Tara Brach - Short Talk and Meditation: Saying "Yes" to Our Life (11:23 min.)

Episode Date: December 25, 2024

Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying "yes" to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature (a reflection from the archives). Listen to the full talk: Saying "Yes" – Meeting Your Edge and Softening. 

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. There's a well-known Tibetan master from the 11th century, Melaripa, and he was known for composing all these wonderful stories and songs. And I'd like to share with you the most famous of them, or the one that I've heard the most. In this, he describes himself as leaving.

his cave to gather firewood and when he comes back he finds that the cave is filled with demons. I mean they've totally taken over the joint and so they're everywhere and his first thought is okay I got to get rid of these guys so he lunges at them and he tries to push them away and fight them and so on tries to force them. They're totally unfazed. In fact the more he tries to get rid of them the more they kind of settle back and you know really get comfortable So he realizes he's failed miserably at fighting the demons. So his next approach is he's going to teach them the Dharma. Now by that means he's going to have, you know, he's going to kind of try to be rational and

explain to them why they can go bye-bye, you know, basically. So that's what he does and he talks about existence and non-existence and impermanence and compassion and kindness. And they just stared at him with these big bulging eyes kind of glazed over. That didn't work. So he takes a deep breath of surrender and he gets that they're not going to be manipulated into leaving. And so he kind of comes to some wisdom.

He says, okay, I'm going to find out what they have to teach me, you know, let them be and just be open to their teachings. And when he does that, most of them back. and dissolve, except one. And so it is with our life. There's always that one really core thing that does not go away very easily. And so that's the especially fierce demon that stays. And so he goes even further and he walks over to the demon and he says, okay, take me, eat

me. He just kind of sticks his head in the demon's mouth and that one dissolves also. So, I like this story mostly because they don't go away easily and it just is kind of arctypical that we try everything we can. We really do when we are facing the shadow of our own unwanted experience, whether it's fear or shame or jealousy or anger or whatever it is when we're in our cave and this stuff is coming up, we first go through all the try to get rid of them, we try to fight them, we try to push them away and then our resistance gets subtler and subtler.

And eventually there's some wisdom in us that knows to stop fighting to truly authentically say yes. basically say yes to the life that's right here. So for this you might want to close your eyes and come into a way to sit where you can really reflect and bite yourself right here and bring to mind a situation that you might have experienced in the not too distant past where there were some demons present. But don't pick something that was traumatizing or super extreme or you might have experienced or you won't get any benefits from this.

It'll just be overwhelming. So some situation, either in relating to another person or work, some habit you have where the sense of fear or hurt, embarrassment, something came up and let yourself see the situation close up, visually, maybe where you were, what room you were in, who you were, who you you were with. Remind yourself of the different thoughts and feelings. And first look for the ways you are saying no, that you were battling the demons and it could be this basic undercurrent of this shouldn't be happening. There is something wrong going on here. It could be through judging another person. It could be through judging yourself.

be through ignoring it and getting really busy, pretending. Saying no is any way that you dealt with the demons other than truly allowing and letting be. So notice how you were saying no. This is an opportunity to bring above the line the different limbic reactions and see if you can do it without adding judgment because then it will be valuable to you if you don't add judgment. And you might increase the no by just mentally whispering no, like sending no, this is bad, this shouldn't be happening, just to really sense what is it like when

you're fighting the demons, saying no to life? How does it feel in your body and in your mind? What's your sense of yourself when you're fighting the demons, when you're saying no? And do you like yourself? You might take a few full breaths and notice whatever's going on here. Notice the nose. Notice the demons that have been brought up. And for the next few moments, explore meeting your edge and softening. Just mentally whisper yes and see what happens.

Yes, it's just letting be. It's like, okay, it's like this. be this fear, letting be this sadness or the shame or this hurt. Yes. Notice what happens in your body and in your heart when you say yes. What's the sense of yourself of who you are when you're saying yes? And can you imagine in the days and weeks to come when this comes up, this situation? Noticing the conditioning, the natural human condition.

of the limbic system to say no, to avoid pain, to fight, and gently letting be, saying yes, sensing the possibilities of that. As you're ready, you can open your eyes or if you'd prefer to listen and meditate with your eyes closed, that's fine. A couple of comments, the teaching here is not that yes is good and no is bad. No is natural and yes is possible and there are times that if we're feeling really strong feelings it's not going to be helpful to say yes, we can get overwhelmed, and we can get flooded with emotions that are too much to handle.

And at those times we have to say yes to our no, we have to say not right now and that's okay too. So often though we don't, we're in the habit of thinking we can't handle it and we can. And what we find is that no is very contracted and it correlates with a very tight sense of self. And yes, introduces us to who we can be when we're courageous enough or willing or able to begin to be with the life that's here without resisting.