart. And through the history of our species, we can see that huge disruptions can be the times of adaptation, where we're tapping our deepest resources of intelligence, of compassion, creativity, generosity.

Maybe you've seen this in your own life, I suspect you have, how when everything crashes, when we get really groundless, let's say we've lost a really important relationship or there's a major sickness or death of a dear one, it can call out our strength and a very deep wisdom and a very deep loving. Mother Teresa once commented, and I love this one, she said, I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish she didn't trust me so much. And isn't that perfect? Because as individuals and as a species, this is what we're given right now. And we do have the potential and the resilience to handle to go through this crisis.

We've made it through as a species through epidemics and floods and droughts and earthquakes. And historically, and this is what's always so compelling to me, the most defining feature of evolution, this started 10 to 20,000 years ago, is this capacity for compassion beyond just kin. And when things fall apart, that compassion really just fills the atmosphere. We take care of each other in challenging times. Compassion deepens. As my friend Valerie Carr puts it, she says, this is truly a time to know that no, no, No one is a stranger. And we can feel that a little more.

So in the talk last week and tonight and then it emerges to be a three-part series and who knows, it's called Sheltering in Love. And we're exploring really how we can do that, how the difficulties that are arising for each of us in our own ways, how they can give rise to self-compassion and really holding each other with an open heart, with an act of caring, what I call radical compassion. So what we're exploring is the essence of the bodhisattva aspiration. And I love this particular prayer. It goes, may whatever circumstances arise awaken a heart of compassion.

So when we encounter difficulty, because this is no matter what circumstance, Nances, when we encounter a crisis like this, to have that prayer makes us available to wake up. Maybe we'll pause together here because it's such a powerful reflection. Invite you to close your eyes and take a moment to sense how things are for you right now in the midst of this global pandemic. I mean, some of us are sheltering in more fortunate circumstances, some not, but we're all living with this profound, earth-shaking, uncertainty, and many of us a lot of fear. So just to take a moment and pause, how is this all living in your body? What are the difficulties or challenges that are very real for you right now and for you that may include a sense?

of really the horrificness of what people throughout the world are experiencing. What are the difficulties? And you might sense that aspiration. Please, may these difficulties, this challenging time, may it awaken this heart, may it awaken more loving, more compassion, and to continue to sense yourself what you wish this would call forward. worth in you. When things fall apart, there's a tremendous potential for what can emerge. So, my friends, this is, and you can open your eyes, this is our shared inquiry right now,

how these times of feeling unusually vulnerable, fearful might call forth our best. And I asked a handful of days ago in Facebook the question, in your wisest moment, how are you working with the deep suffering that can arise with the pandemic? And I want to say that the responses are really inspiring, and I invite you to check them out, quite beautiful collective wisdom, gives so much hope or capacity for this wisdom. So the responses, well, there was a range of creative pathways. People are using for inner healing, yoga, meditation, breathing, tapping, gardening, walking in nature beautiful.

A lot of people talked about gratitude, but here we are in really painful times. What can we be grateful for, pausing with the simple things, whether it's the beauty of spring that we're seeing, are the sweetness of another being that we're with, are seeing other people be kind. One person wrote, my constant mantra is thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

for breath, for life, for safety, for this opportunity to go within. So that's one very powerful way with this bodhisattva path. Aspiration is say thank you more to this life. Now, for a huge number of people in the response, it was presence to face and be with vulnerability. and really this is the heart of the Bodhisattva path, which is the path of an awakening being, which is all of us, which is that courage to go ahead and face the fear, to be with it. We often explore the rain meditation,

which is that weave of mindfulness and compassion as a tool for that, as a tool for being with the difficulty with presence, and in the responses on Facebook, people described all the different fears and agitation and so on, and many described working with Rain. Rain, just so I name it with you all who might be new to this, rain is an acronym. The translation of each letter is recognized, that's the R, allow, investigate, and nurture. And then after you do those four steps, there's what's called after the rain.

or you actually sense the presence that's here, rests in it. That's a critical moment for really learning who we are, discovering who we are. So the recognizing allow is the beginning of being with vulnerability. And here one person shared in my wisest moments, I'm just accepting where I'm at. This is fear. That's okay. This is sadness.

that's okay. This is a weird feeling. That's okay. You might listen to another one. I'm just going to read it because you can track rain here in a very powerful way. This person writes, in my wisest moments, I recognize that what I'm feeling is fear. I'm afraid. I also feel helpless. What works for me, if even temporarily, is accepting those feelings, investigating that When it comes to fear, when it's about the future, I tell myself to stay in the moment. When it comes to helplessness, I apply compassion. Then, each time I hear an ambulance and the sirens are non-stop in New York City, I take a breath for the person who is inside and can't breathe,

and I send love to the EMTs that are there. It's so clear. You can hear it that when we find, a pathway to bring compassion to the difficulty inside us, it naturally starts extending to others. This is the beauty of rain. Another person wrote in my wisest moments, I'm able to look outside myself and I'm grieving for the families in Italy who cannot be with their loved ones or hold their funerals. That's going to be more and more of us. And we are a resilient species. We have this capacity to care about each other and to help each other. And increasingly, it's happening now

as things are falling apart in our world and during our current sheltering at home. So we can see it. We can see how many people are transitioning relationships online in every possible way, meditating together, Zoom dance parties, dinner parties. Last week, Janet, who who's part of our team here, working with me, did her Parkinson's boxing class online. It's happening in all dimensions. This is what I'd like to kind of emphasize right here, is that this online transition includes really authentic, intimate contact, being vulnerable. And again and again, this capacity to be with our own vulnerability and each other

is what awakens the heart, being real. So in one of the online groups among members of one of our DC meditation communities, it was a Zoom meeting. One of the friends in this group joined in from the hospital because she was in isolation, a coronavirus unit, and she was sharing her experience with her friends in the group, the loneliness, what it's like when the only people you have contact within the room are wearing their hazmat coverings and and just sharing and being

able to be seen, be heard, be connected in spiritual community. So this is what's possible. We can do it online and so many are on phones, let me say too. So many have told me about reaching out to dear ones. They hadn't been in touch with people who are having a hard time, other people reaching out to them and really feeling connected. There's a story, a true story I want to share with you, and it stayed with me since I first heard it. Many of you know of Dorothy Day. She was a Catholic social activist. Well, when she was eight years old, she lived through the San Francisco earthquake, it was of 1906, and she watched people emerging from that devastation. And seeing all the adults around her caring for strangers in a way she had never seen before. Really, she was

really touched by that. And with the clear-sightedness of a child, she sees that they knew how to do this all along and asks a question. She asks, why can't we live this way all the time? You might think about that for a moment. And what if we really brought our heart to that inquiry? that we sense when things fall apart, when we get kind of thrown out of any normal habit pattern, and when we sense our shared vulnerability, we respond with such care. There's such beauty to the human heart. What would make it possible to live that way all the time? So for the remainder of this talk and next week, this is what I'd like to

explore, how this sheltering in love can really be a lifetime practice, letting these difficult times grow our connectedness in a way that endures, that really changes our planet and how we take care of each other, how we take care of the most vulnerable, how we take care of our earth. And it requires a training because we forget. This is what's right in front of us. We know that in our habitual routines, we in some way go into lockdown in a different way, we lock down our vulnerability. So there's a training on how we can stay connected with that tenderness inside ourselves and with each other. I teach about this in my book on Radical Compassion because there are a handful of habits of the heart that we develop that come out during crisis and that get lost.

we go back into trance. But the key is the one I've been coming back to again and again here. And that is to learn to be with our own vulnerability, to learn to see and recognize it in each other, to have the courage to express it, to listen, to be companions in that. Vulnerability is the portal to compassion. If we're not in touch with it,

there will not be compassion. And so during a crisis, it's very exposed. And we can sense, especially for those of us that are taking a pause to be with what's here, then when we're with each other, it's kind of like, okay, we get it. We're in us together. Now, I'm not talking about getting in touch with our vulnerability if we're feeling traumatized. We have to be really very careful and do whatever we can to nurture a sense, of safety before we go right into where the deepest vulnerability is. But for many of us, it is

possible to feel it and to feel how it is with each other and to offer help more readily, to receive it more readily. We can see it now. We can see it as Dorothy Day describes it with the earthquake. We're truly in it together and our hearts are open because we really sense a larger belonging. So let's look more closely at what happens when we're not in crisis so that we can anticipate the trance. So it can be alert to it and so we can feel that bodhisattva aspiration to keep waking up. And what really happens as we know is that we all have a lot of strategies to get away from our fear. I often quote that sage, was asked how to heal and his response was to ask ourselves a question, what are you unwilling

to feel? What are you unwilling to feel? It's a powerful one. So what happens when we're on automatic is that we're on automatic strategies that actually distance us from our vulnerability and we are trying to control how we appear to others. If we look closely at our interactions, we'll see how much of what we're doing is to have a certain impression, to have other people have a certain experience of us. We cover over our vulnerability,

we cover over what we don't like about ourselves. And when we're doing that with ourselves, we're unable to see past the mass of others because other people are doing it too. it cuts off that empathic flow. So we have to be able to see how that happens with us. Because we each have a story in our mind of how we should be. We have a notion of our good self, how we want to be.

We also have ideas of how we shouldn't be. This is the prototypical good self, bad self. We have ideas about other people should be and shouldn't be. And it stops us from being real. So you might again reflect for a moment, closing your eyes. take a few full breaths. So we're exploring here how we, when we're on automatic, we cover over our realness. You might bring to mind someone that you respect a lot and maybe are a bit insecure around. And when you have that person in mind, you might ask yourself, what is it I really

want them to see about me? And that tells you a bit about the good self-identity. that has a certain hook to it. What is that you don't want them to see about you? If you bring to mind a certain situation with them, can you get a sense of what you do to present the good self and cover over the not good self? And you might investigate a little because in those moments you might sense,

am I relating to what's real inside me? Am I in touch? And am I noticing who that I? other person is, what's real for them. And just notice the degree of being cut off from realness, from your true strengths, your vulnerability, and your heart. So what we start finding is our stories about ourselves and others, how we shouldn't be and how we should be, end up preventing us from seeing who's really there and living from our bodhisattva heart. I'd like to share with you a story that I feel brings this out in a beautiful way.

Some of you might remember it, I think a year and a half ago or so I shared it. It's told by Terry Dobson, who spent a lot of time in Japan when he was younger studying Akito, which is the art of reconciliation. And he received a basic teaching, which is whoever has the mind to fight, has broken their connection with the universe. Okay? So Terry was young and he was tough,

and while he saw the wisdom in this teaching, part of him wanted to prove himself more physically. So you can start to get a sense of a story about himself. And of course, you'll hear about his story. story about others because one afternoon he was on a train and a big drunk dirty man laborer's clothing. He boarded and he started yelling and he was very violent and he was cursing and he was swinging his fists around and he knocked a young woman with a baby into lapse of an elderly couple. And Terry figured this was his chance and he felt tough and holy. This is the good self

and he was going to put an end to this guy's violence because this guy was a bad self. So he stood up and he's clearly going to step in and the drunk saw him and now he focused his yelling at Terry he said you're going to get a lesson you know and Terry gave him a look of disgust to egg him on and the guy was about to rush at him when all of a sudden an old man in a kimona called out hey and then he beckoned the drunk man to come over to him at first he was belligerent why the hell should I talk to you? But the old man just beamed. He didn't have any fear or resentment. His eyes are sparkling, actually with interest. He asked the drunk what he was drinking and just started talking to him. He told him about every evening how he would sit in the garden with his wife,

drinking sake and looking at their persimintry. The drunk was bewildered and he said, well, I like sake too. And then the old man said, I'm sure you have a wonderful wife too. No, replied the laborer to this so strangely friendly man and a softer sullen tone, he said, my wife, she died last year. The suddenly changed drunk hung his head in heavy sorrow and then gently swaying with the motion of the train. This big, burly man who was so threatening just moments ago began to sob. He said, I don't got no wife. I don't got no home anymore.

I lost my job. I don't got no money. I don't got nowhere to go. I'm so ashamed of myself. And big tears rolled down his cheeks and the spasm of pure despair ripped through his body. My, my, the elderly man said with a heartfelt care, yet undiminished delight. He said, that's very difficult predicament and deed. Sit down here. Tell me about it. Terry turned his head for the last look before leaving the now crowded train. The labor was fraughted like a sack on the seat, his head in the old man's lap. The old man was looking down at him with smiling compassion, his hand stroking the filthy, matted head of this confused soul.

Terry described leaving the train dazed and what he had wanted to do with muscle and mean have been accomplished with a few kind words. Whatever we practice regularly gets stronger. And if we practice judgment and resentment where we see the mask of the bad other and react to it, those are the muscles that get stronger. And if instead we move to the world and look past the mask, have that interest of, well, who are you and what's going on, that becomes who we are, that

bodhisattva heart gets, gets more and more alive and engaged, and that's what we start living from. This is the training, this is one of the trainings that is known on the bodhisattva path, and it's a, it's essentially a compassion training to, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, during crisis, it's when we're not in a formal crisis to be very intentional both in terms of being in touch with our own realness and our own vulnerability beyond our good self, bad self ideas. It's like stepping out of the mind and really coming into where life is right here and being

with ourselves with compassion and then being able to see past the mask of others. And in a way the inquiry is, well, what's it like being you? really trying to find out and now is an amazing time as we're sheltering in love in a very real at-home way to explore bringing that realness into our relationships with our friends and our family. For some of you who are practicing rain to explore it with a rain partner and on my website there's all the guidelines on how to do that in a guide in an audio that guide sessions because when we practice being in touch with vulnerability with each other, there's a field that holds us and we can sense that we're larger than the currents of fear.

We're larger than the anger. We're larger than confusion and helps to be with another to sense that larger belonging. So as I mentioned, we have this capacity to have the difficulty and the pain, and the suffering of the current times really wake up these hearts. It's really a kind of a leap in our evolution if we're intentional. And it does get conditioned out of us. You know, we have it. It's innate to us, this capacity, but it gets conditioned out by a society that's filled

with so much as we know mistrust and insensitivity. We get taught to hide and just want to present the good self. But we concede in the realness of children. You know, it's such a refreshing delight to see a child with their undefendedness, letting how they are be seen in the world. Christy, who is my assistant here, sent me a really cool sharing. This is New York City school teacher who collected these epic quotes from children. And it's called Live from Snack Time.

And they're fun, and they're also very poignant. real and some of them are when children are struggling and I'm just going to read you a few of them to give you a feeling. I've been having a hard day for the last two years. It's an anonymous one, age four. Another, I'm too sad for pants. It's James in age two. Another. I can't show you how much I missed you because my hands are too small. Anonymous age six. Don't wipe my tears away. I want to feel them on my face. Henry H. 2. And then one more, can you give me a time out? I want to be alone. Another anonymous age 5. So my friends, we're talking about this compassion training so that what's coming up here so naturally when the world falls apart is something that

we can have as an enduring part of our world. And it comes from that courage to connect with inner vulnerability and then extending, seeing the realness and others. And the truth is, when this formal crisis passes and it will, we, we, are still fundamentally vulnerable. We'll all die. We lose all that we love. We're in a groundless world even though we are constantly trying to find certainty. So we need the honesty and bravery to stay open to that essential uncertainty and be real with ourselves and each other. And when we are, the gift of it is, when we

When we're courageously present with our own vulnerability in each other, we realize that it's our shared vulnerability. It's our world's pain. And we sense our belonging with each other. I have a very close friend who's also a poet. I read often from her Dana Falls. Here's what she writes. Everything, everything, every little thing is unique at its surface and in distinguishing

at its core. I want to remember this today, the oneness, the oneness underlying our differences and the truth that we can never really be strangers, even if we've never laid eyes on each other before. I want to remember this today. So with that, I'd like to have a closing practice if you'll join me. Yeah, so wherever you are, each and our home sheltering places. Please again adjust yourself so that you're comfortable. I'll close your eyes and we'll explore again this this very simple but powerful pathway to compassion. Just opening to the truth of what's here. You might begin by reminding yourself of your your aspiration that hope or longing you have for how what might be called,

called forth in you as you move through these difficult times. And to feel our collective aspiration that the suffering of these times might awaken compassion, that together we might love our world into healing. And with that, that kind of intentionality, invite you to check inside right now and see if anything that's asking for a healing, acceptance and presence with a very light rain just recognizing it you might name what you're aware of letting it be there allowing investigating by putting your hand wherever you feel it most strongly your throat your chest your belly breathing with the vulnerability that's here and letting your deep intention be to hold it with compassion how much is it possible to meet to meet

this vulnerability with a tenderness of heart. Perhaps there are words that you'd like to say to yourself right now. Just notice the heart space that opens up in after the rain, just a little more space, more tenderness. Bringing to mind a dear one who can use your healing attention right now, someone who's feeling the challenges and difficulties of the time. Bringing that person close in so you can ask that question, what's it like being you? And kind of listen in just to what your intuition is. What's it really like for this person right now? How might they be feeling afraid of what's going to happen?

Afraid for their lives or for another person's life or for their financial well-being. Feeling and allowing yourself to sense their vulnerability. as if you could breathe with it as if you could put your hand on their heart right now offering whatever message of care comes naturally and to wide in the circles by bringing to mind a person who's very different from you someone you don't know well perhaps a different race religion ethnicity different political party

that's that can be a tough one bringing to mind a person of difference. This is a time to truly know one be a stranger. So leaning in a little, what's it like being you? Just wondering that, sensing how this person like you wants to be safe, wants to feel secure and may be feeling very threatened. And from this heart space offering your care. In a sense in this heart space that you're holding yourself, dear one you brought to mine, difficult person, and just sense how many others are part of this space, taking a moment in the quietness to sense those around the world that are struggling in the same ways, how no one's a stranger, how we're all feeling the

world's fear, the universal fear, how it lives through all these bodies. sensing your heart space holding and with deep tenderness all living beings, sheltering in love with all beings and feeling your prayer for all of us. We sense our collective aspiration. May these times of such great suffering, awaken our collective heart space. awaken us so that we can live in a daily way with increasing generosity, sensitivity, sensitivity, compassion, and tenderness.

I'd like to close with a poem I love from James Baldwin, for nothing is fixed. Forever, forever, forever, it is not fixed. The earth is always shifting. the light is always changing the sea does not seize to grind down rocks generations do not seize to be born the sea rises the light fails the moment we seize to hold each other the moment we break faith with one another the sea engulfs us and the light goes out. Thank you, my friends, for being part of this and I'll look forward to being with you next week. Namaste and blessings. Stay safe and be well.

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