Tara Brach - The Bodhisattva Path—Nurturing the River of Caring

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

As humans face the darkness of fear, violence, and division, something else is also stirring: an awakening field of courage, care, and connection.  This talk explores the primitive survival strategies that keep us in trance and the evolutionary currents of awakening that return us to belonging. Through reflection and practice, we are invited to nurture the river of love and justice moving through our world, and to step forward—together—into beloved community.   Our introduction music is from "Opening" by Adrienne Torf, © 2025 ABT Music

Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brock podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com, where you can also join our email list. Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste, friends. Welcome and thank you so much for being here. I'd like to begin with a short story.

It was the coldest winter ever, and many animals died because of the cold. The porcupines, realizing the situation, decided to group together. This way, they covered and protected themselves, but the quills of each one wounded the closest companions, even though they shared their heat with each other. After a while, they decided to distance themselves from one another to stop being wounded. As they did this, they began to die, alone and frozen.

So they had to make a choice, either except the quills of their companions or disappear from the earth. Wisely, they decided to go back to being together again. This way, they learned to live with the little wounds that were caused by the closest relationship with their companion, but the most important part of it was the heat that came from the others that enabled them to survive the coldest winter ever. So, as you might sense, this porcupine story feels like

quite a compelling teaching for these times that were facing this cold, dangerous winter in human history. humans, when we encounter threat, we either contract, we contract into trance and forget our belonging. You know, we get caught in that sense of being separate and defended and aggressive. Are we evolve, we awaken, we intentionally learn to tend and befriend. So like all great allegories, it really illustrates the biggest challenge with tending and befriending in this case. which is that evolving. This is for each of us individually and as a society involves being vulnerable.

It involves discomfort. I mean, there's a reason we all long for intimacy, you know, and we fear it. Because inevitably, we have to face vulnerability. We have to face our wounds around trust and betrayal and rejection and not being seen. so we get pricked. I don't know if you know this, but a group of porcupines is called a prickle. I just learned this. And I'll tell you one of my preteen, or maybe it was even earlier jokes, was how do porcupines do it?

Very carefully. And then one more, one more, which is what did the porcupine say to the cactus? Is that you, mom? Okay, I digress. The point that I really wanted to make is this, that evolving consciousness requires the courage to feel vulnerable. It requires us deepening our attention to meeting vulnerability with compassion, to intentionally widen our circles of belonging community. The only way we widen circles is if we're willing to feel vulnerable. Many of you might be aware today is the first day of Ramadan and wishing all who celebrate a blessed Ramadan.

If you're not familiar, this is a sacred time in the Muslim tradition of fasting and prayer and deepening compassion and community. So it's very much in the spirit of our reflection today. We'll be really looking at examining the forces within each of us that block us from feeling belonging to each other and to the world, what I often call the trance of separation. And we'll be looking at the evolutionary currents that awaken a sense of loving connection,

the currents that really serve the creation of what Martin Luther King called beloved community. So over these last weeks, I've talked to a lot of people about what's been unfolding, of course, globally here in the United States and most immediately in the streets of Minneapolis. And several framed it as kind of an epic battle that it feels like, and the word Star Wars was brought in, like Star Wars with the imperial forces moving through the streets, you know, masked, armored, intimidating, and wielding power in ways that terrorize that are cruel and human. And that this is happening as I speak and it's all over the country, this real fear, you know, real families, personal friends, real suffering.

And it's happening for a growing number of people in the United States who hadn't felt it before, it's increasingly close in and real. So I would name that this battle is not at all new, especially for people of color who've been for generations living in bodily fear in an oppressive society. and of course it's playing out all over globally, horrific violence against the most vulnerable. So, as happens through all history and in our personal lives, the human spirit can get brighter in the midst of the darkness. you know, like the porcupines, we have the courage to choose togetherness over a temporary comfort and to open our hearts to live from love. Michelle Alexander is the author of The New Jim Crow.

And she describes this beautifully. She talks about a river of justice and love as this continuous, unstoppable flow of struggle for equality, for human rights, for solidarity, through time, and that in the face of oppression, it can become more full, more powerful. And she offers this image of a fleet of boats in the river. And that's the different ways than when this river of love is flowing through us, different ways that we choose to engage out of love to serve each other, to serve our neighbors, to serve the greater good. And we saw this strengthening of light in the darkness and the civil rights movement

and really in all nonviolent movements, all activism through time. So we're witnessing the fleet of boats in the river in a compelling way in Minneapolis, neighbors showing up for each other, nurses, teachers, ordinary people refusing to look away. and meeting the abuse of power with solidarity, with care. And I mentioned Star Wars, and I want to kind of focus on this for a moment, with the Rebel Alliance resisting the imperial regime, because one of the biggest illusions as we perceive what's going on is that this is a battle between groups of humans,

or a battle against certain human enemy. And I say this because to be part of the river of justice and love, for that river to flow through us, for us to widen our circles of belonging, it's crucial that we see, as Ticknaudhan put it, that humans are not the enemy. For me, the most helpful perspective is really the evolutionary, drama that we're in, to think of it in terms of evolutionary forces that live through all of us.

It's the center of our whole human stories, this interplay between our ancient ways of reacting to stress and threat, which are, you know, aggression, defense. It's the porcupines when they're going off on their own. And our more recently evolved capacity for care and connection, which is what gives life to the river of love and justice. That these are the forces playing out. And again, they're playing out in every one of our human body minds and in our society. We can sense the moments that that river, that flow, evolutionary flow, that's the awakened flow is living through us. I mean, we can sense it when we're feeling really at home in our own being, when we're feeling

that wash of gratitude or wonder, when we get tender and when we feel loving. In those times, we naturally have our boat in the river on some level we're caring for life and for each other. And we can sense it in our larger society when that river of love, of love, Loving is more alive and conscious. I mean, collectively, many could sense that energy following the monks walking across the country and being met by these crowds who are resonating with the message of peace. And for me, what was just so moving is that in these gatherings there's a sense of celebrating goodness.

You know, we love goodness. I think of that some of you might have seen the or been there but are seen the videos in Minneapolis were thousands of people who had gone to churches to train and singing

these certain songs sang together thousands of people singing in front of this hotel where ice agents were inside it was this massive choir and it was singing in this beautiful harmony and with such heart and the words were really calling to the hearts of those who were working for ice. It wasn't like any sort of a hatred towards an enemy. You know, I often think of the Dalai Lama. I remember I'm saying something like I don't know

why people like me so much but I think it's because of compassion and the truth is I can't always feel it, but I care about caring. Isn't that true about you? I mean, don't you care about caring? And that's the flavor of that evolutionary flow, that awakened heart. We love goodness. It's the essence of who we are. So here we are, we have this evolutionary capacity, this river flowing through us and every one of us is wired with this same primitive conditioning. We all have it that can take over, this fear-based conditioning that can take over and block the flow, block the flow of loving awareness. It's this grip of fear and these reactive primitive energies of anger and hatred and aggression

that have intelligence, but when they take over, they separate us in trance. And in those moments, we're facing the cold winter alone. So I want to go more into the trance we go into, because we go into it sometimes lightly and sometimes in a really big way, the sign of trance have been caught in the more primitive energies. And when I say caught identified, that the shape of our being is contained, by them is defined by themselves. And it's the moments when we lock into blame, into anger, into hatred, but also moments

that we get anxious, we get very mental, we're disembodied, we're not able to really feel close to others or at home and ourselves. For some, the sign of trance is being unnum, and for many it's being distracted. But the bottom line is this, trance is suffering. It's what the Buddhists call suffering because we're cut off from our true nature, from our wholeness, from who we are. And we're not experiencing that river, that flow of love and light and awake energy. And what it means is that we're really unable to respond to our world. We can't respond from heart to our close-in relationships, our respond to a world and trust.

a world in trouble. So our boat is not in the river. There's that haunting warning from Pastor Martin Numerer, World War II. First, they came for the socialists and I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out. And then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak for me. So Transmese means means our boat is not in the river. We're not engaged, we're not part of taking care of each other. And the only way to dissolve the trance that touches all of our lives is to on purpose look to see it, to have the kind of humility that recognizes, okay, there's places I go to sleep and that honesty and the self-kindness that lets us really face those places with a kind

of presence that can free us. So what I'd like to do is review the key strategies that our primitive mind uses when we're feeling threatened. And just to invite you to listen and sense which ones predominate for you. They're all familiar. This is all part of our survival strategy of fight, flight, freeze, and appease. So listen with some real curiosity and not judging yourself, just curious, which are predominant. And since when you're facing the cold winter, however, you experience it, you know, in terms of our world, and also immediate threats. your personal life, which of these come up? So the first one is fight and that's the aggressive energy and it shows up most frequently as blame that others are wrong or bad can show up as

slashing out in some way emotionally or physically. And as I mentioned earlier, it shows up most frequently for most of us as this conceptual way of thinking of others as the enemy, that they're the bad other, that we're fighting a bad other that's a human. And I've many times shared that this is alive and well in me daily when I take in the news, there is a reflex to latch on to who's bad and who's good and go right into that narrative and think in terms of sides and dehumanize and devalue those that are on the other side. And more generally, it is totally natural that the more personal wounding we've had, the more we've been hurt or abused or dehumanized ourselves,

the stronger that survival energy will be in us, the grip of aggression outwardly. It also takes shape as mistrust, as it feeds that rigid polarization that we're seeing in our society. And it can take shape as real paranoia, the conspiracy thinking. You might remember that old joke with a conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. You know, when he arrives, God says, welcome, you can ask me one question, anything you want. And the man says, well, I need to know who really shot J. F.K. And God says, Lee Harvey Oswald shot him and he acted alone. The man pauses and then he says,

wow, this goes even higher than I thought. So when we're encountering threat, the reaction from the primitive brain, one of them is bad othering. And in those moments, we're in trance. we're in trance and we're cut off from that life-giving flow, that capacity of ours to that, to be living in that flow of caring. Okay, other survival strategies when we're in the face of the cold winter of real stress and overwhelm. The other one, flight. You know, in flight, the common way it takes place for many of us is this is more than I can take on.

I really have to take care of my own life and it's kind of pulling into my own life. And, I mean, I know that voice especially when I'm tired. Many competing demands and it's self-protective. The signs of flight, if you're kind of tracking for yourself, behaviors that distract. It's like you'll take in something about the world or something upsetting in your life and then go distract. and it could be YouTube rabbit holes or video games or overusing food or drugs. You get the idea, but it's fleeing, losing ourselves in something else so we don't have to face the rawness, really. Overplanning, overworking, online shopping.

There's a story of a man and a woman and they're in their living room and he's saying to her, if I ever become, you know, like a vegetable, please pull the plug, at which point she goes over the TV set and she yanks the plug. So you understand that one of the ways that we face the darkness or whether or the cold winter is flight. We pull away. Another is Freeze. And freeze has the kind of narrative, what I do won't matter. It's like total powerless It's too big, it's too late, or this is too much, I'm way too overwhelmed. The signs of freeze are feeling stuck, confused, unable to act, procrastinating, withdrawing socially, difficulty making even small decisions.

It's a shutting down emotionally, often there's numbness. And I hear the freeze response a lot from people who are isolated. and don't have many connections to others, which of course brings us back to our little allegory about the porcupines, it's a very natural response when we feel overwhelmed and fragile and without agency. Okay, so in the face of the cold winter we either fight, flight, freeze. A peas is often not noticed as much, but it's a really strong one, which is I do. I just don't want to create conflict. I don't want to get in trouble, so I don't want to lose my belonging, so I'm going to go along with it. I'm just going to go along with it, whether it's

something to do with work or a relationship or a larger world. It's Timothy Snyder in describing the teachings around authoritarianism. He said, you know, one of the habits is to obey in advance. We see it with people, those of us in emotionally abusive relationships and vulnerable populations, too dangerous to speak the truth. So appease, accommodate, see it in politicians facing retribution right now, anyone feeling vulnerable and fearing trouble if they speak the truth. So these are the most basic of our surveillance. survival strategies and each one of them, with each one of them and I want to kind of name some

common denominators, we dissociate. We dissociate from reality because we're trying to protect vulnerability and so we're contracting away, we're cutting off the flow of that river, the flow of caring, the flow of full awareness and the way it takes shape, each one of them in our relationships and in our larger world is we don't feel belonging. That is the basic sign of trance. We don't feel belonging. We're unable to engage out of care. Our boats are not in the river.

Okay, friends, so our key inquiry here is how do we nurture our evolution? The given is we go into trance. And I often talk about the whole spiritual path as forgetting and remembering, we go into trance and we get caught in the grip of fear and in some of these strategies we each have our favorites. So the question is how do we nurture our evolution? How do we reawaken to that flow of aliveness and love? And how do we engage in a way out of caring that really fits for us? And I often describe the path in terms of the bodhisattva training. Bodhisattva is awakening, being, and the training has a kind of simplicity in the sense

that the main focus is, can we see where we're blocked? Can we see where we're suffering? In other words, can we see where, okay, I'm going into fight mode and blame or I'm going into accommodating or whatever it is? And can we meet what we see with kindness? Can we stay? Can we touch into that vulnerability and hold it with compassion? Because that's what releases the grip of trance.

That's what lets the river start flowing again. I'll give a personal example because this process is so active for me these days. so much about this cold winter that disturbs me and of course I have my not-so-wise reactivities before I say, oh yeah, be present, you know. I experienced this just a few days ago. I have a friend, a Latino woman who's a new mother and her story is like so many that you're familiar with. Her brother was arrested. and his car was left in the street and he was deported. So his children and family are here because he doesn't have a home or job or a new way to support them.

Her pastor's assistant who had been like such a source of comfort, arrested, deported. Much of her work is in D.C., but she's too scared to go into D.C. So, you know, the financial squeeze. So I take this in and so much anger comes up and it's very targeted. It's targeted towards, you know, the ice agents that haunt her. It's also targeted to the individuals and the groups that I see as being behind the cruelty of this. And I feel my body contract and I'm in a trance. You know, it's a trance.

And so it requires for me that I pause. It requires that I start noticing, okay, what is really going on? And beyond that, what is that habit of being angry trying to protect? Because under the anger, if I investigate, there's fear and there's a sense of being powerless and deep down, there's this caring, this enormous tenderness and caring. And it's only when I get beyond the strategy down to the caring that the flow starts happening again, that I can feel I'm reentering a kind of larger flow of aliveness and openness and presence.

I want to name it's humbling that these strategies, the stress strategies of flight, flight, freeze, and apiece are really, really strong and deep. The same day that I talked to this woman, I spent an hour and a half meeting with some dear friends that were involved in exploring this non-violent compassion-based activism, a particular initiative. So I spent an hour and a half talking about this. And that night, I dreamt that I was face-to-face. the human enemy and I was kicking and swinging and grabbing sticks and, you know, I was not an embodied bodhisattva. I was just a raging human. It's in us. It's in our nervous systems.

So here we are. And can we have the courage to face the forces that separate us and to nurture the currents that really carry us forward? So we'll take a pause here to reflect and give you an opportunity to kind of examine the survival strategies that you might sense keep you in trance, you know, the ways that you're avoiding the vulnerability, the pricks, the cold winter, and we'll look at the pathway of waking up, allowing the river to flow through us. so I invite you if you can to take a moment here to come into stillness. You might close your eyes or lower them.

And take a few nice full deep breaths and let the breathing gather you, let it collect you right here. And inviting you to choose something going on in the world right now that gets to you. That's threatening, that's upsetting, that disturbs your heart. and if there's nothing that is of big impact then there may be something in your personal life and work or relationship that is distressing that you might want to explore and as you bring this to mind whatever it is

something in our larger society or in your personal life bring it close enough in that you are in touch with what's upsetting and sensing in your life how you end up reacting. What is your most familiar strategy in response to this? Do you go in to fight? In other words, do you go into anger, blame, bad othering, wanting to hurt? Or do you go into flight where you get busier? You find ways of distracting yourself, addictive behaviors maybe,

in some way checking out, pulling away. Or do you find you go into freeze or you just kind of shut down, go numb, feel stuck? Or is it appease where there's accommodating, cooperating while you're burrowing your truth, your response, your feelings? It may be more than one you might want to just sense which is most calling for your attention. So that again as you consider what distresses you, let yourself again bring this right close in and you consider your reaction, you might gently. ask yourself, what vulnerability is this reaction protecting? What are you trying to protect?

If you didn't bad other, if you didn't distract, or whatever it is you're doing, what hurt or fear or loss would you have to face? Just take a few moments and sense, what am I unwilling to feel or feel fully? And as you reflect, if it feels okay to you, you might put your hand on your heart, but mostly bring a very gentle and kind energy to your heart. And just sense what you'd have to feel if you deepen presence to what's distressing and sense that it's possible to hold what's here with a really kind presence. And as you do, sense all of us who are caring. As the Dalai Lama said, we care about caring.

Sense all of us who really are here, caring about life. Let that togetherness, the warmth of that togetherness, help hold what's painful. And you might imagine who you'd be if instead of reacting blame or flight or freeze or appease if you could let the vulnerability

the life move through you hold it with compassion who would you be in the face of what's distressing how might you respond how might your boat be more in the river just imagine that living from that flow of caring as you're ready if you want to open your eyes or move around, please do.

In recent months, many people have shared with me that they feel called by these times to engage more, to have their boat more in the river, I certainly do. But there's a sense of, I'm not sure how. And so I want to say that there are many levels of what this means to engage out of care, out of a love for life. And it can mean, as one friend described,

their intention when they go out is to make contact, especially with people that seem different, make heart contact, smile, friendly, warmth. Our boat is in the river when we put our hand in the shoulder, someone who's struggling. Or when we intentionally learn more about

what's going on and talk to others. And of course, in the more classic understanding of the way when we give our time, our energy, our money, our support to whatever helps those who are most vulnerable. But the bottom line, what allows us to put our boat in the river is letting ourselves be touched by the pain, the vulnerability, the hurt that's within us and around us, letting ourselves be touched. And I really could sense that. I was reading different stories and interviews, those in Minneapolis who are not professional activists,

and sensing that bodhisattva spirit of this willingness to face vulnerability and to act. I'll just read a few of them because they're so beautiful. I couldn't stay home anymore when something like this happens in your own city, silence starts to feel like consent. This was an abstract for us. This was our street, our neighbors, our grief. I came out because I want my kids to know I didn't look away. I'm not here because I love protests. I'm here because I love people. This isn't about one man or one officer. It's about a system that keeps repeating itself. I step forward because if this can happen here, it can happen anywhere, and it already has.

I didn't come out angry. I came out heartbroken. There's something happening. I suspect you can feel it a kind of movement around the world that's arising in the midst of the darkness. It's that evolutionary flow that's responding to cruelty

in humanity. with tremendous courage and heart. Because I've been focusing on the United States, this all over, I've been seeing it all over in response to the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank and seeing it in Iran where women and young people,

they've risk everything, been killed in this process of trying to demand basic freedom and dignity, this courage that's rippled way beyond their borders. And in Ukraine, through years of... of violence and hardships is really the cold winter. Everyday citizens building these amazing networks of mutual aid. So it does feel like one of those junctures in human history where in response to the darkness, the buildup of authoritarian rule and cruelty, people do feel called to engage more.

So, some might be listening and saying, well, I do care about suffering and yet I still feel like I'm on the sidelines. I'm not active. I'm not protesting. So again, I just want to say, we all have different roles. You are a part of this movement, this flow, this river of awakening. Bring attention to the vulnerability inside you, inside someone in your family, inside a neighbor. There are countless ways to put our boats in the river.

And here's the thing. As we go deeper in that inner work of meeting our own vulnerability with presence and compassion, we do become available to meet others in the same way. I mean, there comes this moment where we realize there's no them. I mean, everyone is our neighbor as a part of our heart. I'll share our story that really touched me. It's of C.P. Ellis, who is a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, because it shows what happens when we get closed into vulnerability.

So, as you know, the clans deeply committed to this white supremacist ideology, the perfect white race. But for Ellis, life brought him face-to-face with vulnerability in his own home because his son was born with Down syndrome. And he began to see that the world that the clan stood for had no care for the vulnerable, not for his own child. So he opened to his own vulnerability and went ahead and loved his child and not long after, and he left the clan.

At one point he was asked to do something unimaginable. This is a widening the circles part of his story. He was asked to co-chair a community process of desegregating schools, along with a woman named Anne Atwater, this black woman who he had openly hated. She was a fierce local activist. So here he is. He had gotten in touch with his own vulnerability. He had widened his, he left the clan, and now he's asked to be with somebody he had been locked into seeing as the other. And they struggled. I mean, the mistrust between them ran really deep. So their survival brains were dominating.

And one day, this is written about, it's a beautiful story, one day they were sitting together and Anne shared through tears, she said, my daughter comes home crying every day, teacher's making fun, the daughter saying, teacher makes fun of me in front of other kids. And Ellis was stunned because he said the same thing's happening to my. kid, the teacher's making fun of Tim Ellis's father, the Klansman, and he comes home crying. And at that moment, something broke open. And these are his words. He said, I began to see,

here we are. Two people from the far ends of the fence have identical problems. And from that moment on, I tell you, that gal and I work together, good. I begin to love her, really, love her. I have to say for myself, the stories I love are reconciliation stories, because it's inevitable that we end up pulling apart into separation. It's part of the human evolutionary drama. And yet we have this capacity, this river that flows through us of awakening and of love that can help us to see that trance and to become tender. And this is beloved community, this is what creates it.

It's a testament to what happens when we willingly choose to meet vulnerability, choose not to say so comfortable or safe, but rather to choose connection. So, I'm going to begin to close here. and say that we can't live in this current atmosphere of fear and aggression and blame and violence and cruelty without being affected. And if we go into trance, we disconnect from our heart, from our spirit. I love Ticknauthan's words. He says, this, my dear, is the greatest challenge to being alive

to witness injustice in the world and not allow it to consume our light. During the Vietnam War, there's a story of this man who every day would come to the White House gates. And he didn't shout, he didn't carry a sign. He simply lit a candle and stood there until it burned all the way down. Did this day after day, and one afternoon a reporter approached him and asked this almost skeptically, do you really think this is going to change what's happening in the world? And the man shook his head and he said, no. He said, I'm not doing this to change what's happening.

He paused. He said, I'm doing this so that what's happening won't change me. If we don't want to go into trance and have that kind of hardened heart, we need to stay present and tender and open to the vulnerability that's coming up in us and that's right around us everywhere. We need to engage with our world. But there's something more I want to add to this, which is, because I'm emphasizing vulnerability, we also need to directly look toward the light and to celebrate,

like those monks walking, celebrate the goodness. I think of those thousands singing, celebrate the goodness that's here. There's so much goodness and beauty in our world. Sojourner Truth was a formerly enslaved woman who became this powerful advocate for abolition in women's rights. She says this, she says, life is a hard battle. anyway. If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life's light to be determined by the darkness around me. So make room, make room for the light and for delight. It's not an escape. You know, our pleasure, our laughter, beauty, it just restores capacity. And it reminds us that we're more than

what is being demanded of us. So friends today, just to say we are each a part of this evolving movement that in the face of a cold winter there is an evolving movement of widening compassion, deepening compassion, a willingness to be vulnerable, get closer in to each other, and to celebrate the goodness. you know, together we can survive and flourish. And it's grounded in what in the Bodhisattva path is called aspiration, that this is what matters, that we are choosing to love. We're choosing to evolve our consciousness.

So we'll close with that, on that note, if you will, just to take a moment again to feel your breath, come home into presence. and you might sense, I've been using the term this cold winter, whatever about these shadowy times comes forward in your mind, you might sense our world as it is, and also sense your vision of beloved community, what you wish for, what you hope for, what you pray for. So sense what matters to your heart and then widening the attention to sense how through history in these present times and through the future, there will always be those who have the same deep longing for a loving world. And just feel your belonging to this flow

of caring. Just feel this as a universal current of the awakened art that lives through us. It's what we belong to. You are part of this movement of awakening, and you might sense in a very immediate way in the days and weeks to come. In your personal circles, what it really means to have your boat in the river, to express this flow,

to express this caring, and you might sense the larger society and world we're a part of, and what it means to have your boat in the river in this wider field and a shared prayer. May we face the darkness with presence and courage. May it grow our light. May together we bring this healing medicine of love and compassion of justice and peace to our world.

Namaste and blessings friends.