Tara Brach - The Calling of These Times - Part 2

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

The Calling of These Times - Part 2 - 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. Welcome, friends. I'd like to begin talk today with a short teaching story and it's about three beginner novices from a seaside monastery and they get caught in a mini tsunami and stranded on a desert island hundreds of miles away. And after struggling to keep themselves alive for several weeks, they find this cave with meditation cushions and they sit down and then the spirit of the cave starts speaking to them in an echoing voice and says, you know, you've found your feng shui spot on the island

and you've properly assumed zazen. And I'm going to give you three wishes. So the first one says, I want to return to the monastery. I miss the morning bills as I'm sweeping the walks. Vush, that one vanishes. And the second one says, I want to return to the monastery too. I want to learn again at the feet of our beloved abbot. Swish, that one disappears. And third one looks around and gets really anxious and goes, I'm lonely.

I want my friends back here. The teaching is that when we're stressed, or when we're in crisis, unless we're mindful, we get carried along reflexively by this kind of quick twitch of our habitual thoughts and wants and fears. And what's really needed, especially in these current and challenging times, is instead of that habitual reaction that we pause, that we awaken our deeper intelligence and care so we can respond to our own experience in the world in a wise way and for the sake of our collective well-being.

So this is the opening to part two, this is a two-part series entitled The Calling of Our Times. And we're really looking at how we can respond to our global crisis and the stressors of our personal life with an awake heart. So I'd like to read you part of a poem called Hieroglyphic Stairway by Drew Dillinger. It's 3.23 in the morning and I'm awake because my great, great grandchildren won't let me sleep. My great, great grandchildren ask me in dreams, what did you do while the planet was plundered? What did you do when the earth was unraveling? Surely you did something when the seasons started failing as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying.

Did you fill the streets with protest when democracy was stolen? What did you do once you knew? I share this poem because I've been talking to a lot of people about how they're relating to our world and there's a heightened sense of the growing suffering, a recognition of what's sometimes referred to now as our global poly crisis, that each of what we think of these individual crises are all related, that if you think about it, climate disaster and war create more inflation, more economic inequities, which create more extreme ideologies, a growing authoritarianism, loss of human rights, the realization of our poly crisis is growing, and this reality has really entered our consciousness and our nervous systems.

And there's this natural question that arises, that question in the poem, which is, what can we do? I know it's very, very strong. Most recently I've been kind of taken the pulse in the United States, the reaction to the threats to democracy, women's right to choose. Very strong question, what can we do? And in a larger way, really, what is the calling of these times for each of us and for us collectively? I often think of Einstein's kind of famous quote that we can't solve problems from the same mind state that they were created from.

So it becomes really important to ask, well, what's the mind state responsible for the multiple crises on our planet? What's the mind state? And you might reflect to yourself about that. What do you sense is behind it? You sense like behind the climate crisis. Can you feel how humans have been for so long experiencing, themselves as separate from the earth. The earth is this other that we can plunder and that

we can pollute. If you think behind wars, it's humans feeling separated from each other, that the other becomes a bad other, an enemy. And it's okay when somebody's an enemy to violate them. In other words, us, them. And if we think behind the pain in our personal life, the conflicts, there's that sense of bad other, that we're a victim, the other's bad in some way, or maybe it's that we're at war with ourselves. Or you think of teens and this incredible anguish of loneliness that so many are feeling, it's from being cut off. The common denominator of all the different expressions of suffering is a sense of severed belonging. severed belonging from our inner life, from each other, this forgetting that we're inseparably

a part of the same living web, the same consciousness. The indigenous elders teach that of necessity we need to repair the divides. This is Black Elk. He says, the first piece, which is the most important, is that which comes with within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, all its living expressions. When we realize our relationship, it feels very much as that the calling of these times are to repair the severed belonging, to realize our relationships, our belonging, and to live from that, you know, to serve from that, love-based activism, to act from that.

So, in case this sounds abstract, what I'd like to do for the rest of this reflection, really, is I'm going to aim to ground it and really look at, well, what do we mean by repairing severed belonging, whether it's within our own being or in our world? What do we mean by reconnecting? So last year, I was invited to participate in a kind of interview and presentation that celebrated the 90th birthday of Ariyatine. I eagerly agreed. Ari, as people call him, is a Buddhist elder who's considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka. and he's created an amazing model for awakening through crisis that's really based on repairing

severed belonging on love-based activism. So I was really excited to have a chance to be part of that. And also I got to talk to him individually and it was profoundly inspirational. I mean, he just kind of channels a sense of care and presence and charisma and here he is 90. So, Ari created a movement. It's called Sarvodaya. And the word means everybody waking up together. And he's organized citizens in one-third of the nation's villages to dig wells and build schools and to meditate and collaborate. And it's a form of spiritual practice. That's really amazing to me. So his vision of all of this first emerged in response to a horrible crisis. Many might know that Sri Lanka went through several decades of really terrible civil war.

So in 2000, in the year 2000, Ari published what he called the People's Peace Plan. And more than 650,000 people came to this gathering to hear how we envisioned the future of Sri Lanka. And at this gathering, he proposed a 500-year peace plan based on meditation. on working together, on the different factions or religious groups learning each other's languages and cultures on economic justice. His aim was to bring the people together back as a whole over a period of 500 years, repairing severed belonging because he said it took over 500 years to create the breaches, the divides. So what you're hearing really is that the the sacred intention or the vision or the aspiration of an elder. And you might say, well, we don't

have 500 years and who knows. But what's important is this, that we need to respond to our personal and global crisis use as best as we can. And there's some powerful medicine in the Sarva-Daya a model that it'd like us to look at together. And of course, the grounds is what I just told you, this aspiration to repair severed belonging, to go beyond us and them. That's the heart of it, beyond us and them. And that gets nourished on two levels by inner practices of meditation and by the outer practices, the spiritual practices that really have to do with, with each other, serving each other, working together. So I want to look at these three dimensions, the sacred intention and the inner practices and the outer practices. And just begin with a pause here

so that we can connect with the mood and spirit of aspiration together. So we can move through these pieces together. So you might let this pause be one of arriving where you invite yourself purposely to come right into your body and your heart knowing that the deepest aspiration of our heart, what most matters to us, is here but often we don't pay attention to it. And the more conscious you become of what matters of your deep aspiration, the more that becomes the compass of your heart. So you might sense, okay, what is my intention, my aspiration, and begin with your inner life. You might sense over the years or decades, what does it mean to deepen

belonging? You might even ask right this moment, is there any part of your heart, your body, your moods that's asking to belong that might feel left out? Just notice if there's something there, some fear, some pain, that just by noticing it and having the intention to let it belong, there's an opening, a movement towards wholeness, a repairing of severed belonging. So we have the aspiration to let all parts of our own inner life belong, and you might bring your mind to relationships in your life that matter. And sense what would it? it be like to really be conscious of that intention to deepen belonging, to include others in your heart, to love without holding back? And you might widen to sense your community

and what does it mean to feel belonging to the wider community, that intention to really include whoever might be left out of your heart because of our condition, because of our condition of our society, maybe those of a certain race, our class, political affiliation, just to sense what's it like to have the intention to deepen understanding and care and belonging in this wider sphere and then to sense the world, this whole living world with its violence of war and cruelty to other species, with the struggle of our living earth, just to just to sense your aspiration, repairing the severed belonging, the healing of our world, to sense that in your heart and to feel your sincerity of what you long to see manifest. May this be the compass

of your heart. May there be a remembering, taking a few full breaths. Your eyes are closed, opening your eyes. So what Sarvodaya and many spiritual and religious traditions teach is that we have this aspiration for who we can be, how we want the world to be, and then it's the inner practices and the outer actions that help to manifest. So if we think of inner practices, if we think of really what they offer us, as we know our suffering is those repeating patterns of, looping thoughts and feelings that then lead to habitual reactivity and perpetuate severed belonging. So that means we have worry thoughts and then we can feel fear in our body, maybe a fear

of failing, you know, feel it in our body. And then there's that looping so we get more and more kind of obsessed, worried, and fearful and then we make inevitably errors because we are never operating so well when we're caught in that looping. And then there's more thoughts of how we might fail and more bodily fear and we're off and running. If we look closely at our life, we can see that in any relationship where there's conflict, where there's distance, and I'm going to invite you in a little bit to choose one so we can explore how the inner practices can help us with that, we'll see a dance, a kind of interplay where each person is caught in that looping. Each person is caught in that looping of thoughts and feelings that lead to the reactivities

that create separation. Rabbi David Nelson likes to tell a story of two brothers who went to their rabbi and they wanted to settle a longstanding feud. And the rabbi got the two to reconcile their differences and shake hands. And as they were about to leave, he asked each one to make a wish for the other in honor of the Jewish New Year. The first brother turned to the other and said, I wish you what you wish me. At that, the second brother threw up his hand and said, see, rabbi, he's starting it up again. Don't we know it, though, the patterns we keep replaying?

And the deal is that to interrupt them is the only way if we want to repair severed belongings. and we have to interrupt them. We have to be able to pause, see what's happening, and inwardly open to more resourceful mind states. Now, just to say, often we can't do it in the midst, but we can see a pattern in our life and then during our meditation or our practice, interrupted by reviewing it and going deeper, pausing and tapping into our resources. By a way of example, one man several years ago working with executive director of a nonprofit, and the key players on his board and staff were in a kind of a war, a disagreement about the direction of the agency or the organization. And one camp felt like they were spread too thin and they were not able to use the resources wisely or get

anything good done. And another camp felt like they were missing important opportunities, low hanging fruit. And it was, they were just caught and there was a lot of anger and anxiety and growing tensions in the relationships between each other. And this was especially difficult for him as executive director because he was involved with that distancing. So, he decided to pause in the sense of stepping aside and practicing Rain with the situation. And for many of you familiar with Rain, it's recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And it's a way of bringing mindfulness and compassion to a stuck place so we can untangle it, so we can interrupt patterns.

So he started with the anger, recognizing anger, and allowed it to be there, the A of Rain. And then as he investigated and felt into it, he sensed, well, there's this belief that I'm going to fail. And then he felt that squeeze, that fear in his body, in his chest, a kind of clutching. So he let himself feel it, investigated the sensations, breathed with it, and he began to nurture. You know, thank you for trying to protect me. It's really feeling his relationship. with it and he just felt this kind of compassion for himself. He said, just do your best from care. Do your best from care. You care about how things are. Just do your best. And there was something about getting in touch with the anger and what was underneath it and holding it with compassion

that really allowed him to feel enlarged, being at rest in a larger sense of his own being much more open-hearted. And from there, when he thought of the other staff members and board members, he realized they all care passionately. There's just different views on what's best in terms of strategy. So the next meeting, that's what he started with, just really talking about how much everyone was caring. And it set a tone for a much more collaborative kind of a conversation.

and it was so clear to him that what was important was to repair the suffered belonging, to have the relationships, the relational field intact, because that would allow for whatever best that could emerge to emerge. As we know in relating to our society, the inner reactivity that creates divides is pervasive. I mean, it's so deep in our psyche to create an enemy out there. And you might just scan your own life because I'm sure you've noticed it may be reading or listening to news or taking in what people are saying, social media, whatever it is, are just thinking about the world how quickly the mind just goes right into good guys, bad guys,

winning, losing, right, wrong, good, bad. We just fracture into that. These are signs of severed belonging. I'll share a story from my own life that's quite recent and that's by that I mean this week. So I was composing this talk that I'm sharing with you right now on repairing severed belonging and how to wake up out of this us, them, and really this being the call. of our times. And by way of context, I don't look at news or open emails or anything until after I've exercised in the morning and after I've meditated. And in good part, it's because I really respect the power of that tendency towards othering. I know how easy it is to get seduced. So I'm very intentional about trying to protect my psyche from going into those patterns. Well, a couple

mornings ago, I woke up early and I was lying in bed and I was kind of reflecting on this talk. And I remembered while I was reflecting a beautiful quote I wanted to share with you about bridging the divides. And it was still dark when I got up. So I looked at my phone to find the time because I don't wear a watch. And what immediately appeared in front of me was a text from a friend with a lot of exclamation marks. And I swear, my mind could not look. I always just sucked right into it. And it was about a candidate winning who I really wanted to win. And everything in me went, yes, you know, and you can imagine the fist pumping, you know, yes, you know, and my mind was buzzing with the implications. Then I went swimming and you know the research about when your team wins, the

testosterone that flood your body. Well, I tell you, that swim was like Olympic level prowess. I was like on. And then I sat to meditate and I'm watching my mind and finally there's a bit of settling and it was just so clear the power and the pull of identifying with the side. with the winning or the losing, the good guys, the bad guys. And I wasn't judging that it was happening, just realizing, well, look at this. And the energy surge that comes with it and the kind of excited squeeze. And I stayed, just continuing to witness, to breathe, calming, opening. So the space got larger, got quieter.

And I could sense behind that excited squeeze around winning. was a longing. And it was the longing for a more compassionate, connected world. And then there were tears. And there was a resting in a much more spacious, tender kind of a field. There was belonging again. I was back home in some greater space of who I really am. And of course that's when I remembered that quote that I had wanted to share with you, which is, the mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. Srinar Sargata.

And sometimes the abyss can feel exciting like you're winning. But it's always an abyss. there's severed belonging. So let's just pause here and we'll just do a brief practice on healing, severed belonging, when there's othering in our relationships. So again, to invite your attention inward, take a few full breaths, and bring to mind a difficult situation, one that triggers reactivity with somebody in your, maybe a closer in circle, child, a parent, partner, friend, work colleague, where you sense

that there's distance. There's kind of a habitual way of distancing, some dance that you're having with that other person. Take a moment to sense your deepest intention, that sacred intention, in some way in your own language, to feel more belonging. Then allow yourself to go into the situation where the reactivity gets activated. Just remind yourself of what triggers it, what the person might say or do, how you might feel so that you know what that stuck place feels like, the place of severed belonging. Just recognize and feel the feelings there. No judgment. Noticing what here and then pause, just really pause.

And imagine in a sense that you're being transported to a very safe and sacred space. You might imagine the space if there's something in your mind, some beautiful space that's meaningful to you in nature or might be in your own room at home that feels most healing. might be an imaginary place, but sacred space. And in that space, call on your most awake heart. What some people might call their high self, some might call it their future self who you're really becoming, your big mind, some might call it bodhisattva self. And if it's hard, you might you call in someone you know who expresses real wisdom and compassion where you feel resonance, spiritual figure, deity, living teacher.

Just invoke your high self or the sense of this being kind of that can support you. And just notice as you let that experience of wisdom and compassion of the high self or this other being fill you. Just notice what it's like. What's it like when you're being filled with, bathed with, immersed in wisdom and compassion? Just feel your posture, your face. Notice what happens to the feelings of stuckness. And then looking through the eyes of wisdom, the heart of compassion, at the situation. Notice what you see about the other person. Since you can see really deep, you can see really into where their vulnerability is, their hurt or fear, their unmet need for being seen, feeling safe, feeling cared about.

And as you do, you might just imagine new possibilities for how you might respond to the situation. Other creative possibilities. to break the old pattern, the old dance, ways that might create more belonging and bringing yourself back to that sacred space, really feeling it right here and now. Just listen, listen for whatever message you most want to remember from your own awake heart, from the wisdom and compassion you've invoked. What's the message? What will continue to move you towards more belonging, knowing that you have the potential to respond from a different mind state than that which created separation. You can practice something different. You can nurture

belonging. Pick a few full breaths, opening your eyes. So we're looking at an inner practice that can help us to draw on our resources and move towards repairing severed belonging. And we need this in our society. And it's happening some. Those who are guiding restorative justice and reflections doing repair work and other domains between groups. Again, from Sarvodaya, right after the ceasefire, they held what might be

the largest meditation for peace in the history of the world. 650,000 people. And here's the description from Joanna Macy. Sitting on the grass as far as the eye could see, they made the biggest silence I ever heard. After prayers from Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim clerics, and in the intervals between Dr. Ariotanay's words guiding us in mindfulness of the breath and loving kindness and firm resolve for peace, the silence deepened. I thought, this is the sound of bombs and landmines not exploding, of rockets not launched, and machine guns laid aside, it is possible for us all. Okay, so we've looked at the deep aspiration to move beyond us and them and at the

little bit of the inner practices that can support that. And the last part is outer action, what I love to call love in action, or love-based activism, which is action from a caring heart. And it could be the action of calling a friend who's struggling because we care or voting because we care, our serving in political office because we care, or hospice work because we care. Whatever it is, if it's done from caring, it helps repair severed belonging. And the most challenging domain of outer work is when we start facing the severing that comes from systemic violence, such as the cycles of religious and racial and gender-based violence

because the divides are so deep in our cultural psyche. So this is the severed belonging that totally needs our attention and that's most challenging. It takes a real courageous truthfulness to see the reality of the suffering and keep our hearts open. And I want to share a story told by Brian Stevenson, a social justice activist, lawyer, and to me, a real spiritual leader, because he models the possibility of repair, repairing severed belonging. And he writes about one initiative that he was part of starting, where people would go to lynching sites and they would dig up the soil and put it in a museum, and with the name of the victim as part of a real restorative act, the kind of redemption,

restoring spiritual belonging. And one woman participating in this initiative went out to a very remote area and she was very nervous but she decided to do it and she was about to start digging when a truck drove by and there was this white man in the truck who slowed down as he drove by and he stared at her and then he turned around and came back. staring at her and he stopped the truck. So he gets out and he starts walking towards a very large man. She's very nervous and I'll read you what Brian writes. She says, we tell people you don't have to explain what you're doing. If you want to say you're just getting dirt for your garden,

feel free to say that. And that's what she intended to do. But when this white man walked up to her and said, what are you doing? She said, something got hold of me. And she said, I turned to that man and I said, I'm digging soil because this is where a black man was lynched in 1931, and I'm going to honor his life. And she said she was so scared that she started digging real fast. And then the man stood there and he said, does that paper talk about the lynching? Because she had a paper with her that described what had happened. And she said, yes, it does. And he said, can I read it? And she gave the man the paper. He stood there reading while she was digging. And then he put the paper down and stunned her by asking, would it be okay if I helped you? And then she told me that this white man

got in his knees and he started throwing his hands into the soil with such force. His hands were getting coated with this black soil and they were just turning black and it moved her. And she said the next thing she knew she had tears running down her face. And he stopped and he said, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm upsetting you. And she said, no, no, no, you're blessing me. And they kept putting soil in the jar. And they got the jar almost full and she noticed toward the end that the man was slowing down and that his shoulders were shaking. And she turned and she looked and she saw the man at tears running down his face and she stopped.

And she put a hand on this man's shoulder. She said, are you all right? And that's when the man said to her. He said, no, I'm just so worried that it might have been my grandparents that were involved in lynching this man. she said they both sat there with tears running down their face. So Brian writes, he says, now beautiful, things like that don't always happen when you tell the truth about history. But until we commit to some acts like that, until we tell the truth, we deny ourselves the

beauty of redemption, the beauty of restoration. So friends, we're exploring the calling of our times and we're looking at ways of healing the severed belonging that's the root cause of the suffering we face. We're looking at the conscious intention to nurture belonging on all levels, with our inner life, with each other, with groups that are not part of our heart, with our world, with our natural world. We're looking at the inner practices that help us to reconnect. Keeping in mind that the mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses, Can we come out of our thoughts and into our heart? And we're looking at the outer practices, the ways that we can bring love into action.

And ultimately, this movement towards realizing belonging needs to become part of our larger society, a collective movement. And I think that's why I love the model Sarvodaya because it means everybody awakening together. It doesn't say, overcome whatever percent of the population we consider the enemy, but it says find ways to widen our circles of belonging. I want to share an example of love and action that was part of the inauguration of the Sarvodaya Linkup program, which was the program intended to bridge the divides between the religious groups that have been in a violent civil war for decades. And imagine that for a moment,

bridging the divides between religious groups that had for decades been violating each other. And this is what you'll hear is Joanna Macy again reporting. She says, that day the ceremony took place for the Linkup program and a thousand villages in the more devastated Tamil areas are paired with a thousand in the Sinalese areas, and the latter will bring materials and skilled and unskilled labor so that both parties can work together to rebuild homes and schools, wells and toilets, and places of worship destroyed in the fighting. I heard of a village in the south that just on hearing of this program immediately loaded two lorries with roofing materials to take north. Today, to symbolize this partnership, a village from each side had been sold.

elected and after the temple bill was rung at the precise moment bills were rung that day across Sri Lanka. Young people from each of these two villages came forward. They bore round trays of special festive food they prepared and they fed each other. The place were then passed among the rest of us gathered there. Even if the sea's fire is sabotaged, I want to remember that taste of sweet rice and coconut, it told me that this is what we really want most of all to stop the fighting and feed each other. Isn't it true that that's the deeper longing, that we stop the fighting and feed each other? I mean, just to imagine the groups we know that are violently divided, the vision of stopping the war and intentionally seeking to nourish, to work together,

serve together, meet each other's needs. So it may seem like a dream, but this is what becomes possible as we dedicate our lives to love and action. And it arises naturally because, and I think you know this, when we slow down a bit, we do care. We care deeply about our world. a poem from Rebecca Baggett called Testimony. I want to tell you that the world is still beautiful. I tell you that despite children raped on city streets, shot down in schoolrooms, despite the slow poison seeping from old and hidden sins into our air, soil, water, despite the thinning film that encloses our aching world,

despite my own terror and despair. I want you to know that spring is no small thing, that the tender grasses curling like baby's fine hairs around your fingers are a recurring miracle. I want to tell you that the river rocks shine like God, that the crisp voices of the orange and gold October leaves are laughing at death. I want to say, like Neruda,

that I am waiting for a great and common tenderness, that I believe we are capable of attention that anyone who notices the world must want to save it. Friends, these two weeks we've been exploring the calling of our times, and we started this week with a poem, What Did You Do Once You Knew? We explored sacred intention, the intention to repair severed belonging, and how inner practices can bring us back to more wholeness, more caring, and how that caring leads to actions that come from love. I often think of this Zen saying that the whole practice is to sit and sweep the garden,

and it doesn't matter how large the garden is. And I think it's important to know and to add that we're sweeping together. We're in this together. So in that spirit, I'd like to just invite us to have a closing meditation to feel that togetherness. As we've been doing, you might let your attention go inward. If it helps to close your eyes, please do. Taking a few full breaths.

And as you exhale, just sense what might want to let go a little right now. sensing the truth that the mind creates the abyss, creates separation, and the heart crosses. You might allow your attention to come into your heart, to feel yourself breathing in and out of the heart, to invite forward the natural tenderness that's there, the caring, the sense of what matters to you in your own life, that kind of perspective if you're at the end of your life looking back what would matter about this moment, this day, and sensing your care for this precious, mysterious, and hurting world, feeling that. As you do, you might feel yourself joined by countless beings, beings from the past, who cared, who served, who lived from love,

beings now, those in the years to come who love this living world and yearn to live from that loving. You might sense yourself as a flow-through. Let this river of loving care move through you, knowing that you belong to these past, present, future currents. You belong to this shared heart space, knowing this is the true nature of who we are. And we close, with the words of Desmond Tutu. At no point will evil and injustice and oppression and all of the negative things have the last word. And yes, there's no question about the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering.

But you know at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love, that you You and I and all of us are incredible. I mean, we are really remarkable things that we are, as a matter of fact, made for goodness. At the center of this existence is a heart beating with love. Thank you, dear friends. Thank you for your presence and for that heart space that we share, that we all belong together. Thank you, dear friends, for your presence. for your caring, for the hope that you bring to this world. Blessings.