Tara Brach - The Calling of These Times - Part 1

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

The Calling of These Times - Part 1 - The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste friends. Thank you for being here. So during the last couple of weeks, I've been reflecting on a talk for today. It's November 9th. And in the United States, this is the day after our midterms. And so I was just wondering to myself, you know, given how strong the feelings are in this country and myself and so many, you know, should I wait and see what the outcome is and then, you know, talk after that. And what I realized is that whatever I'd want to explore, what would really matter to

explore and what I'm really looking at deeply in my own practice, it would be the same no matter the outcome of these elections. And just to say that what's unfolding here in the United States is unfolding globally. So whether we think in terms of winning or losing, what we're really having to face is just how much pain and fear there is in our world, including in our own hearts, We're having to face how much hatred, how much othering, how much delusion, how so many are living in these separate and very distorted cocooned realities. So we're asked to face that. And we're also asked to remember something larger and more fundamental, what we might call

human spirit, our capacity for love, our capacity for waking up awareness. So our inquiry today is really how do we bring our presence to the suffering, to the darkness or difficulty that's here, and how do we remember to call on love, to call on awareness, to sense the possibility of really living from our deepest nature? So we'll look at this in two parts. Start this week and then do another next week. And my hope is to ground it in reflections or meditations that are helpful. So to start to say that no matter our political views or beliefs,

for most of us, our world's very unsettling, disorienting. There's a heightened sense of threat. And here we are, climate disasters and the arise of authoritarian rule, the decline of democracy, wars. To have a nervous system means registering the quaking of our world. And of course, it's powered along by obsessive thinking, you know, for many, whether it's in our personal lives or our thinking about our society. you know, fear keeps spinning thoughts that in turn creates more fear in our bodies. I like the way Annie Lamott puts it. She says, my mind perched on the top of my head like a spider monkey and thought of more things that could go wrong. And those things, what they would be,

I tried to drop my attention from my head to my heart, which is actually an ascension of sorts. Still my mind chattered on as if the spider monkey had taken acid. My mind is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. And so here we are. Our minds just keep going. And, you know, even if we're not obsessing, just by being sensitive, it's natural that we'd feel the current suffering in our world, that we'd anticipate more. And as I shared last week, I can say for myself that the midterms in a very specific way have woken me up in the middle of the night. So our starting place and I can say this is, I just keep finding this again and again,

is to pause when we find ourselves spinning in the fear to keep pausing and reconnecting to what's right here, to take refuge in presence. and I want to do that together. I'd like to invite us to pause together and just know that whether you've just received an email that is critical and gets you angry or whether you're contemplating the larger events that affect all of our lives,

when we get activated, we need to pause. Many of you are familiar with Victor Frankl's very famous words that between the stimulus and the response, there is a space and in that space is our power and our freedom. So in that spirit friends, just invite yourself to sense, okay, I'm pausing right now. You might feel the breath, you might sense that there's an invitation for whatever, that is here right now, whatever you're feeling, just to be here. A pause allows everything to be as it is. You're resting in life right here, just as it is. And notice if there's some touching into presence, moving from that virtual into the vividness and the immediacy

of heerness, that there's a kind of mystery here. We don't know what to expect. There's more openness, just a little longer resting in what is right here. It might be pain or tension. Let it be here. Just since there's a space in this pause for whatever's here, breathing, aware. You might sense in that awareness that there are others like you who are pausing who have that wisdom just to stop to be you might feel that shared space of awareness notice that there's some enlarging some opening with the pause and helia norris the sharing silence is in fact a political act when we can stand aside from the usual and perceive the fundamental, the shared heart and awareness, change begins to happen.

This is our starting place and our place to come home to again and again. Keep pausing. So, when I talk with people or when I witness others in their lives, those who are suffering the most are not able to talk. any sense of real shared human spirit of that kind of presence, that hard presence. And instead, there's a sense of being imprisoned. There's this belief, okay, I'm separate, and there's some basic badness or evil or flawedness, and it's either in me or others or both. That's the suffering.

This belief of I'm imprisoned, I'm stuck. I'm separate, something's wrong with me or others. And with that usually it's only going to get worse. I'll never get what I want. The world will never improve. So that's the feeling tone, the prison of suffering. And in contrast, a real guiding light for me is, and I heard this many years ago, the Dalai Lama was, you know, talking to Western teachers who said, you know, what do you suggest

we most bring to our students? And he said, it's this message. It's to trust the power of heart and awareness to awaken through all circumstances. To awaken through all circumstances. So sense what this means for a moment that even in the face of the great shadowy, of the times, of the fear, the violence, the hatred, that there's an inbuilt capacity, an innate capacity to wake up through it, to manifest more light and love through it. That's our capacity.

Now I want to say this isn't some Pollyanna thing of here's what's going to happen over the next hundred years. It's about potential. This is what's possible that we have a capacity. to wake up. And you might just check inwardly and sense, do you trust this in your own life? Do you have a sense that when real difficulty arises, you can learn, you can grow? I mean, look back in your life at the difficult times. Did you become more wise through them? Did your heart get more tender?

Because if you find that's true, you might sense, well, how might these times also be times of awakening through? What may these times be calling out in you? I'll say when I reflect back on my own life and I look at the really difficult times, there's a few that come up, I can see how that trust in the past, power of hardened awareness grew over time. You know, I think of early on, you know, when I was 20 or 21, no, no, no, it was later than that, I was more in my 27 maybe. And that's when, and I've shared this with many of you, a betrayal of a spiritual teacher, I was very emotionally abusive.

That was a really dark, quaky time. My whole involvement with the spiritual community, everything was brought up into question. And it was almost, I was either going to contract and buy into these messages about my badness, which had strong pull because I was very inclined to buy into believing I was not, you know, that I was flawed in many ways. So it was either that or how to open in some way and sense, okay, I'm going to dedicate to trusting basic goodness. And then I think of, you know, some years later when I spiral down in illness and it was horrible because I, for years, I had no sense there was a possibility of recovery and that was darkness like losing what I loved and in that kind of hitting bottom of grief finding

the sense that I could love life no matter what, including losing life but still loving. still loving, that that was the possibility and that was like a real waking up through darkness. And then I think of the times I've lost dear ones and just the crushingness of it and then having to wake up to a timeless kind of loving and connection. Trust has emerged through the years that no matter what, no matter what kind of difficulty or darkness, hearts and awareness wake up. can wake up. That's the potential and I've witnessed it in so many others. One friend just two days ago, really wrenching loss of a dear one and she wrote this. She said amidst the sorrow

and grief, I can feel my brain rewiring like a million neurons firing together and helping me make profound connections to the precious Dharma teachings I've received up till this point in my life. You know, many contemplative and spiritual past point to this resilience, this spirit, this possibility, after a loss, after a dark period, which feels like death, coming back to life with greater presence and wisdom and spirit. It's the meaning of the word resurrection, though it's not always understood that way. Here's a short illustrative story I like with a Baptist pastors presenting a children's sermon to a group of children. He asked if they know what the resurrection was. So this is in front of the

whole congregation. And he asked the question and a little boy raised his hand and said, he said, well, what I know is that if you have a resurrection that lasts more than four hours, you're supposed to call the doctor. As the story goes, it took about 10 minutes for the congregation to settle down. So this is a bit of a detour. But what we're talking about is the possibility of awakening through darkness, crisis loss. And we're looking right at these times. Like, how do we trust the power of heart and awareness in these times? How do we open instead of contract?

I recently read a book called The Choice by Edie Eager. She's sometimes referred to as the Anne Frank who didn't die because she was a same age and the same upbringing when she was deported to a concentration camp. And in her memoir, it's very, very powerful because here she is facing all the darkness. And she just shares in a very deep way how she had to open to and feel the anguish, the darkness, and still sense possibility, still keep open to love, to waking up. And it's what let her survive. It's what it gave her the resilience to really flourish.

And she, after the war, she's worked with countless people with trauma to do the exact same thing. To face the fear and the pain courageously and to keep choosing to turn towards possibility. Turn towards possibility. to open, not contract. And so the takeaway is that it's so natural in the face of difficulty, and you can just sense it right here and now in our world, you know, what it's like, it's so natural to contract and get caught in that mental conditioning that believes the fear thoughts that succumbs to fear, that feels kind of separate and powerless in it.

So you might sense how that's there, facing our world right now. now, that prison of the mind that we get caught in. And maybe for some of you as you're listening, you know it in your personal life, that prison of the mind that things get difficult, you get stressed and you get caught in that sense of something's wrong with me or something's wrong with others, blaming, not forgiving, feeling deep down, worthless or unlovable. That's the prison of mind. Are we going to open to the pain or stay caught? in the prison, open to the pain and remember possibility. So again, the Dalai Lama's message is that we have this potential to wake up through the difficulty. And the first step of that is that

there has to be a willingness to pause as we just did earlier and even more deeply in the midst to the pause, to befriend, to embrace and befriend what's painful. So I'd like to do another short practice, embracing, befriending, whatever's difficult inside us in the moment. And it was a way of beginning. I'd like to invite you to just sense your body as it is right now if you're sitting many of you may be, just coming into stillness and taking a few full breaths, if you're open to it to bring in a sense of kindness by bringing your hand to your heart and sense the touch as a message of kindness, a gesture of kindness, of a willingness to befriend whatever is here, breathing, feeling the touch of the hand on the heart, and then listening and feeling into your

heart, sensing whatever the state of your heart is right now, whatever mood or emotion is here, breathing, feeling, you might mentally whisper what you're aware of, if it's fear, agitation, anger, confusion, excitement, grief, just to whisper what's here. And if you find deep down that sense of fear, agitation, just to know that this is part of life trying to protect itself. It's really life-loving life, trying to take care of life. So you just might send that message in that this belongs, it's natural. It's a wave in the ocean. Notice what happens when you do, when instead of any resistance, there's a sense of, okay, this too. Perhaps you'll notice that instead of the contracting, there's a little more space. I invite you to sense, kind of widening the

attention, the millions of others who are caring, who are hurting for our world, and we're world, the millions who are also trying to be with what's here, the shared awareness that we're all here holding this life. Just notice that kind of enlarging, not alone, not having to tense against embracing what's here. Rumi writes that life's water flows from darkness. He says, the darkness, don't run from it. Night travelers are full of light and you are too. Don't leave this companionship. Just sense a little more space, little more tenderness. Not so much inside that prison of mind. If your eyes are closed you might open them. So this is where we begin to sense possibility. If we can open, if we can pause and

sentence into what's here, befriend it, there's a little more space. We can sense the power and freedom that Victor Frankl talks about to choose how we want to respond to our world. Here's how he puts it. He said, we who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few a number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. So here we are. And we're facing a world that's hurting and in difficult times. and we can either contract, feel separate, powerless, caught in that prison, or we can sense

that possibility of choosing to open to trust the power of heart and awareness. Okay, now you may be thinking, okay, I can see that as an individual, but we're in trouble as a species, as a planet, and that's true. So we need to extend this inquiry, sense how we hold the collective. You know, earlier I asked you, do you trust if you can awaken your heart through difficulty? So what happens when we ask, do you trust that humans, that collectively we can awaken? Do you trust that we can evolve our consciousness as a species? I mean, can we face this darkness and wake up? Is it possible?

And I have to say that this is one of the conversations I actually really like to engage in with you, with friends, with colleagues, this real deep sense of is consciousness evolving? And how can we facilitate that? That's the big one. Because I find evolution to be a really crucial teacher. in keeping the big picture in mind. And through evolutionary history, humans in all species, it's in times of great stress, what I'm calling darkness, that we're forced to adapt, that we're forced to grow in some way.

I've always been curious that scientists found with trees and experiments that without the pressure of winds, of blowing winds, the trees can't build heartwood. That's their core and be resilient. They need those stressors. So what builds our heartwood? How do we have the stressors actually build our heartwood? And I was thinking of Margaret Mead when I was reflecting on this, how she was asked to talk about the first signs of true human civilization. where, you know, because homeless apians, they had been facing the stressor of major food shortages and alike. And so a student asked her that question was kind of expecting her to talk about clay pots or tools for hunting. But that's not what she did. She said the first evidence of

civilization was a 15,000-year-old fractured femur. That's what links the hip to the knee. and this bone had been broken and had healed, which means other people had cared for this person, had gotten them to safety, had tended to them, that helping each other collaborate and caring is what allows us to flourish in all sorts of ways. In other words, the first step to true civilization is an act of human compassion. That becomes the foundation to all the ways that we have. could possibly flourish. So our adaptation to the winds of stress, according to evolutionary biologists, is communication, collaboration, caring, compassion. This is the heartwood.

And I think of those words, community, communicate, you know, from the Latin root of communists, which is in common, shared by all. And in contrast to some of the older stories of evolution, which have humans as competing and aggressive, which of course is true, it's part of our nature, what's allowed us to flourish is that we're social creatures that we have this capacity to engage in nurturing relationship and a sense of belonging to a larger home.

And to me, the most helpful way to view our whole trajectory is that we're cultivating wider and wider senses of belonging, of wholeness, of who we are, you know, that we're getting identified with greater holes all the time. We start with, let's say, you might say, family and then whole community and then the whole nation. We identify with all humans, all species, and then the wholeness of our living. earth. That's where the healing is. So I want to keep us, if we're thinking about, okay, here we are and we're talking about facing huge suffering on the planet Earth, the suffering is

coming from a lack of feeling that belonging. It's where that being in that prison of fear, feeling separate and then reacting in violence out of that, the healing has to do with recognizing belonging. It has to do with awakening love, really awakening love. This is a poem by my friend and poet Dana Faults. She writes everything, everything. Every little thing is unique at its surface and indistinguishable at its core. I want to remember this today, the oneness underlying our differences and the truth that we can never really be strangers, even if we never laid eyes on each other before. Everything. Every little thing is unique at its surface and indistinguishable at its core. When we know this

oneness, the most natural thing in the world is to take care of each other. And even if we're not remembering the oneness, by taking care of each other, we come to realize. it. So here's the thing, that over time we are moving in this direction of enlarging our belonging and taking care of each other. Again, today, November 9th, 2022, and the world looks horrifically polarized, in trouble, regressing. And we need the larger view. It's very easy to romanticize the past. But if we look back through central, and certainly through the thousands of years, it's clear there is decreasing human to human violence, increasing valuing of life, increasing human rights, non-human rights increasing slower,

but it's happening. So while dark times are marked by a surge in fear and division, we do have this growth capacity for caring and compassion. It's part of the reason so many around the world are profoundly alarmed. It's because so many care. And it's important to remember the existence of that caring, even when we feel like our world's in trouble. It touches and inspires us when we bear witness. It helps wake us up out of that prison. I remember this happened at the beginning of the Iraq War, Americans were invading. It was really dark time, a lot of othering, and the Army Marines were closing in on Baghdad. There was a small unit that was walking through a town

outside of Baghdad when hundreds of Iraqis poured out of the buildings on either side, and they had their fists waving, they were being invaded, their throats taut, they pressed in on the Americans who glanced at one another in terror. And then they're yelling. They're really frantic with rage, the Iraqis. So from the view of the reporter who described this, because the cameraman and everybody was as frightened as the soldiers, this could be it. The thought was a shot will come from somewhere, and the Americans will open fire and the world will experience another Mylai massacre of the Iraq War. And at that moment, here's what happened. An American officer stepped through the crowd holding his rifle high above his head with the barrel pointed to the

ground. And against the backdrop of this seething crowd, it was a very striking gesture. And he said, take a knee. The soldiers looked at him like he was crazy, but he said it again, take a knee, and then one after another, they're swaying in this bulky body armor and gear, they knelt before the crowds that were just boiling. They pointed their guns at the ground, and the Iraqis feel silent, and their anger subsided. And the officer then could order his men to withdraw. I heard that, and just even as I share it with you, it touches me because you can feel in that, in this dark, intense time, this possibility of the heart waking up, of acting from respect,

acting from love, and how that's what made the difference. There was that kind of pausing and awareness and choosing in the direction of relatedness. So maybe you feel as I do that when you hear about goodness, your heart just resonates with it. I mean, we love goodness. We love stories of reconciliation when people who are separated for some reason, misunderstanding and hurt, find their way back to loving. That's kind of the arctippal kind of pathway of so much poetry and writing. I know for me I can be reading something I know is pure fiction, but when it has that kind of reconciliation and I just weep and weep. There's a story from Spain of a young man, Paco.

He and his father had very bad altercation, so he ran away. And his father searched for him for months, no avail, couldn't find him. And he was very desperate to reunite with his son. So he put an advertisement in a local newspaper. And it said, Paco, meet me in the town square by the fountain at noon on Tuesday. And when he went to the town square at noon, there were 800 some young men named Paco waiting for their fathers and for the forgiveness they never thought was possible. We love love.

We love goodness. Our bodies are designed to feel good when we manifest the potential for love. When we have compassion, it feels good. When we feel caring, it feels good. when we see others care and act from compassion, it gladdens us. And that good feeling is evolution's way of rewarding and reinforcing the unfolding towards wholeness. I remember having a similar response when I was hearing about this is the very beginning of the war in Vietnam, where Ticknod Han was with a group of monks and nuns.

and they were doing what they could to help both sides with suffering, food, medicine. They refused to take sides. So the United States suspected them of being Viet Cong and the Viet Cong considered them the enemy. But they themselves didn't other. They did not create an enemy. And by the way, all of them, these monks and nuns, were really young. They were in their late teens, in their early twenties. So one night their encampment was bombed and don't know by whom, but it was bombed and all

but a few of the monks and nuns were killed. And the survivors were asked the next day to make a statement and the statement was that whoever did it was forgiven. It was violence done out of ignorance. I think of Ticknodhan's life through all those decades and he was, he was, you know, he was resolutely did not create enemies. He was a model of living for the well-being of all, for the whole. He was an evolutionary model of that and he taught the power of understanding and love over and over again. So I share these acts because they're not just acts of certain enlightened individuals.

They're a part of a larger movement that is going on on this planet Earth. Of the language I like for, it is love-based activism. And it's here. It's been growing. It impacts our planet. It expresses the trajectory of our growing evolution. And this same movement was behind Freedom of India in the 40s and the ending of apartheid in South Africa,

the civil rights movement in the United States. Here are the words of Martin Luther King Jr. He said, if we want to make a change, be it political, environmental, for social equality and justice, or simply in our own lives, love is the only way. Love is the only way. And from the perspective of the evolution of consciousness, it's not love that will manifest all at once. There's many moves forward and backwards again. And they're naturally early adapters, people in groups who catch on and dedicate to cultivating love because love it's innate and it needs to be cultivated. Krista Tippett from On Being was describing the importance of this.

She talked about Margaret Mead saying that in human society in many times in places there are what she called evolutionary clusters. These are small groups of people who become more, and these are Margaret Meade's words, purposeful, conscious and responsible. And she's also known, having said, never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, that's the only way it's ever happened. So these early adapters can, it's kind of contagious.

Love in action is contagious. Christ also talks about John Paul Lederick, who's a global peacemaker describing giving the image of critical yeast. He said before there's critical mass, which can take decades, there's critical yeast. And he defines it as small groups of people in unlikely combinations in a new quality of relationship. Dedicated to greater holes. It's just beautiful. So as we close friends, there's this inquiry.

How do we be part of that critical yeast, that evolutionary cluster of humans that nourishes this movement of love and action? You know, in our evolutionary potential as a species, it's in each of us. So we talk about this potential for love and awareness, it's in each of us. In Buddhism, a being with an awakened heart described as a bodhisattva and we all all have this capacity, each one of us. You would not be listening right now unless you care deeply and caring is the very heart of the Bodhisattva.

Ticknat Han puts it this way. He says the Mahayana Buddhist Sutas tell us that you are that person. If you are yourself, if you are your best, then you are that person and only with such a person kind, calm, lucid, aware, will our situation improve? I wish you good luck. Please, be yourself, be that person. So we can be part of the critical yeast. And what moves us forward as we've been really exploring in this talk is both this capacity to open to what's right here inside us and also to remember that bigger picture, that it's possible to awaken love awareness through all circumstances, that we really can dedicate ourselves to a wild and all-inclusive love for this world.

We can dedicate ourselves. Again, Margaret Mead, never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. In fact, that's the only way it's ever happened. Okay, let's have a closing reflection. Invite you wherever you are to let your attention go inward, to perhaps collect yourselves, taking a few long, full breaths, feeling the breath at the heart, listening inward, and asking yourself, what is being called forth in me? What is needed for these times?

Just listening, sensing what's the attitude? the qualities you want to embody, you might imagine manifesting what it looks like to open rather than to close, what it looks like to trust the power of love and awareness, what it looks to be, really, who you can be. Towards the beginning, I mentioned Gonilia Norris, pausing, sharing, silence. I want to close with her teaching. She says, each of us can make a difference. Politicians will not return us to the sacredness of life that will be done by ordinary humans, who together alone can say, remember to breathe, remember to feel, remember to care.

Let us do this for our children and ourselves and our children. children's children, let us practice for life's sake. Thank you, friends, for being here. Feels really important in my life to be with you, to feel our togetherness, you know, to keep pausing, keep reconnecting with what most matters, keep entrusting ourselves to the heart and awareness that can awaken and that can bring healing. I hope to be with you next week. Thank you and blessings. For more talks and meditations,

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