Tara Brach - The Backward Step

Episode Date: December 7, 2011

2011-12-07 - The Backward Step - Our habit is to think we are on our way someplace else, and that our happiness is to be found outside ourselves. Yet realization becomes possible when we take the backward step into the formless dimension of our own being. This talk explores the two pathways that awaken us from our stories of self and reveal the love and awareness that is our true nature. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donation makes a difference! Thank you!

I'd like to begin with a myth that I've always loved from ancient India. And it's a story of a musk deer that detected in the air a faint but heavenly fragrance and decided that this was the most amazing, delicious scent it had ever experienced and it wanted to find the source. So it began traveling around looking for where the scent might be coming from. and it crossed high icy peaks, and it went across huge stretches of dry, hot desert, and crossed rivers and seas and steamy jungles.

And it still couldn't. Always there was a vague hint, but never could it find the source. Finally, at the end of its life, the musk deer collapsed, exhausted, and as it collapsed, its horn pierced its own belly and as it lay dying that scent just emanated all over and it realized that the source of what had been seeking all those years had been within its own being so that's an easy one to translate and and yet it's one like all the great truths that we forget we forget in in ways that we might call it a trance, that we're in this idea that what will make us happy,

what we most need, what will really bring us satisfaction and peace, is in some way down the road, or it's located in somebody else, or it's only available after we jump through a certain number of hurdles. So if we look at our lives, and this to me is quite amazing, many moments, we really feel like we're on our way to something else. This isn't really what counts. What really counts is what we're preparing for, or what's down the road, or what we left, sadly, years back. So there is this sense in us that now isn't really it. And if you wonder, is that true, just sense how many moments you actually have been present and said, yeah, this is enough. This is it. This, right here, this. This is it. This is the center

of my life. This is the meaning. This is the preciousness. This is what counts. Usually it's not in our minds right here and it's not right within our own being. And to me, that is the myth and the trance that we live within, that it's somewhere else. So for many of us, there was probably about 100 of us that spent four days on retreat during this last week. And we had a guest teacher, Anam Thubten, a wonderful teacher from Tibet. And he gave a talk and he started with one of the most well-repeated known teachings in the Buddhist tradition, which is, this human life is precious. Don't waste it. And of course he had our attention right away. This human life is precious. Don't waste it. And the corollary to that teaching is what you long for

really is already here. So stop spinning all those wheels that are kind of bicycling away from the present moment thinking we're trying to get somewhere. Doesn't mean we don't plan ahead. It doesn't mean we don't strategize. It doesn't mean on the relative plane we don't do everything we need to do

to take care of ourselves and our families. But it means not to get lost. not to get lost in that map of the mind that thinks we're going somewhere other than right here. Not to get lost. I found when I review all the different wisdom teachings, and this is beyond something particular to Buddhism, there is the same inquiry. And it's really, what is it that obscures that truth that it's already here?

What is it in us that keeps? us thinking that we don't have what it takes, that something's missing, that something's wrong. So I find this in all the different teachings. And what we often find if we look deeply and if we explore these teachings is that we get caught in that trance because we're living in the story of a separate self. We're believing in the limitations of a separate self. And we're constantly retelling ourselves portions of the story to keep that, we actually keep oriented in this limited idea of what we are.

And as long as we are believing that story, we can't see the radiance and the wakefulness. We can't see the love, the spaciousness of presence, of the presence that's here. It's obscured. Our story is this veil. So what happens is that our attention gets fixed on these ideas and stories

and we lose sight of the big picture. And so it's a case of misdirected attention, but over and over again misdirected. I remember some months ago hearing a story, happened in a Montana high school. And some of the kids played a prank. And what they did was they got three goats and they put signs on the goats. And on one it said number one, another number two, and then another number four. Then they released the goats into the high school. And you know what happened? All day the administrators and the teachers were looking for goat number three. All day.

Misdirected attention, right? they were looking for something that didn't exist. And so it is that we are always paying attention to a story of self and a story of the future that's not right here and not who we really are. And when we do, we miss out. We miss out in a way, and I'll share with you, this is one of my favorite readings from Pema Children. she says being preoccupied with our self-image in this way.

It's like being deaf and blind. It's like standing in the middle of a vast field of wildflowers with a black hood over our head. It's like coming upon a tree of singing birds while wearing earplugs. So that gives a little feeling when we're just running the loop of our tape about who we are and what we are.

what's wrong and what we need to do and what we need to avoid, how much we're missing out on. And that's where there's a sorrow that comes, because we intuit that. I think for many people, there's an intuition that we're skimming the surface and not arriving so much in the richness of what's here. I find it helpful to then say from an evolutionary perspective,

okay so what can we learn and what we see is that it's part of the design that we become identified in this story I mean there's a reason it's universal you know all on every continent humans come into get born and grow old grow old and there are stages of development where it's very distinctive that there's a sense of in fact we have to to be healthy individuating as a a self. It's just part of the deal. And the idea is not that we should be trashing the story or not taking care of the needs of a self. That's not the point. The point is that if we become fixated and never discover what's beyond that story, we lose out on really our birthright to sense

to sense the sacred. We get fixated. And so the Buddhist teachings are really that we suffer because we don't know who we are. And I think those are the teachings I find in every wisdom tradition. That we get a kind of developmental arrest where we get the sense of,

okay, I'm a separate self, I'm an ego self, but then we don't keep developing. We kind of stay there. And so, as I said, it's natural that we go through these stages and I was reminded of this story where a bus full of kindergartners were on a school trip and one of the little girls brought the bus driver a handful of peanuts and he was he said thank you

honey that's very kind of you and how generous and so she sits down 10 minutes later she's back there and she's brought him another handful of peanuts and again he's very generous but on the third time he said, honey, you keep them, you and your friend should share them, keep them for yourself and enjoy them. And she said, oh no, we just like sucking the chocolate off of them. So of course, we do things for ourselves and we enjoy for ourselves, but we don't want to spend our whole lives sucking the chocolate off of things and then giving things away. We want to be generous and we want to sense our fellowship with each other and be part of a larger whole. So as I mentioned, I sometimes call it developmental arrest, when we don't keep on growing and waking up to a more

enlarged or deep or full sense of our beingness, that developmental arrest shows up as suffering. And for some of us, it might show up as chronic anxiety. And for others, as a sense of shame or a sense of a personal failure. And for others, it might be a kind of depression where we just bury things. But in the depth of that, there's a misunderstanding. There is a sense of a separate self that's not okay, that's threatened or unloved. So then the inquiry becomes, so how do we wake up? How do we wake up out of those stories and really begin to discover who we are? And it helps to know that the sticky identity of self that we keep on getting hooked back into. In other words, that familiar feeling of self that most of us have when we're really contracted is based on our

unmet needs for love and safety. That when there's unmet needs for love and safety, which is pretty pervasive, given our culture and given our world, that even if we had the most well-intentioned parents and their parents who are the most well-intentioned, there's still a way in which we emerge feeling not completely secure. So to the degree that there's unmet needs, they take, they have the feeling of selfness. And then we develop these beliefs that in some way help to make meaning out of or give us a guideline on what's happening. I need to be like this to be loved.

The reason that I'm not feeling safe is because I behave like this and this happens. We develop a whole set of beliefs that explains our world and strategies to get love and safety. So those feelings, those beliefs, those strategies, that's the hub of this self-feeling. And the more intense the unmet needs, the more sticky. You know what I mean by sticky. It's very hard to sense, oh, I'm bigger than this. This is just a part of my being. These are just the waves in my ocean.

It doesn't come so easily, right? So then we start looking at, well, how do we perpetuate it, this sense of self? And one of the things I've shared here often that I think is quite interesting is that the life of an emotion, okay? And this is, you know, once it's triggered off the life of an emotion as it moves through our body, is approximately 1.5 minutes. And yet we get stuck in emotions for really long periods of time, don't we?

And you know what keeps them cooking? What is it? What keeps our emotions going? Yeah, for those of you watching this or listening, people are pointing to their heads, our thoughts. Yeah. You have to keep thinking

to keep an emotion fueled. You have to keep thinking. You have to keep having stories of what's going to go wrong or what's missing. To keep an emotion in place. You have to keep telling yourself stories in order to keep having a sense of your own self. The other way to say it, if you quiet the mind for a while, that solid sense of self begins to dissolve. there's more of a sense of communion or belonging to your environment as soon as you really quiet those stories so we get challenged because again the very experience of unmet needs keeps us

addicted to our thoughts we have some sense that if something's wrong that we can think ourselves out of the box we can think ourselves out of prison So sadly, the very thing that would help to free us up from the grip of strong emotions that are painful and a strong sense of limited self, the very thing that could free us, quieting our minds, is the very thing we can't do because we're addicted to thinking our way to healing. It doesn't work, though. So what happens then is that we find we're very identical. identified and very wedded to our thought patterns and our beliefs. And these include our thought patterns about each other and ourselves.

And the more we're wedded to them. In other words, the less there's some space between thoughts, the less we have an ability to step out of the thoughts, the less we can see the truth of what is. Now, I'll give you an example about how our beliefs can, our, our, stereotypes can block truth. This is one of my favorite examples, and I shared it here about six months ago. Some of you might remember.

And I'm going to ask those of you that don't know this one to vote. You're about to elect a new world leader, okay? And only your vote counts. So here's the facts about three leading candidates. And listen carefully, and then we're going to vote on these. Candidate A associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two mistresses.

He chained smokes and drinks eight to ten martinis a day. Okay? That's your first candidate. Candidate B. He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college, and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening.

Okay? Candidate two. Candidate three. He's a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer, and never cheated on his wife.

Okay. All right. How many votes for candidate A? I see by hands? Okay. How many candidate B, the one that drinks the court of whiskey every evening? Can I see for candidate B? Okay. You voted twice. Candidate C. Can I see hands for a candidate C? Okay, more. Okay. Scrolling down. Candidate A is Franklin, Dillinor Roosevelt. candidate B, Winston Churchill. Candidate C. Adolf Hitler. Yeah. Now, the reason I share this is because we all live in a kind of virtual reality where we have ideas about things and our ideas are not the truth itself.

And very often our ideas are stereotypes. We see a certain kind of person that looks a certain way. And in our mind, all these associations come up, and we lock into an idea of, oh, it's that kind of person. You know what I mean? We do that. It happens in religious and spiritual groups. In fact, interestingly, often the people that are closest in religious belief

have the most out-and-out hostility. So here's two Asian groups. We have Asian religions. We have a Taoist master. He's sitting naked in his mountain cabin meditating. And we have a group of Confucianists who enter the door of his hut having hiked up the mountain intending to lecture him on the rules of proper conduct. They see the sage sitting naked before them and they're shocked and asked,

what are you doing in your hut without any pants on? Here's his response. He says, this entire universe is my hut. He says, this little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing in my pants? So you see that we have these ideas and we think we're right and we lock in as to how others should behave. And it becomes a really important question.

Can we begin to see what our own veil is? Who have we come to quick opinions or stereotypes about in our lives? In other words, do we end up having a veil when we see the color of someone's skin? Is that what it is? Or when we hear about their sexual orientation? Or when we sense a specific physical or mental disability? What happens? Do we cluster people together all of a sudden?

What about political beliefs? How's that for one? As soon as we sense somebody's political beliefs, how quickly do we then create a sense of separation? I've tracked myself in that one for years, and I'm very humbled by how quickly it can happen. So we have these veils, and then, of course, we have ideas about ourselves,

and we know that. We run these stories about ourselves. We believe the story, and we can't see who we are. We cannot see beyond our own stories about ourselves. the phrase, I should be different. No matter how true you think it is, it's still a veil. Because in a moment that you think you should be different,

you're unable to see how you really are. You're unable to see both where you're caught in something small and the who you are behind that. How we should be different. Now the most basic veil that we get caught in is often, it's not only, you know, our limiting thoughts about self or other, any time we're living in a story, we're not contacting the world of reality here. And think of how many moments you move through the day. We're actually telling yourself all sorts of things about the past and the future.

When you're not contacting realness. Okay, so one other story on this theme. This man says, as a bagpiper, I play many gigs. Recently, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man. He had no family or friends, so the service was to be at a pauper cemetery in the Kentucky back country. As I was not familiar with the backwoods, I got lost, and being a typical man, I didn't stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late and saw the funeral guy at ever. dently gone, and the hearse was nowhere in sight. There were only diggers and crew left,

and they were eating lunch. I felt badly and apologized to the men for being late. I went to the side of the grave and looked down, and the vault lid was already in place. I didn't know what to do, so I started to play. The workers put down their lunches and began to gather around. I played out my heart and soul for this man with no family and friends. I played like I've never played, before for this homeless man. And as I played Amazing Grace, the workers began to weep. They wept, I wept, wept. We all wept together. When I finished, I packed my bagpipes and started for my car. Though my head hung low, my heart was full. As I opened the door to my car, I heard one of the workers say, I've never seen nothing like that before, and I've been putting in septic tanks

for 20 years. So we live in our story about things. And sometimes it has some relationship with what we call reality, and often it doesn't. Now, mystics through the ages have explored strategies or techniques that help us to wake up out of the story. And so much of meditation is really learning to quiet the story so we can begin to see who we are.

And I think there's one description that really for me has been valuable, that when we're living in a story, even an illustrative story, we think, let's say, well, I'm a human being and I'm on a spiritual path, right? Now that sounds pretty good, okay?

But as our mind quiets, something shifts, and there's more of a person, perception of being awareness, being awareness or spirit, that's experiencing itself through this human incarnation. So rather than a person, a self, on a spiritual path, where spirit having a human experience, living through a human body, expressing through a human life. And I think that shift is what we'll be exploring for the rest of this talk is really a shift to relax back into what's sometimes described as beingness, that we move from the kind of particular

sort of shape of this humanness to a quality of beingness, of presence. So I'd like to name two primary ways that we wake up to this beingness. And one of the ways is by being present with exactly what's presenting in the moment. I sometimes think of it as like we're being present with the waves of the moment, with these thoughts and feelings and sensations that are right here. So we enter right with what's happening. And the second way is what I think of is we're being actually present with the ocean itself, present with presence itself.

So you'll get a little better feeling for it. as we go. In this first approach, we're really practicing what the kind of training and mindfulness that we're most familiar with here, where we're getting quiet to some degree and we're just noticing what's coming up moment by moment. We're noticing, oh, now a thought. Okay, now a sensation, feeling of the breath, you know, strong kind of maybe a clutch in the chest, maybe it's fear. We're staying with our experience. And the teaching with mindfulness is that in the moments that we notice what's happening, that we're aware of these waves of experience, the sense of our identity begins to dissolve,

and we actually come to inhabit that awareness. So we're no longer identified with the wave. We're that which is aware of the wave. Does that make sense that mindfulness helps us to shift, out of a small identity. So for example, I worked with a woman who was telling me about her merciless inner judge. A lot of us tell each other about her inner judges because they're alive and well for the most part. And she was in this practice of deepening attention last year to the judge.

In fact, when she discovered one retreat, how many moments on some of the judge, moments on some level, she was feeling a sense of self-aversion, how many even small things had that added on sense of, I'm doing this wrong, I'm blowing it, I should be different. And just how much pain was in that. She committed to what we sometimes call a sadna or a spiritual practice where she was going to primarily catch the judgments and begin to bring mindfulness to them. And so what she would do is when she'd find that she was judging, she'd pause and then start noticing the different layers of the waves that were there. And she'd noticed that behind the judgment there was a kind of belief. And the belief was, as you can imagine, the language of, you know, you're failing. And the judge believed that its job was to prevent her from failing more. It was trying to be helpful. By the way, that's the way the judge gets to stick around.

along. Something in us thinks the judge is actually helping us be better. Right? Does that make sense? Yeah. So she caught those waves of belief, you know, that you're failing and I'm here to make you better. And then she also caught the belief that if I don't get better, I'll lose all chance for love. So there's a big investment in the judge. The judge was going to save her, make her better so she could get love. Because remember, the unmet needs that we organize around are for love and safety primarily. Okay, so those were the beliefs.

And then she sensed under the belief what was going on. And when the judge was there, the first thing she sensed was a kind of anger that she was angry at herself or disappointed in herself. There was a sense of aversion towards herself. And what she would do as we practice with mindfulness is she'd notice that anger orversion and she named it

and then she'd feel it and breathe with it and it would unfold into what was next which was the next layer of waves fear. Okay, something's wrong, afraid. And again, naming it, breathing with it, feeling it. This is the practice of being with the waves mindfully. And she'd feel it

and feel that sense of the fear. And she began to bring some kindness to it. Okay, fear, fear. And as we often teach, put her hand on her heart, and just offer presence, mindfulness and kindness to the fear. And what she found was that as she got gentle and stayed with the fear that was there, stayed with the waves,

she found that she was, again, kind of expanding and that she was resting in a space of kindness and presence. But she was no longer either the judge or the judgeee. She was neither the victim or the judge. That's the shift in identity that the Buddha described as liberating. When through the power of presence with the waves,

we discover where the presence that includes the waves, but the waves don't define us. We enlarge. So this is an example for her, what she did was she used judgment as a place where she was going to practice with the waves. And the more she practiced with the presence, more she became to a kind of sense of her beingness, that I am this beingness. That these waves of fear and judgment and anger are a part of things. But they don't narrow me or limit me or point to the depth of who I am. any more than the waves on the surface of the ocean

can in any way point to the depth and vastness of the ocean so that's a kind of homecoming to beingness to sensing not I'm a human on a path but what I am is this beingness that's living through this body and mind that's expressing through

that's waking up through okay so that's the first pathway paying attention to the waves. Now for the second one, I read you from Sogiel Rimpichet. And then we're going to do a little, a few reflections together. He writes,

if everything changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances, something boundless and infinitely spacious, in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place? Is there something in fact we can depend on that does survive what we call death? If everything changes, what then is really true? So we'll do a little reflection on this and see how we can move again from the sense of a story of a self

to this beingness, this sense of spirit. Yeah, so if you'd like to close your eyes and let your attention go inward, and just for a few moments, imagine your review. viewing a kind of a photo album of your life. And just remind yourself, there you are, that picture of you in kindergarten, kind of what you look like. But more than that, just to remember your wants or your fears at that time, just brief touching into for a glance. You're there in kindergarten. And the photo album kind of jumps ahead, and now you're just looking at a picture of yourself senior year of high school. Just again,

sense that your body's changed, your personality's emerged, what wants and fears, what's important to you, again, just flashing on it for a moment and jumping ahead to your first job, if you are at that point in your life, what you look like, what mattered to you. You might see a photo of you soon after falling in love or getting involved with a very important person in your life, a friend or teacher or lover. Again, what mattered to you, what was predominant about you that draws your attention? If you're a parent, maybe the next pictures of you when you just had a child. You just became a father or mother. And again, what it is about you that catches your attention, what that brought out for you. Maybe some pictures celebrating achievements.

maybe some also at times of great insecurity or great loss. Then you're looking in the mirror now. Who are you? Consider how your body has changed from being in the womb, an infant and onward, your worldview, your sense of what's important in life, what gives you pleasure, your moods. Now ask yourself this. In every time and place, through all, these years and moments, what about me has been unchanging, deeper than any thing about your

appearance or your personality or your ideas? What has been unchanging through all those moments? Can you sense there's always been and is right now a consciousness, a presence that knows, that's aware, that perceives what's happening? If you can be begin to sense this mystery within your own existence, this changeless presence, this awareness, your relationship to this changing world shifts in a way that's very freeing. If you'd like to open your eyes, please do so. So this is one of the kinds of reflections where we begin to sense the things about us we're familiar with and then sense behind that, what's always there. And when we begin to examine the awareness that's here, you know, we begin to sense it's called the formless

dimension that we can't say much about it. You can't see it. You can't notice much about it, but you can begin to be it. So there's a few guidelines on how should you become drawn to investigating the nature of awareness. this formless dimension. There's a few things that are really helpful. And one is that there's no way that you can strive your way into understanding awareness. You can't strive your way into

or use a whole lot of effort to realize your true nature. It's not a path of efforting. And that's really important to know because people can get very fervent about saying, well, I don't want to waste this precious human life and I don't want to realize a spirit that's here. And it can create a kind of tension in your system where you're going for broke and it just doesn't work. And the great story that I love that kind of exemplifies this is about the Buddha's close disciple

and his cousin actually, Ananda, who this took place after his death. There was a great counsel of enlightened beings that was going to gather. And Ananda was one of the only. of the close people around the Buddha that wasn't invited because he wasn't considered to be enlightened. So he committed himself. He was going to stay up all night the night before the council and get there. He was going to get somewhere. And so he determined to practice vigorously and he just made the most, the strongest possible efforts he could possibly make and all he succeeded in doing was becoming exhausted and dispirited. So finally he gave up

and he just decided to let it all go and it was in the moments of relaxing back and resting his head on the pillow where he was alert but in no way striving that Ananda became enlightened. So the qualities that free us, this wakefulness and yet profound openness, non-striving.

And the metaphor that I find is most useful is what in the Zen tradition they call the backward step that we're not moving forward on the spiritual path trying to get somewhere. We're actually relaxing back wakefully into what is always and already right here. We're relaxing back. It's a backward step from this way

that we keep aiming ourselves at things, at form, at objects, at sounds, at thoughts, to resting in this beingness quality. So let's just, let's explore this a little. We'll explore the backwards step and just kind of close with a few other pieces on this. But if you will, just to close your eyes again. And in this pause, just feel yourself right here

and notice without any effort that awareness is already here. Awareness is here. You might sense all the vibration and aliveness that's here. And if you sense the awareness that's here, you might also sense the stillness that's aware of movement, of vibration, that in order to experience this vibratory world, it's not vibration that experiences vibration. It's that stillness, that still presence. And in a similar way, you might notice that listening to sound, that it's silence that's

listening. The sound's not listening to sound. It's wakeful silence. You might notice that the sound and sensation is all happening in this openness, this space. Just begin to sense this awareness as openness, as stillness, as silence. You can't directly experience that, but you can be that. You can be that silence that's listening. That's That's the backward step. Relaxing back and being the awareness. You might be listening to sound. And you can ask, who's listening? Who's aware of this? Just gently turn the attention and look back towards that which is aware. And then just let go. Just be that. Be whatever you experience. There's a saying that the supreme seeing is the seeing of no thing.

you can't find out who's aware you can just be the awareness the beingness so this practice of the backward step is to keep dropping the stories dropping whatever is going on and just resting back in that which is aware over and over sensing the openness of awareness the awakeness the tenderness

opening your eyes last little piece what we find is that we might get a little glimmer you know we go through this and we've got such a familiar sense of self and of kind of tightening and of

our story that we maybe just get a little glimmer of oh yeah there is some kind of space of stillness but then we get busy again and that's okay the more we begin to sense as the that story of the musk deer invites us to,

it's not somewhere else. The more moments that you say it's not in someone else and it's not down the road, it's here right in this being, the more your attention will naturally start relaxing back and you'll get increasingly familiar with a sense of your own presence. Increasingly familiar.

And the more that you trust, that presence is, who you are more than any story. What happens is that then the stories come up, the limitations, I need this, this is missing, I'm doing this wrong. You don't believe it as much.

It's less sticky. There's more of you resting in the truth of who you are. And that is the beginning of freedom. I'd like to give you just a sense of some of the ways that freedom expresses one of the ways I like to think of it is happy for no reason, that you no longer inside a story of a self that needs this, this, and this

for everything to be okay and for you to be happy. And you don't need to change this, this, and this to be okay. There's more of this sense of what the DeBenz call a child of wonder, where whatever is going on brings up a sense of cherishing, of interest, of care. When you're not identified with a small sense of self, you're more available to respond to what's right here. And by that I mean when you encounter beauty,

there's this response of really appreciating. When you see goodness another person, there's this tenderness. And when you encounter suffering, when you're not resting in that small self that's self-preoccupied, the natural response is caring and reaching out in some way to help to alleviate that suffering. So there's happy for no reason. There's responding to this world with love, with compassion.

And the last piece is, when you're not believing in the small self-story, there is a spontaneity and creativity that is free to express itself. And it expresses in our life in a way that we're not holding back anymore. We're not conserving ourselves and holding back because we're going to be having to do something else later. It's like in the moments that you're living your life, spirit is flowing through you,

and the only thing to do is to sense how much you can engage in that moment. And it's with that that that I'd like to share. share a final, very short story about Eastock Pearlman. He was crippled by polio when he was a young child. And at each performance, he'd make the slow entry onto the stage with his crutches and unclasped the braces on his legs and then prepare to play. Now, 1995 in Lincoln Center, he was performing and did his entry as he normally did, finally was set to play. And just as he'd began to play one of the strings of his violin broke. It snapped.

In fact, everybody could hear it snapping. So people thought, well, what is he going to do? Put his leg braces back on and leave the stage and get another violin. But that wasn't what happened. So I'll read you. He sat still, closed his eyes and paused. And he signaled for the conductor to begin again. Pearlman reentered the concerto playing with an unimaginable passion, power,

and purity. Perhaps some of those watching could sense him modulating, changing, reconfiguring the peace in his head so deep was his immersion in creating. When he finished, there was an awed silence. Then came the outburst of applause as people rose and cheered from every corner of the hall. Pearlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, and raised his bow to quiet the crowd. Then he spoke, not boastfully, but in a couple of. 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. How much music you can still make with what you have left. I think this is the spirit that comes when we're not living in a limited sense of self. This is the spirit that emerges when we begin to trust this awareness, this openness, this wakefulness, this love that's really our true nature. This is the spirit that allows spirit to express through this incarnation in a way that's free and really serves all those we meet. So as we began, we began with the musk deer on its way somewhere, we end by just inviting ourselves to come right into the moment. Again, letting this moment right now count for the last little bit here, if you will, just to close your eyes. And since, even if you have meditated thousands of times, even if you've paused many times, that this moment counts.

This moment's as important as any moment in your entire life, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, it's opening to the waves that are right here with your heart, with your presence. We close with a very simple prayer. May we trust, realize, and live from the loving presence

that is our true nature. May this awakening ripple out to touch all beings. May all beings recognize their beingness, the love and spirit that lives through them. May all beings awaken and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation,

learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.