Tara Brach - Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation - Loving Kindness - Befriending our Lives (retreat)

Episode Date: December 26, 2019

Short Talk and Guided Heart Meditation - Loving Kindness - Befriending our Lives (2019-11-02) - This short talk and meditation introduces the domain of "heart practices" and then guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of belonging - knowing that we can never be alone (from the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. So welcome to our afternoon heart meditation. It's nice to be together with you. I'd like to begin by asking a question. That is, how many of you have some regular practice, loving kindness practice that's part of what you do? Can I just see by hands? And how many of you like and enjoy the loving-kindness practice?

Okay, now here's an honest one. How many of you don't like doing the loving-kindness practice? And thank you. I wanted to ask that because there's a lot of people in, you know, when you just start asking and asking and questioning, that either have a lot of difficulty with or just don't like. at least the way it's classically taught the loving kindness practice. So I wanted to begin by saying that loving kindness practice is any way that you pay attention that in some way awakens, softens, opens your heart.

Any way that on purpose you're paying attention that does that. And as happens in any culture you get a certain thing described as this is the practice and then it becomes, oh, so what we do is we say four phrases and we widen it out like this. And lo and behold, we have our meditation. And that's one option of countless because we all have different kind of words and images and ways and perhaps of touch or ways of feeling in our bodies that that, that we all have end up translating in some way to allowing our hearts to soften.

And so it's really so much needs to be customized to your own experience. So first off to say that I think of cultivating the heart as going absolutely hand-in-hand with a mindfulness practice. We often describe it as two wings of the bird. and that mindfulness sees clearly what's happening and heartfulness opens our heart to it. And in Asia, the word present heart is another description of mindfulness. So they're totally interwoven.

And one of the most important parts of our practice for many people in certain seasons is intentionally waking up the heart. You hear the words a lot. We have this negativity bias that leads us to feeling separate and aversive. And some form of loving kindness deconditions that. So the question is, what way do we do it? And loving kindness in some way ultimately includes all of life

because what we're coming to realize is that nothing is separate, which means including the life inside us and how we relate to ourselves is conditioned very early by how others our caregivers our greater culture relates to us and it can range from being abusive neglectful to present and unconditionally loving many of us had kind of a some sort of a mix where we really are not so present and tender with ourselves. So it becomes a, I often call it spiritual reparenting, is learning how to relate to ourselves with kindness. And it needs mindfulness. It means that we're not just whatever happens just blanketing ourselves with love. It needs clear seeing and understanding.

of what's going on. I love the story of a priest who sees a little boy who's standing in front of a door reaching to press the bill, and he comes up and presses it for him, this kindly priest. And then he says, now what do we do? And the little boy says, we run like hell. So it's not, and it's not idiot compassion either.

It's often described by the Tibetans as, you know, that whatever a person does, it's like, well, I love you, I love you. You know, there are boundaries and there's clear seeing. And yet our heart, the trajectory of our heart, is to be ever more tender and open. My current practice is very much, with loving kindness, very much is around the phrase of friendliness

because the poly word for meta or loving kindness often has that connotation. And at first I didn't pay attention to it too much because friendliness sounded kind of lightweight, you know. And yet the more I do a deep dive into the word what really, when we're truly feeling friendliness, the openheartedness and care and benevolence and tenderness, it's become really meaningful for me. And I wanted to share an account.

experience that I had a few years ago where it kind of shifted my practice with loving kindness. And I was walking on the river where I walk regularly. And I heard the sounds of guns upriver. It sometimes happens in the fall that it's very close to where I'm walking where there are people shooting at the geese. and they're truly sitting ducks, so to speak, because, you know, geese on a river, very easy to kill them.

And I immediately started crying because I spent a huge amount of time watching geese, whether it's the formations overhead or seeing the new babies in the spring or watching the geese on the rocks right where I met. So I feel very familiar with them. and immediately I felt like, oh my God, they're hurting my friends. And it was really upsetting because I really, the more you pay attention to any living being, the more that being becomes a friend.

And it made, I had some of the same feelings when I really look close in at animals being bred for food, you're hurting my friends. And the daily torment, just being an ally or a friend. And then, so I started saying, you know, I thought of the geese and I was saying, we're friends. And I saw my dog sitting and watching me because she gets concerned when I cry. So I said, oh, and yeah, we're friends, we're friends.

And there's a little bird in the trees and we are friends. And every time I'd say we are friends, it was like, whof, the sense of poignancy and the tree, we are friends. And the people I had passed recently on the trail, I thought of them, we are friends. And I share this because with the sorrow there's this wash of belonging. And that started to be this practice of saying we are friends. And now I can look at any of you. And if I slowed down and I go, oh, we're friends.

The fear and separation of a separate self dissolves with that. So that became very much and has become a very much part of my metapractice is to bring to mine and sense the we are friends and the depth of what that means and the freedom that comes with that. So I'm going to build that into a guided metta practice for us as we go on, but just to say a little bit more that. The process of META in some way involves being an all-inclusive heart. How we do it is really, again, customized. Usually it's encouraged that you begin wherever it's easiest. You begin, for many of us, it would be, for me with my dog. You know, it's just very easy and uncomplicated.

You can begin with a spiritual figure. You can begin with anybody. you feel an uncomplicated tenderness with. Very often, it's children. For many of us, that's the simplest. One grandma sent me this. She said her granddaughter, she was telling her granddaughter about her own childhood.

She said, we used to skate outside on a pond, and I had a swing made from a tire. It hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony, and we picked wild raspberries in the woods. So she's telling her granddaughter this, and the little girl's getting more and more wide-eyed. And then the little girl said, I sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner, since I'm a new grandma.

I can really relate. Oh my, it's so easy to feel the loving. So we'll do a bit of the loving kindness practice this afternoon. Know that however it's led, it's meant to be an invitation for you to explore for your yourself. I think the two main pieces are that we sense a growing, deepening appreciation for the life within and around us, the goodness. And the second part is that makes loving kindness powerful is to express it. There's brain science that goes with this, that when you

feel a sense of gratitude and appreciation, that goodness, that tenderness, that's, that's That's the beginning of really opening our hearts. When you actually express it, when you say the words, I love you, or thank you, it activates the brain more fully and the feelings really wash through us fully. So even in the practice, you can explore sharing your experience with others and it makes it really strong. So with that, feel free to adjust and find a way of sitting that's comfortable and allows you to be alert enough so you're here.

With the loving kindness practice, we might use ideas and thoughts of others, but for it to really become manifest, it's an experience in the body, tenderness and warmth in the body. So I like to begin by establishing that embodied presence, bringing META into the body with the imagery of a smile. Ticknod Han calls the smile yoga because it, and again it's got a real science to it, that the image and the felt sense of a smile actually relaxes the fight-flight-freeze mechanism, the stress reaction, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system which really allows us to feel a sense of ease and benevolence. You might imagine the great sky that's around us

right now, this blue open sky and imagine it filled with the curve and the image of a smile, receptive, vast, open, and letting your mind merge with that vast open sky and sensing the smile spreading through your whole mind. You might allow the eyes to smile, the outer corners of the eyes, lifted up some. So there's a sense of spaciousness and ease and softening of the eyes.

The brow is smooth. Still sensing that open sky-like mind, letting it all float in that, smiling into the eyes, slight smile at the lips, and sense the inside of the mouth smiling, and visualize and sense and feel a smile spreading through the heart. This isn't to cover over, but really creating the space for the life that's here. Sensing that smile there and kind of rings of opening and opening and opening so that there's space, there's space enough for the shoulders to relax back and down, arms relax, hands soft, smiling into the heart. So you can actually feel the sensations there, the

aliveness there. There's room. You might visualize and feel the sense of a smile spreading through the belly, softening the belly, letting the awareness, the aliveness be felt deep in the torso. You can begin to feel sensations much more intimately and directly. The belly, the legs, the feet, letting the atmosphere and feeling of a smile spread through the whole body, the space around you, this feeling this aliveness held in the felt sense and experience of a smile, inviting into your awareness some being that's easy to feel love with. As mentioned, it might be a pet or a child, a beloved, beloved parent, sibling, friend, teacher, spiritual figure, bringing this being close in

so you can see their eyes, the look on their face, reminding yourself of what you love, sensing how they express love, how they express their aliveness, their consciousness and their intelligence, their tenderness, their humor, their truthfulness. And as you sense what you're loving, you might mentally whisper the being's name and say, I love you. Or you might say thank you. Just your gratitude for their existence, feeling the goodness of loving, sense them receiving your love, your thanks.

So you can feel the connectedness, the field, the depth of we are friends, we belong together. So you're sensing that field that's bigger than any self. And then bringing your attention to the life within you, viewing this being right here through your own wisest heart, sensing the goodness that's here, that which loves inside you, this capacity for love, the longing for truth, to see the truth of nature, the longing to wake up, to be part of the healing. And if it helps to look through the eyes of another, if it's difficult to see your own being, see the goodness, to look through the eyes of another that loves you, seeing the goodness,

how this being, who you are loves beauty, loves to be in wonder, loves to love. And as you see that, you might offer yourself some wish, some blessing, whatever comes naturally, expressing your care for the life that's right here. And if it deepens it, you might explore putting your hand on your heart. Because we don't often be in relationship with our life this way. So it'd experiment, and you might have used, you put your hand on your heart, vary the pressure so it's tender, direct, so the pressure itself is communicating care.

Notice what happens when you offer yourself a sincere wish. May I be happy? May I feel safe, free from inner or outer harm? May I be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence? May I touch great and natural peace? taking some moments to explore, offering care, whatever message feels alive and right for you right now, and perhaps visualizing and sensing that message manifesting, sensing sensing what you're wishing for yourself.

And from the place in you that longs to love and loves to love, we widen the circles now, bringing to mind. someone that's close to you that you care about, bringing them close in and sensing the goodness in that being and reflecting we are friends and the depth of that, what that really means. In the next few moments, bringing to mind others in your close circle, family, friends, and exploring what happens when with each you bring them close. in your awareness and sense the field of relatedness of we are friends, including as you reflect some of those who are here, those that are sitting near you, those who you might

know or have seen just visually, those you may have eaten lunch with, we are friends, widen to include parts of this natural world that you love, beginning with non-human animals, bringing to mind a non-human animal, bringing that being close in. We are friends and including parts of this living earth, a tree that you love, perhaps, that's near to where you live, plants, water. We are friends, sensing the belonging that arises, bringing to mind now a group of humans who may be suffering, a group that's different than your own, bringing the image of a human person nearby right close into your awareness that represents the suffering group.

Be those of a different religion who are suffering, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, identity, those at war in a certain part of this world that are struggling, facing genocide, just bringing a being in close in, sensing the struggle and reflecting we are friends, bringing in the image and sense of someone who's very difficult for you to include in your heart, honoring first the reaction of this is difficult. It's your first bringing kindness to the life inside you. And then in the spirit of the Dalai Lama saying, my friend, the enemy,

sense the we are friends that reaches past the conditioning to the vulnerable and real human that's living there. And widening now the awareness to include all that you have reflected on. Inner life, beloved one, friends, those you don't know as well, non-human animals, this living earth, difficult beings, those who are struggling. Feeling this living earth, our larger body, teeming with life, holding all, sensing that web

of belonging, we are friends that connects us. that relaxes us back to the awareness, the one field of awareness, tender and awake, luminous and open, so we can feel that shared prayerfulness on behalf of all life everywhere, that all life everywhere awaken to its innate belonging, that these lives are lived in service of each other, in service of aliveness, that all beings everywhere can can feel the natural joy of being alive, that all beings everywhere can touch deep and natural peace. These are the words of the poet Mark Nippo.

My soul tells me we're all broken from the same nameless heart, and every living thing wakes with a piece of that original heart aching its way into blossom. This is why we know each other below our strangeness, why when we fall we lift each other, Or when in pain we hold each other, why, when sudden with joy we dance together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back together. Life is the many pieces of that great heart loving itself back together.

Taking these last few moments in quietness, resting in that heart space that includes all beings everywhere. Life is the many pieces of that great heart, loving itself back together.