Tara Brach - Sustaining Our Caring (2020-06-17)

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Sustaining Our Caring (2020-06-17) - All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care. 

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'd like to start this talk with a story that some of you might remember. I've been for over the decades inspired by Jarvis Masters. Jarvis is an inmate who's been living on death row in San Quentin in prison for a number of years, and he has a Buddhist practice, and he's taken his vows of compassion. So he tells a story that has just stayed with me. He's in a prison yard, in the prison yard there,

and a big young inmate next to him picked up a rock. He was going to throw it at a seagull that was kind of standing in a puddle of water, and Jarvis just spontaneously, you know, instinctively raised his arm to stop the stone thrower. And the young inmate was, you know, shouted back, what are you doing? You know, and everyone in the yard got quiet because part of the culture is to not mess with anybody else's business. Jarvis spontaneously responded, that bird got my wings. Well, the guy who was going to throw the stone kind of looked at him. He was puzzled, but he put the stone down and it seemed that everybody relaxed. And for days, the inmates were asking him Jarvis, what do you mean by that?

You know, that bird got my wings. What an amazing expression. And what did he mean? And in a sense, we all have the same longing to be fully alive. We have the same longing for love. we have the same longing for freedom. We have the same longing for wings that fly, you know. And in a timeless way, we all arise from expressions of the same formless presence.

There's a one underlying awareness, spirit, living through us. So I think so often, what would the world be like if we remembered this? If we move through and with everyone we met on some level, no matter how to be. how different they were, that some level, that bird's got my wings. You know, that same deep longing for love and aliveness. If we could see this, how much less violence, racism, greed, how much more love? So the empathy or compassion of that realization, to be able to see that in others, that birds got my wings, is really an expression of a very evolved.

and awake heart. And it arises that understanding when we're paying attention, when we're with another or in some way in contact, and we're paying attention to another's vulnerability, to how like us they want to feel loved. We all want to feel love. We all want to live, you know. So it's when we're paying attention because when we're attending, we ship. from a sense of I to we, to really that sense of belonging. And in those moments there's a kind of freedom because we really know who we are deep down that we belong. So I start with this story because this caring, this expanded consciousness and sense of belonging to something larger to each other. This is what's happened to many, many white people watching that almost eight-minute-long

lynching of a black man, the murder of George Floyd. The witnessing and the caring and the wanting to help, that bird's got my wings. You know, while watching, we were mothers, we were all mothers knowing the torment of watching our child suffer. We were humans knowing the fear and anguish of not being able to breathe, of being scared for our life. We knew that belonging. And black people know this violence in a daily way and through the centuries. I mean, they've had the heartbreak and compassion of we daily. But for white people to be in close contact, It crashed through the armoring of denial.

For many it made the horror of racism real. This is absolutely radical and filled with possibility. We're living in a time of collective awakening and it's happening around the world. This is deepened attention and caring to those who are most vulnerable. And now with the leadership of Black Lives Matters, it's re-energizing a movement. It's re-energizing a movement for equity, for racial justice, and more broadly for social justice, a more compassionate society, which by nature means caring for all beings, including non-human animals that get tormented daily, including our larger body, this precious, fragile, endangered earth.

So, as we know, movements swell and movements shrink. And, you know, we humans, all of us, wherever we are in our spiritual awakening, we wake up, but we all fall asleep. So it feels really important to recognize that we're in a moment that if we really inhabit, we have amazing potential for true transformation spiritually and outwardly for creating the world we believe in. And this is the thing, it depends on us staying awake. It depends on us sustaining and deepening and widening our caring. Really, it depends on us training in seeing that that bird's got my wings, that movement of from I to We. That's our evolutionary capacity and we're at one of those junctures where if we dedicate to paying attention,

It's unlimited potential what can happen. So just to add to that, while awakening our hearts involves every one of us, everyone. The particular effort to sustain caring about suffering, to sustain that caring, is most critically needed by white people and more generally by dominant populations. And why is this? it's because, and there's a lot of research that validates this, that those in power, those with privilege, get cut off from compassion for suffering of those less dominant. That's just how it goes.

The dominant species or populations have less compassion for those that are non-dominant for their suffering. And what that means is, and the reason why is, because we have deepened. deep conditioning to avoid discomfort, to hold on to our privilege, our place, and to get complacent, to not pay attention. And of course that hurts all of us. This is really, really important to keep our eye on. And it has to do with in our spiritual path individually and collectively as a society that we kind of wake up and then we get complacent.

And I'm emphasizing the role of white people speaking as a white woman. There are many expressions of dominance. So it's not just white. It's class. It's sex. It's ability. It's religion. So each of us, and they're all intersecting.

So each of us to heal and to evolve our consciousness needs to attend to when we get cut off from compassion, each of us. and how it plays out. As one spiritual master put it, that loving means not leaving anyone out of our hearts. So this is, to me, like the compelling question of our time, is how do we sustain our caring? And it's the inquiry for tonight, and I suspect this will continue to be a series of talks. How do we sustain and live from that sense of we, from that really, that bird has my wings, that we really belong. This has been brought up in many, many different groups I've been with. One woman I'm remembering from a few weeks ago in my Saturday Sotsong,

the question-answer, she talked about her deep caring for being a white ally, waking up from racism, and the fear that she get pulled off course. She'd lose her fervor because it's happened before. And she spoke for so many of us, and we can think of it in a broad, broad way, that many of us have a very real intention to love well. I mean, you might think for yourself, you know, just knowing who you are, that that's an intention in there. And we know how every day, even though that's our intention, if we're honest, how we go into a trance. We know every day how we go on automatic, how we get really preoccupied in small-minded ways of how we can get this done and be more comfortable there and defend ourselves here and get caught in our

judgments and we turn on ourselves but we get caught in trance. There's a wonderful description of how it happens this big squeeze that we're in where in some deep way we know that we long to love without holding back and to really have inclusive hearts, and we've tasted that at different times, and how daily we get caught in something smaller, the big squeeze. And as a society, we are an attention deficit society. We get revved up on something, and it's like the front lines of our consciousness, and the news and everything, and we forget quickly.

We might care and protest and march, and then we go back to a very dissociated normal. And I say we, of course it's not everyone, but it's enough of a pattern that it's important to look at. We go back to that dissociated normal. And I sense that many feel as I do right now, feeling the bigness of this moment, that there's more of a prayer that please, may this be a time that we keep on remembering and that we keep on caring. You know, may this truly move us

towards a more loving world. I'm thinking now of the Dalai Lama said something years ago that has stayed with me. I come back to it a lot. He said, I don't know why people, like me so much. Of course, that alone grabbed me. But then he said, it must be because I value Bodhi Chita. Now, Bodhiita means the awakened heart. You know, I value an awakened heart. And then he said, I can't always claim to practice, but I care about it. You know, I care about caring. care about caring. You know, I wish we were alive right now. This is the time I'd pause and say,

how many of you can relate to that? You're not always actively caring, but you care about caring. Well, I can say for myself, yeah. It's often, though, because of the big squeeze, because of that trance in the background, and I know for so many of us when we get preoccupied and we get speedy and we're on our way somewhere else.

It takes something to pierce the bubble of our trance and bring us back to active caring, where we're actually feeling that sense of tenderness and belonging. Maybe somebody dies or we witness a suffering as we just have collectively in a more in-our-face ways and something gets pierced. Sometimes our bubble gets pierced by goodness. We see somebody who's giving themselves wholeheartedly.

We see the goodness of other people helping. The Buddha taught that the world arises from the tip of intention. I think that's an amazing, just that line, that the world arises from the tip of intention. And in the Buddhist tradition, remembering what we care about, remembering our intention, is a formal practice that is designed to help us come back home when we've forgotten, when we've gotten waylaid. So it's one of the most powerful practices for times like this when we want to keep remembering. I'll share my practice a little.

I bookend the day with formal meditation. I find I start the day with it and I end the day with it and then throughout, hopefully, there's an informal practice of presence because meditation doesn't have anything to do with being in a certain posture or aiming the mind in a certain way. It's the quality of presence. But I do a formal practice at the beginning and the end of each day. The end is shorter because I'm tireder. And as part of that formal practice, I always set my intention.

I remember what matters to me. So I take some moments. And in some way, and it's different language and different moments, I'll be whispering, you know, please may this heart be open. Please may I live from caring. And if it's at the beginning of the day, I'll often sense what's up ahead for the day who I'm going to be in touch with, and just imagine in those encounters remembering, just remembering, as if that was the last time I was going to see that person, you know, just remembering to have a tender heart.

And then at the end of the day, in my meditation, I'll review the day and sense what happened. and often there's a real distance between how I wish I'd showed up and how I actually showed up. And I've learned, and this has been over the years of working with judgment and so on, that to really hold that with kindness. And what I find is that just by seeing where I wasn't present, I'm a little more alert and awake to the next round. just seeing it and feeling the, oh, I wish I had been there, you know, I'm more there. It's a powerful practice.

And even if you go through the motions when you are saying, please, may I be open-hearted, because deep down are waking up hearts really long for that, it actually brings us more into that field. So let's pause right here for a moment and let me invite you to reflect for a bit. Let's just get in touch with our intentions because this whole inquiry is about how do we nourish caring and the ground level is intention that we care about caring. So you might close your eyes, take a few full breaths and you might scan these, last days, last week. And notice when your heart's been touched.

When was the bubble of trance broken? For many it might have been watching the video of George Floyd. For others it might have been seeing others being moved, being touched. might be something else going on in your personal life where you with someone who's suffering or you might have seen something beautiful. When's your heart been touched? And see if you can bring yourself into that situation and just sense what it's like when you're caring, when your heart is concerned for another or appreciating another,

when you felt that sense of we, of that belonging. And just notice how it feels like home. In some way it feels more like we really are than the moments in stories and in trance. And feel in your own words with your own way of touching in your intention, your intention towards Bodicita, that away. awakened heart. And you might even sense for the next day, you know, who might you be with, imagining being with someone and seeing past the mask, past your own habitual ways of relating to

them, slowing down and pausing, taking them in, and sensing their, their heart's longings for love, and in the deepest way that the spirit, the consciousness that flows through, that bird has my wings. You might even widen out and sense someone part of a population you know is suffering because so much is right in front of us right now letting us care about the violence of racism. If there's someone of difference or someone in your race who's suffering from racism to let yourself touch into that suffering and feel your caring, it has my wings. And as you feel ready, you can keep your eyes closed or open them. So we begin, the ground level, if we want to nourish our caring on the spiritual path

and collectively in a societal way, just remember that it matters. That bird has my wings. And then we begin to ask ourselves this question, well, how do we relate to the reality of the ways we forget and cause harm individually and as a race. And most in our individual lives have people we've hurt. We know that. If we scan through our lives, there are people we've ignored that we just weren't paying attention to because we were preoccupied. Sometimes it's our children. People we've judged and hurt with our judgment. People we've betrayed. People we've deceived, aggressed against, other species that we've aggressed against. And then collectively,

especially if you sense where you're a dominant population, such as white person to other races, there are beings that we have violated for centuries. How do we relate to that? So this is imposing a really big question and I don't want to in any way pretend it's not the question that so many of us in the society are grappling with and it deserves a deep attention and there are brilliant books out, people that have immersed in a way that I have not, white fragility by Robin D'Angelo, how to be an anti-racist by Ibron Kendi. website now I have an anti-racism lending page and you can find these and others on that. So tonight for the remainder and for the next weeks I'd like to explore how cultivating a

compassionate presence can serve us in looking at this question of how to respond, how to respond to the harm we've caused. And I want to begin by saying that self-compassion is necessary. If you hate yourself for the ways you cause harm, if you hate yourself for your anger or your blindness or for lashing out or being judgmental or defended or numb, you know, if you hate yourself for not having paid attention, that hate will actually solidify your sense of separateness. It actually reinforces the blocks.

It'll keep you from sensing the we. So the fear is, if I offer self-compassion, let's say, to my racism, to ways I've caused harm, if I forgive my racism, if I forgive my judgments and my feelings of superiority or my complacency or whatever it is, that's just going to keep me causing harm. How will that help? And I'd like to say that if you're avoiding the pain that lives under your racism, then nothing changes. But real compassion doesn't do that.

To explore radical compassion, as I call it, it doesn't arise unless we have authentically and courageously contacted the pain that's there. it arises from contact with pain. And with that, as that self-compassion arises, comes a radical shift in how we then relate to others. I'd like to illustrate this to the story, and it's a story, another one that has stayed with me for years, 30 years, whatever. And it's told by a Vietnam vet, his name's Richard Latrell. And he tells a story of killing a young Vietnamese man during the war. And right after he killed him, he pulled a photo from the man's pocket of a young man and a little girl. So through the years that ensued, he was increasingly horrified

by what he had done. It plagued him. Well, when the Vietnam Memorial was built in Washington, D.C., he made a pilgrimage there, and he left the picture that he had taken from this dead man, and he also left a letter that he wrote. And it all got gathered into a book that's called Offerings from the Wall. And through a fellow vet, it got brought back to him. And I want to read you what the letter said that he had put up on the wall. Dear Sir, for 22 years, I've carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day.

We faced each other on the trail in July, Vietnam. Vietnam. Why you didn't take my life, I'll never know. You stared at me so long, armed with your AK-47, and yet you didn't fire. Forgive me for taking your life. I was reacting just the way I was trained to Kel V.C. V.C. V.K. So many times over the years I've stared at your picture and your daughter. I suspect each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters

of my own now. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland. Above all else, I can now respect the importance life held for you. I suppose that is why I'm able to be here today. It's time

for me to continue the life process and release the pain and guilt. forgive me sir so in March 2000 the trail actually traveled to Vietnam to meet the daughter of the man he met and killed on that trail in July and returned the photo and as you described the meeting they had an interpreter Richard introduced himself and said tell her this is the photo I took from her father's wallet the day I shot and killed him and I'm returning it and then with with a shaking voice, he asked for her forgiveness. And after an awkward moment, she burst into tears

and they embraced, just sobbing and embracing. Later, she told him, she and her brother told him that the day he came to them was the day their father's spirit had come back to them. So he did something that was reparative by just reaching out. So I want to slow down here and look at the pathway of healing because it has a lot of wisdom for us today that Richard had the integrity to keep looking at the photo, to face the pain and to see that man in the picture as a human. He had seen him, he was conditioned to see him as an enemy other just the way I was. we may be conditioned to see others as inferior and not know that we have that and not even know

that we don't know. So the first step is to this willingness, something in us knows that there's waking up here, there's compassion possible, that we keep looking. We look into our own minds and we read the books and we watch, even though they're heartbreaking, we watch the videos and we engage in the conversations, we face the pain. there's a natural response if we really face the pain. And this is a difference between toxic guilt and a kind of healing remorse. Toxic guilt is when we think, I am bad, I am responsible, it's my fault.

But there's a much deeper wisdom here that it's not our fault. just the way Richard was conditioned by his society to kill Viet Cong, every one of us is conditioned by the atmosphere of our society to be racist. It's not our fault. So to take it individually as toxic guilt. And yet, as a population, dominant population, we have caused harm. And the remorse for that, the caring and the remorse, the seeing, looking in that photo and saying, oh my God, that bird has my wings, that brings up

the kind of caring that makes us want to repair, want to reach out. I think one of the most important pieces that for many of us helps us is to know that it has to be uncomfortable. You know, it's just like a chicken needs a shell for a while, but to wake up out of it, You have to kind of peck through it and let it shatter. There's an uncomfortable that every one of us has to feel if we want to wake up out of the illusion or trance that creates a different bad or inferior other. It's going to hurt.

And if we can keep holding hands with each other and having the willingness to hurt to not feel good about ourselves because that's what it feels like. It feels there's a feeling of real pain in causing hurt. It doesn't have to be toxic guilt. It just feels bad. To be willing to feel that will then allow us to act, to act in a way that's reparative. Because there's a sense of movement from I to We that we're doing it for all of us. We're raising our voices, we're acting for all of us.

and I love the way Cornel West puts it. He says, love is what justice looks like in public. It's our way of deepening love. I know we don't want to let this moment we're in fade back to the old normal and it doesn't have to. So my friends, our dedication if we care about caring is to keep attending, to keep connecting to where the hurt is within ourselves and our society as part of seeding in the world that we really long for. In my own life, I am grateful for any moment when the reality of suffering in some way wakes up my heart. And as a way of closing, I'd like to share such a moment.

Last Thursday, I was part of an event and one of the speeches. speakers was Van Jones, who's a friend that I love and greatly, greatly respect. And what Van offered, it nourished my caring. And I think you'll feel the same. So for our closing reflection, I invite you to watch and listen and mostly let yourself be touched. I'm glad that we're doing this this week. If we had done this a week ago, I probably couldn't have been a part of it just because there was so much heartbreak.

I think the world saw something that's been happening in our country for centuries. It saw a black man lynched by a white man. That's what that was, that video. And it broke us. broke the black community to watch something like that happen. One minute, two minute, three minutes, four minutes, four minutes, five minutes, starts calling out for his mother, his mother's been dead for years, six minutes, urinating on himself, begging for his life, 15 times I can't breathe.

The community's screaming in horror. eight minutes and 46 seconds these videos have been a part of American life now for almost seven, eight years it was always so well it was a quick decision and cops got to defend himself

he was talking back he was fighting back what do you want what do you expect and you can't second guess the police but this one this one the film from beginning to end stunned the world and for

all of the times that we have been lynched. We've never had a situation where a billion people could see it all at the same time on their smartphones. And it shoved a piece of glass into the eyeball of everybody on the planet, and it hurt them. People couldn't sleep, having seen it. They couldn't rest. And if we had tried to have this conversation a week ago, we probably couldn't had it. But a miracle is taking place. A miracle is taking place. A continent of new common ground has emerged from beneath the waves where there are 20, 30, 40 million white Americans saying racism is real, more real than I thought. There's something wrong with our justice system. it's more broken than I knew.

What can I do about it? As an African-American man, it's a miracle. It's all I've wanted. It's just an acknowledgement that what is happening is happening and that we need to do something about it. And now we're in the middle of something.

We don't know what it is. We don't even have a name for it. And the civil rights movement It wasn't called the civil rights movement at the beginning. At first it was just people trying to fix a problem. And later on, they called it the civil rights group. We don't know what this is. NASCAR says they're not going to let Confederate flags fly anymore.

The NFL is apologizing for not supporting Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protests years ago when he was trying to call attention to this. You have people, corporations across the world, saying Black Lives Matter. What is this? We don't even know what, we don't know what to call this. 1964, they called it Freedom Summer when those students went south to register voters. Some were killed, some were beaten, but they changed history. But they didn't call it Freedom Summer. Then they called it. It was two years later when a book came out called Freedom Summer. They didn't know they were in Freedom Summer. So we're in some awakening, some great awakening.

We're much more as possible than we had dared to hope for. Somebody killed a black man and everybody cares. It's a miracle. It's never happened. It's never happened. Somebody killed a black man and everybody cares. I wish my parents were here. See this?

It's a blessing. It's a growing freedom to move from I, to we, to have the softening and opening of our hearts, to feel that tenderness of caring. We become more of who we really are. I want to thank you, friends, for your attention, for your presence, for your caring. May we continue on this path together, nourishing the caring, feeling that sense of we that will allow us to serve this healing and this freeing up and this transformation that's truly possible. Blessings and I hope to be with you next week. Thank you very much.

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