Tara Brach - The Grounds of Living Compassion

Episode Date: December 22, 2010

2009-09-02 - A critical question on the spiritual path is how we can bring the loving presence awakened by meditation into every facet of daily life. This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us in reactive trance and the ways we can deepen our attention and align our lives with our hearts. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

So one of the critical questions on the spiritual path, and always at the end of retreats, this is the focus after we've been in kind of a quietness. The questions really, how do we bring the qualities of heart and awareness that we're really trying to cultivate in meditation into daily life? It is the single biggest, most compelling question. I mean, this isn't about just sitting on a cushion or a chair and closing your eyes.

And it's really how to live the awareness that's waking up through us. And it has to do with in our families and with our colleagues and our friends, how do we stay aligned with our hearts? And this question has a shadow side. It ends up causing trouble when there's some idea of what it means

to be a spiritual person. And we have some expectation that, oh, I'm doing this kind of meditation or I'm on this spiritual path, and I should go around and be very mindful and move a little more slowly and only say a certain kind of thing in a soft, lelting tone of voice. So if you're getting the point. But it's a challenge because we have some expectations as to our conduct that we should be pausing and centering and always behaving in a way that conveys kindness. And we don't. And so how not to have it become an expectation filled with judgment and to know that when that same inquiry, how do we bring these qualities into daily life

comes from a place of longing, that it matters to us because we really want to live from the truth of who we are. That's why it matters. Not because we want to be somebody different that fits an expectation, then that question becomes incredibly empowering. It becomes kind of a gravitational field

that affects our whole life. So I'd like to explore tonight what's sometimes called the grounds of compassionate action, the grounds of living from our truth, from our heart. In a way, this is the natural carryover from last week's talk if you didn't hear it, you might download it or whatever, which really had to do with what does it truly mean to accept. Like, how do we pause and really open to this moment?

Because everything we do, all our actions, come out of that pause, come out of that arriving in this moment, if they're to be wise. Most people I know, this especially those of us that got involved in the spiritual path decades, have spent a lot of time practicing solo, you know, on a cushion or a retreat where you're not

talking to anybody else. And our idea of spiritual practice always has that connotation that in some way you're closing your eyes and going inward. And we get that the condition is really strong to be distracted and reactive and that it takes a lot to start to learn to come home and touch peace in the moment. Well, just as much as it takes training inwardly, when we're with each other,

requires the same amount of training. That if our idea of spiritual practice is something that has to do with when we're off alone, then we're missing huge swaths of our life. It's like that Buddhist personal that was in the tricycle magazine

that says, tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself. you know, it's that, it's like, it's that idea. One friend of mine talked to him this week, who was kind of despairing, because he said, you know, I can handle meditating by myself. You know, I go through all the normal conditioning,

everything kicks around, but at least I can at some point quiet and, you know, get in touch. But I'm never present when I'm with other people. I'm always in some reaction. I'm always in some way have an agenda and some way off and it's true if we really pay attention

that when we're alone and sitting and meditating it's not like because the world out there isn't they're to distract us we don't have our own minds kind of kicking around

I mean we hit all sorts of distractions with our own mind I mean our minds are rehearsing what they're going to say to someone else especially if we're going to set them straight, you know. Our minds are rehearsing or, you know, it can be petty what we're going to wear, you know, to some social gathering or reviewing upsetting conversations. So we stay plenty reactive by ourselves.

But the degree of conditioning that kicks in when we're with each other is so strong that we barely remember the notion of being present in relationship. We barely remember. We do afterwards. Sometimes we do it beforehand, we intend, but we lose it. Is that so? Or am I the only one? We lose it. So I wanted to first explore a little bit about the conditioning when we're with each other because my understanding, if we want to truly and sincerely start training ourselves, to bring the meditative qualities of presence into being with each other. If we're really sincere about that, there's an attitude that's the prerequisite, and that is to be incredibly forgiving

of the way we screw up, really forgiving. And when you think you've forgiven, know that it has to drop even deeper, that it takes a tremendous amount of patience and acceptance of ourselves and each other because our conditioning is so strong to be reactive in relationship. Deep forgiving.

It's part of our survival equipment to scan for how somebody might be out to hurt us and to not trust. And it's part of our survival equipment to assess what we can get from someone else. You know, that's just built in. It's just part of it. And I've referred here to the metaphor many times of the space suit itself that it depends somewhat on our culture and our personal, you know, our family of origin,

but each of us comes into the world and our parents and those around us are not that attuned, not as attuned as needed. And so we don't receive the message of, yes, you're unconditionally loved and you're valued and you're seeing. We don't necessarily receive that most of us. Instead, there's messages of be different, be a certain way. To be accepted and to be loved, you need to meet these standards. So what we do is we develop what I call like a space suit self. We've come into a sometimes toxic, at least different.

environment, a difficult culture, a difficult world. So we develop, and it's mostly unconscious, all these strategies for how we can have others accept and love us and not reject us, each one of us. And so our behaviors are in some way designed to control what's happening. It's rare that we have a presence that's put down all controlling. There's nothing in us that's listening but also planning our reaction, are presenting ourselves in some way. It's rare. Let me just invite you to reflect for a moment. If you want to just close your eyes, I'll give you a brief guided reflection. And again, this is all in exploring that we're profoundly conditioned. And the first step is just to see the conditioning without judging it. So you might bring to mind a person in your life that is of some

importance to and is not so easy. And most of us have that. Somebody that's an important person, but not so easy in some way we're not that comfortable or we have some reaction. And as you bring that person to mind, first you might ask yourself, what is it? that you want them to see about you. How do you want them to perceive you? And you might also ask yourself, what is it you don't want them to see about you? Notice how your behaviors try to control for this,

how you try to perhaps cover over or disguise or present some parts of yourself or exaggerate. Are your behaviors molded by what you're wanting them to see and what you're not wanting them to see? I mean, for most of us, we have a fear of being seen as insufficient or boring or unattractive or unethical or selfish. Then we want to be seen as attractive or good or successful or spiritual. Just sense how that might be so. you can continue to reflect on this we'll keep on

we'll keep on reviewing some of this but just to let that be in the background now in the Greek theater the mask was called a it was had to do with a persona that we took on a persona

the actors would wear the mask during the day and then they'd go home and come back to being themselves but when we take on a persona the space suit self, the suffering is that we merge our sense of our identity with it. It's like we become the mask and we forget who's looking through the mask.

We forget who's here. And this is what the Buddha said was our deepest suffering, that all our strategies to try to be loved or respected, our sense of our self gets hitched to them. That's me. I'm the one that wants this, doesn't want that. And we forget the depth and dimension and mystery of who we are. So what we bring to our relationships when we're really hitched to our particular persona,

our wants and our fears, that's what we're presenting to another. And it narrows what we can see. We can only see our persona, to the degree their persona. In other words, to the degree that we're hitched to our mask, we can only see a mask. If we're resting and who's looking through, if we can remember our heart and our tenderness and know that, yeah, the conditioning is playing, but that's not who I am, then we can see another person's persona

but realize that's not who that person is. Does that make sense? So how do we come home to sense this conditioning that we all have, but not believe that's what we are? See past it. The first step is to really begin to, with some honesty or humor,

tenderness or perspective, just recognize the different ways it plays out. And each of our personas has a few basic modes that it goes on. We have ways of behaving to get what we want and change others. We want to change how they're thinking and change how they're behaving and persuade them. And it often has to do with kind of aggressive behavior or blaming behavior. And one of the most sensitive places is being working. right. Our sense of self, we want to be right. And it's very threatening when we don't feel right. So tension with other people, a lot of it rotates around the sense that I'm being made wrong.

A little story of a girl who's talking to her teacher about whales. And the teacher says that it's physically impossible for a whale to swallow a human. Because even though it's a very large mammal, its throat is very small. And the little girl states that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. and irritated the teacher reiterates that a whale can't possibly swallow a human. It's physically impossible. Little girl says, well, when I get to heaven, I'll ask Jonah. And the teacher asks, well, what if Jonah went to hell? And a little girl replies, then you ask him.

So one persona is aggressive, is, you know, I'm right, you're wrong, and that's just one way of going. And what if we look behind that mask, who's there? But that's one of the personas that we get hooked. in and other people get hooked in. Another very common persona is the one of if you see me, you won't like me. If we're really intimate, it won't work. So there's a pulling away, a hiding from connectedness, from being with. It's like that story of a man and a woman sitting in a living room and he's saying if I ever get into a vegetative state, you know, like dependent on a machine, please pull the plug at which point she gets up, walks over to the TV, pulls

the plug, you know. So it's that. It's where we, and that's another persona. It's like the people that are always online because, you know, it's not, it's not safe. It's not okay to be in relationship. And then there's the persona that pretends. And we each know that because each of us has done it. You know, someone asks how we're doing and we have what we present. And we have behaviors that we might be really upset, but we pretend to be cheerful or positive, or we might be hurt and we don't show it, or we might be angry.

And it's that kind of a cover-up. Again, my example is a little strange, but David received a parrot for his birthday. The parrot was fully grown with a bad attitude and a worse vocabulary. Every other word was an expletive. Those that weren't expletives were rude as hell. David tried hard to change the bird's attitude and was constantly saying polite words,

playing soft music, and behaving mindfully himself around the bird. Nothing worked. He then he yelled at the bird. The bird got worse. He shook the bird and the bird got madder and ruder. Finally, in a moment of desperation, David put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments, he heard the bird squawking, kicking, screaming, and then suddenly all was silent. David was frightened that he might actually have hurt the bird and he quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly stepped out onto David's extended arm and said, I'm so sorry that I offended you with my language and actions. I ask for your forgiveness. I will try to check my behavior and be more mindful in the future. David was astounded at the bird's change in attitude and was about to ask what changed him when the parrot continued.

May I ask what the chicken did? I love that one. and I'm not into animal cruelty or anything, but it's great. So we know how children end up behaving when they're afraid of punishment. You know, we really know that. And it's not coming from a sense of sensitivity and caring. It's coming out of fear.

And the idea is not that a child should throw plates or that the parrot should scream curses, but to recognize our space suits of well-behaved, the one who's acting appropriately, to recognize that, to recognize that, because that's a sign the inner life needs attention. So the inquiry is how do we shift from this condition behavior

where we've become identified with the persona, either the persona that's blaming and judging or the persona that's, you know, in some way withdrawing or dissociating, how do we shift from that into an authenticity that really expresses an inner quality of truth and freedom and heart? And that doesn't mean it does it right away. There's layers that need to be named appropriately. So the beginning of any shift from the conditioned self

to a much more alive expression of freedom is pausing. Our conditioning relies on us continuing to tumble into the next moment. Have you noticed how we're doing that? It's kind of like we're leaning forward in our lives and we're just one thing's toppling into the next. To be living from a place of mindfulness, of inner wakefulness, of heart, of truth. We need to be able to pause.

otherwise all that's doing is we're being informed by unconscious patterning. We need to pause. I ran into one friend here as I was leaving last week and he told me about somebody at Alonon who had a kind of teaching and Alonon is a 12-step program for those that are in relationship with people that have addictions if you don't know. And the teaching was that every year of Al-Anon gives one more second of lag time in terms of reactivity. And I thought that was brilliant. That every year of this kind of training of paying attention in a certain way gives one more second of lag time. And that second is precious. If you know anything about the speed of our reactivity to have even a second. And if you have like a few years under

your belt, that's pretty cool. Well, I think of meditation much in the same way, that every time you sit down to meditate, you're in a way investing in having a little more when you're out on the street, a little more space, a little more pausing, a little more lag time, so that rather than the karmic pattern playing out, and how many of us have seen the same patterns, paying out for decades, right? Rather than that, we have the possibility of changing our karma, of changing our future, because in a moment of lag time, you can come into a quality of presence that absolutely uproots the old patterns.

So the beginning is pausing. And as we explored last week, in that pause, there are two kind of ways of paying attention. And one is to sense what is happening inside me. If we're in a reactive pattern, in that pause, the inquiry really is what's happening right here in this inner life. This week also I was on the phone with a friend who's kind of in a relationship crisis. And she was at one point, she started talking about it, but then all of a sudden stopped and started apologizing for taking so much time. And so then I asked her, you know, well, what's under that apology?

You know, what are you feeling? And she said, it's the same, that same undeserving, like I don't deserve to be taking time. And she named it and she spent some time just breathing and feeling it. And then when we continued, just because she had named what was there, we paused enough. That pattern stopped playing out. She gave it some air time, consciousness, brought some compassion to it because she saw, oh, how many times have I been talking to somebody and kind of rushed through it

and not let myself feel nourished because I felt like I didn't deserve to take airtime? I know a lot of us feel that. So she paused in that conversation with me and just named, it's that not deserving thing. And we sat together with it, you know, and there was some kindness.

And then when she continued, there wasn't so much stickiness. It was like she wasn't merged that persona anymore. Do you understand? So the pausing and the naming. Now you can't do the naming with everybody and you can't pause with everybody. It's not necessarily the right container and you don't have necessarily a mutual agreement. But when you do, it's healing. So much of the practice here, the training on the cushion is learning to recognize what's going on inside of. and rather than running from it, being with it and breathing with it and befriending what's here.

And it's the same thing in a relational situation, whether it's anger or hurt or insecurity. It's having this courage to feel what's going on. When we don't, what happens is that we lose the possibility of intimacy. And usually we don't because for the decades of our life, however long, we have taken the vulnerability and expressed it in unhealthy ways. It's like this, somebody sent me this a long time ago. These two women are having their tea talking to each other. And one has a son who's kind of in the background standing on a step ladder and he's got, he's burning into the wall. He's got a mask on goggles.

and he's burning into the wall the words, I need love. And the mother's saying to her friend, oh, he's just doing that to get attention. Yeah. So part one of changing the karmic patterns in our relationships and being able to come from more truth

and authenticity and heart is to be able to pause and at least within ourselves recognize what's going on inside. us. If we can do that and start getting the knack of doing that without judgment, what we next say or do will be a little more informed by presence. It's part one. Part two, because the first parts we're sensing behind our own mask who's here, and what we're sensing is the vulnerability and the beingness. Part two is slowing it down enough so that when we're with, we're with,

others were able to sense what's behind the mask there. And that takes some practice too. This is T.S. Eliot. He says what we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they've changed since then. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger. It's hard to step that of our assumptions about who we're with. We're used to putting people in their boxes, oh, that person and they're that kind of person, and this is what's going on in their life.

And it's like very thin, very two-dimensional. We don't really, really ask that deep question of who's here. Very rare. We're too nervous to ask that question. Do you know what I mean? It's like there's too much tension when we're with each other to really put down everything and wonder who is here. Who is here? So we instead live in what I call seeing each other as unreal others. And by that I mean even the people we know very well,

we have a storyline in our mind about them so we don't, as T.S. Eliot says, we don't recheck to see what's really real this moment. And even if we've been with this person yesterday, In this moment, it's a mystery. So to really inquire about your family or partners or people you work with and really sense, what is it like to be this person right now? That's not so common. And then especially with people we don't know, what happens is that unreal other becomes what we call the real suffering of stereotyping,

where you can sense it in a gathering like this, you'll see somebody and the visuals will immediately set off an idea about, oh, it's that kind of person. And whether it's the more obvious visuals of age or race or gender, are the little more subtle of socioeconomic or education, we have an idea of, oh, that type of person.

Somewhere in us, and it trips off so fast, we're not conscious of it. So we have all these inferences we're making that we're just seeing masks. It takes a lot of training not to, not to make our assumptions about what's going on. I was driving with my three children, writes, one woman. It was a warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible

ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked. As I reeled from the shock, I heard my five-year-old shout from the back seat, Mommy, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt. So we all make our interpretations. So the training, and it's a radical training, is with other people, is to pause and deepen our attention.

And again, sometimes we're going to be able to do it in a formal way of practice. And by that I mean, just the way we might sit or, get together with a few people to sit on a cushion, to have some people in your life that you have an agreement to have interpersonal meditations with, where you're going to set aside time and speak with each other, but be willing to stop, to pause, to sense what's true, to name it, and to look at that other and sense who's here. Very, very powerful. And when we don't, when we don't,

when we don't there's a suffering because we can feel it in our bodies when we haven't really shown up in a real way with another person I want to share that the two main parts of the training are that when we're with another is to see the vulnerability like the humaness that's there and also to see the sacred to see the beingness the formless beingness Okay, so a story for you, and I was reminded of this story. I've shared it maybe a year or two ago with some here because I recently heard from somebody that I was sitting next to at a church on Christmas Eve when the story was first shared by a Unitarian minister.

So it's a little out of season, but it's a good story, okay? So sit back and listen. It was Sunday, Christmas. Our family had spent the holidays in San Francisco, Francisco with my husband's parents, but in order to be back to work on Monday, we had to do the 400-mile trip to L.A. on Christmas Day. It's normally an eight-hour drive, but with kids, it can be a 14-hour endurance test. We stopped for lunch in King City, made up of six gas stations and three diners, when we went into one, road weary and saddle sore. As I sat, satir, our one-year-old in a

high chair, I looked around the room and wondered, what am I doing in this place? The restaurant was empty and it just seemed we were out of place on this special day. My reverie was interrupted when I heard Eric squeal with glee. Hi there, two words he thought were one. Hi there. He pounded his fat baby hands whack, whack on the metal high tear tray. His face was alive with excitement, eyes wide, gums bare, and a toothless grin. And when I saw the source of his merriment, I couldn't take it all in at once. A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else eons go dirty greasy worn baggy pants both they in a zipper at half-masked over a spindly body toes that poked out of woodby shoes a shirt that had ring around the collar and a face like none other gums as bears erics

hair uncombed unwashed whiskers too short to be called a beard but way way beyond a shadow and a nose so varicose looked like a map of new york i was too far away to smell him but i knew he smelled and his hands were waving in the air. Hi there, baby. Hi there, big boy. I see a buster. My husband and my exchange a look that was a cross between what do we do and poor devil. Eric continued to laugh and answer, hi there. Every call was echoed. I noticed waitresses' eyebrows shoot to their foreheads and several people near us. Pachm out loud. This old geyser was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby. I shoved a cracker at Eric and he pulverized it on the chair, the tray. I whispered, why me under my breath? Our meals came and the nuisance continued. Now the old

bum was shouting from across the room. Do you know Patty Cake? Adda boy, you know peekaboo? Hey, look, he knows peekaboo. Nobody thought it was cute. This guy was probably a drunk and a definite disturbance. I was embarrassed. My husband, Dennis, was humiliated. Even our six-year-old said, why is that old man talking so loud? We ate in silence, except Eric, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum. Finally, I had enough. I turned the high chair. Eric screamed and clamored around to face his old buddy. Now I was really mad. Dennis went to pay the check and implored me to get Eric and meet me in the parking lot. I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked directly toward the exit. The old man sat poised and waiting, his chair directly between me

and the door. Lord, just let me out of here before he speaks to me or Eric. I headed toward the door. It soon became apparent that both the Lord and Eric had other plans. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back, walking to sidestep him in any air he might be breathing. As I did so, Eric all the while, with his eyes riveted to his best friend, leaned far over my arm, reaching up with both arms in a baby's pick-me-up position. In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came eye-to-eye with the old man. Eric was lunging for him, arms spread wide. The bum's eyes both asked and implored,

Would you let me hold your baby? There was no need for me to answer since Eric propelled himself from my arms to the old man's. Suddenly a very old man and a very young baby were involved in a love relationship. Eric laid his tiny head upon the man's ragged shoulder. The man's eyes closed and I saw tears hover beneath his lashes. his aged hands full of grime and pain and hard labor.

Gently, so gently, cradled my baby's bottom and stroked his back. I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment and then his eyes open and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm commanding voice, You take care of this baby. Somehow I managed I will from a throat that contained a stone. He pried Eric from his chest,

unwillingly, longingly, as though he was in pain. I held my arms open to receive my baby, and again the gentleman addressed me. God bless you, ma'am, you've given me my Christmas gift. I said nothing more than a muttered thanks. With Eric back of my arms, I ran for the car. Dennis was wondering why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly, and why I was saying, my God, my God, forgive me. I remember when I left the church that night. night that I heard that. I was with a few people and we were sharing in one young man, the man I just got an email from, said, you know, that old man, that's me, that's my life. You know, that people mistook who he was. He says a young man who not so young now had certain

disabilities. And I know other people heard the story and they're the one that really didn't slow down to look at who's here. that so many of us. So we know it. We know how it is that we just assume something and don't really get the humanity that is right in front of us.

So I sometimes think, imagine what this world would be like if we committed ourselves to slowing down and deepening our attention. And it may be, be that we can't do it all the time, that with certain people, it's our intent, just to slow down and really sense, who's here? Have we just did that sometimes? So just to take a moment to reflect

together, again, just if you will, to close your eyes. And to bring to mind one person that you were with today, that maybe you spent a little time with. Imagine if you were, you were reliving the time you spent with that person. If you could just kind of inwardly pause and deepen your attention, if you could inwardly pause and sense. So what's true for this person? Maybe the question, what do you really need? Not asking them necessarily out loud, but just sensing to yourself, what does this person really need? What might this person have most needed from you? What quality of attention? Was it just a just? an honest kind of acknowledging of I value you in some way, in words or in presence?

Was it touch? Was it in some way doing something to be helpful? What if you had paused and taken a moment to appreciate the goodness of this person? Can you sense how your words and your actions, that which comes out of that pause, would naturally have a kind of compassion, naturally be a kind of blessing. If you could have paused and sensed what that person needed, sense that person's goodness. Our capacity to walk on this earth

and bring healing to this earth comes out of this kind of pausing and presence. Open your eyes when you'd like. It's having a conversation I wanted to share with you, with my father-in-law who was in World War II. Four different times when he was in situations where most of the people around him were killed. Really horrifying.

You know, the final time, it was a boat crossing the Rhine and it got hit and sunk, and all 25 people died but him. So he had some major trauma in the war. And he was telling us this story, and he was telling how horrible it was when people would... He'd get really angry when he'd come home. home and people would say things like, well, thank you for serving. It's just like it didn't come near to touching any acknowledgement of what was real. But he described one particular moment when he was,

finally it was the end of the war and his name was being called out to be shipped home. And there was another officer that was there that heard his name and said out loud, I think I know that young man and it turned out it was the head of his training unit and it was at that moment that in some way he was recognized by somebody it was like he broke down in tears because it was like in the midst of being unseen and a part of so much destruction for those years there was a moment of mattering of mattering of being seen and I was really struck when I heard that about how we each in a very deep way need two things. I mean if you ask what a child most needs,

it's two things. It's to be loved and to be seen. And it's not enough to be loved unless somebody really gets you. And it's not enough to be seen unless what's seen is held. And so that is what we can bring in our relationships, as seeing who's there and caring. And it can come in many, many ways. There's many ways of communicating, you matter.

Next week we're going to be talking, Sherry's going to be talking about a way we say you matter to people on this planet that are most vulnerable is by stepping forward and helping. By letting ourselves be touched by the realness of the suffering so that we naturally respond. Compassion and action.

So there are large ways, there are small ways. There are very immediate ways that being with someone, whether it's giving our time, our money, social action, speaking the truth. One of the deepest ways that I know about I call mirroring goodness. That if in some way we can let someone else know

that we see their goodness, it brings it out of them. It's like the word namaste means, I see the divine in you. And in the moment that energetically it's true that we're saying namaste, that we're seeing the divine another person, it calls it forth, it brings it forth. So I'd like to end with a short, it's not so short actually, but with a kind of an essay written by Naomi Nye that really, I think, illustrates the power

of having someone feel they matter and the quality of aliveness and healing that's possible. This takes place in Albuquerque Airport and she says, wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal after learning my flight had been detained four hours, I heard an announcement. If anyone in the vicinity of Gate 4A understands any Arabic,

please come to the gate immediately. Well, one pauses these days. 8-4A was my own gate. I went there. An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore. I was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly, help, help. And the flight service person said, talk to her. What is her problem? So the flight service person said, we told her her her flight was going to be late, and this is what she did. And I stooped and put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. Shuddawa, shu biduk, abiddi, Stanish. I'm slaughtering this, but she spoke to her.

The minute she heard any word she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been canceled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, you're fine. You'll get there. Who's picking you up? Let's call him. We called her son, and I spoke with him in English.

I told him I would stay with his mother until we got on the plane and would ride next to her, southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for fun. Then we called my dad, and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic, and found out, of course, they shared ten friends. Then I thought, just for the heck of it, why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then, telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade Mamul cookies, little powdered sugar crumbly mound, stuffed with dates and nuts out of her bag, and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman, and declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California,

the lovely woman from Laredo, were all covered with the same powdered sugar and smiling. There is no better cookie. And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar too. And I noticed my new best friend, by now we were holding hands, had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing. with green furry leaves, such an old country traveling tradition, always carrying a plant,

always stay rooted to somewhere. And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in. This is the world I want to live in, the shared world. Not a single person in this gate once the crying of confusion stopped

seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. So what we're really exploring tonight is what's sometimes called the bodhisattva path, which is the path of awakening beings.

And we do the inner practices, the practices of pausing and deeply being with our inner life, and just as essential is this training to look around us and see who's there. to see behind the mask the good-heartedness and the fear, the hurt, and the beauty. And then from that seeing, we can respond in a way, whether it's people we know or those we don't know, in a way that comes from a shared world, the world that we want to live in, the world that's possible. So let's close, just taking a moment again, if you will, to let your attention go inward.

let this be a pause or you feel yourself right here. Just notice what's going on. Feel your breath, feel your heart. Sense your own way, your sincerity about being awake in relationships. And you might bring to mind one person who you know you're going to be spending a little time with over the next few days. A person that perhaps there's not necessarily major conflict, but some tend to be. some ways that you get caught in your space suit, they and theirs, could be a child, a friend, a partner, someone you'd like to be more real with, more open-hearted, more truthful.

Imagine being with this person and you might sense when you're together what gets brought up in you. So you just take a pause right now to sense inside you what comes up in you and what's it like. perhaps it's defensiveness or insecurity or kind of an urge to control or pull away. And whatever the conditioning is, see if you can forgive it. It's just conditioning. It's been in human bodies for tens of thousands of years. Perhaps even offer, maybe touching your hand to your heart, just offering presence and kindness.

to your own conditioning, your own reactivity. Forgiven, forgiven. Sensing your own sincerity of intention, the goodness in you. So that as you bring the other person to mind, you can see past that person's mask too. Maybe they're aggressive or defensive, pulled off,

not being real themselves. But see if you can see behind the mask, what does this person need? What do they really need? What's the vulnerability there? Is this person feeling kind of sense of their own insufficiency or threatened or in some way wanting to get something? Something's missing for them?

And you sense the goodness who's really looking through that mask that wants to be free, that wants to love and be healed, sensing the possibility of pausing in this way and then having your words and your actions arise from presence. Just imagine how that might be. This is a world we can choose to live in. As Nikki Chiavani says, if ever I touched a life, I hope that life knows that I know

that touching was and still is and always will be the true revolution. arrive in the presence, in the loving presence. It's our very truest nature. And may these lives, our words, and our actions, be an expression of that. May there be peace on earth. May there be peace everywhere.

May all beings awaken and be free. Namaste. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.