Tara Brach - The Unreal Other

Episode Date: June 9, 2010

2010-06-09 - When we experience others through a conditioned lens of wants and fears, and of unexamined beliefs, we react in ways that cause distance and sometimes obvious injury. This talk explores how we create separation from others, and the ways we can awaken from this trance and live from genuine empathy and wisdom.

A little story to start. The doctor called to say her husband had experienced a massive heart attack during his physical exam. Gladys Johnson raced to the hospital wondering later if she'd ever managed to hang up the phone. She tried not to think the worst, but as she reached the doorway of her husband's room, she lost her composure. All she could see was a massive tube, all kinds of machinery and squiggly lines on the monitor overhead. What has happened, she cried. A stroke, the nurse answered grimly. He's stable now, but not.

not very responsive. Gladys filled to her knees at the side of the bed and gripped her husband's hand tightly. I love you so much, she whispered, pressing his hand to her forehead. She prayed and told him how much she needed him to recover. Mrs. Johnson, what are you doing here? The doctor question from the doorway. Little rudely, Gladys thought. I'm praying for my husband, she said. But Mr. Johnson is in the next room. In her emotional state, Glass had entered the wrong room. Oh dear, I hope I didn't disturbed this poor man, she said, as she left the room. Well, he's been unresponsive for a while, said the doctor, I doubt even heard you. The next day when Gladys visited her husband, she noticed that the bed in the next room was empty. What happened to the man next door, she asked. He gained

consciousness shortly after you left, the doctor replied. We're running some tests on him now, but I think he's going to be okay. He said an angel spoke to him last night and told him to get better. when there is a presence that's loving and accepting known or unknown just presence loving and accepting there is in some way the healing of homecoming conversely the habit of feeling separate is so deep that when there's a message of rejection or threat it deepens the grooves this world can swing in both ways tonight what I'd like to talk about is how we sustain

a sense of separateness from each other how is it that we in our moments and in the big swaths of our life create separation and how do we wake up out of that to know the truth of who we are the Buddha described our habit of feeling separate as a trance or as a dream.

And Einstein said it similarly. Now it's a very well-known quote. He said, a human being is part of a whole called by us the universe, a part limited only in time and space. Yet he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,

restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. One of the other great Indian teachers put it simply, He said, don't push anyone out of your heart.

We're not free if we're pushing anyone out of our heart. So we become aware of separation, usually when we're suffering. But we're usually not aware of in a kind of conscious way of, oh, I'm separating myself from another person. We just feel the emotion of aloneness, our shame, our guilt, our fear, or one of those. So one of the inquiries is to begin to look more closely and really to sense in our culture because our culture sends all the messages and creates the beliefs and assumptions that keep us making separations. How is it happening? And I'd like to share with you just over the last couple of weeks.

I get a lot of emails, a lot of calls and so on with people describing what they're going through. And I'd like to just give you some examples from these last few weeks that really are a kind of amazing illustration of the prison of separation that is very much created and perpetuated by the delusion of the culture. One friend describing what it was like to grow up gay and to have to live with the shame of the secret and then to have to live with the shame of the secret and then to have to live with. the extraordinary hurt that he experienced from his father's reaction for the next 10 years after he revealed his orientation. That's one person. Another woman who's obese saying that everyone that sees me all they see is a body and a person who's out of control in their mind. another friend whose son is ostracized because he's not athletic two women describing their diagnosis of cancer

and how the diagnosis that C-word has put them into another world in the mind of many people they know my mother who some of you know 84 who describes going places with me or my sister and when talking to somebody else, how that other person will direct the conversation to me or my sister and how she's invisible, and what it's like to be an older person and be invisible.

Perhaps the most extreme a couple of weeks ago, a friend here in class, African-American man, described what happened in his mind when he came here to class early, took a seat. All the seats in the room filled. except the one next to him. So I'm going to read. Travis sent me a bit of his blog.

I'm just going to read a little bit of what his experience was. So he says, so the seat next to him is empty. He said, I was a little set off by this until the ghost of racist pass sat next to me. I became very distracted by the ghost sitting next to me. The ghost said, empty seats are devoured in this hall. So why am I sitting next to you? As the meditation began the ghost in the empty seat continued to whisper in my ear.

His rap filled my mind with anger and frustration. Trust me, reader, you don't want a ghost in your ear during meditation. Someone might say, why is this a big deal? Someone may also say, why listen to a foolish ghost? I tried to ignore him, but the ghost of racist past nibbled at my ear. He asked these questions. Why am I the only person to sit next to you?

Do they think you would rob them? No, that's absurd, I replied. I don't think they felt that way. The ghost response is, well, maybe you have an awful smell. No, no, I was clean. You look intimidating? I don't believe a 41-year-old black man in dress pants

and a button-down creates fear and intimidation. Is it because you're new? I don't know. Other people were there for the first time, and they have company. This situation bothered me for the rest of the evening to the point that I did not and could not follow the rest of the Dharma teaching. And I remember the teacher announcing that volunteers were needed with the tea and snack table.

It was my intention to help out because the week prior I helped put away the setup. When it was announced this week, I thought to myself, they don't want a black man to help. So right after the service was over, the ghost of racist past escorted me out after I put my chair away. So when I read that blog, I felt a bit of heartbreak, knowing that to varying degrees, every one of us is conditioned by our culture and by the assumptions and beliefs and bigotry to create unreal others, every one of us. And to identify as an unreal self, rejectable, not okay. So we're not free. We're not free if we feel excluded. In other words, if there's a ghost in our ear in some way saying something's wrong with me

or others think something's wrong with me. And we're not free if we can't see beyond the smoke screen of our habitual projections. When we're with someone that's old or of a minority, it's different from ourselves. It's to the degree that we unconsciously. push anyone out of our heart as not me, as different as other, that we're unfree. And of course, as we explore here all the time, to the degree we push away part of our own being

or unfree, and they go absolutely hand in hand. When we disconnect from a part of ourself, we're in a kind of trance that can't see truly who else is there. So the beginning of awakening is to sense the suffering wherever it comes up in our life and to care enough to investigate. To care enough to investigate. How do we create separation? What are our stories or beliefs about others that make them unreal?

How do we participate? How am I creating an unreal other? So we'll begin by in a kind of a broad view saying, well, so how does this happen? I mean, because it's universal. The human brain is designed to make differences. And because the human brain is fear driven, the differences have fear attached to them. So an intrinsic part of incarnation, we're just going back to basics here, right at the very start. we incarnate, we perceive, okay, I'm separate, there's a world out there.

And so there's a sense of endangerment of insecurity that we're vulnerable, we're going to die, somebody out there or something, some animal could threaten us. So right from the get-go, there's some mistrust of self and other. Most of our history, we were prey to some other creatures. So that's really there. We had to discern who's out there and is that creature going to hurt us. All of our human history, we've been warring to try to secure resources and to defend what we've already got. We've always been at war, humans.

So we've been warring to secure ourselves against and dominate other tribes, other religions, other races, other genders. Okay, that's been going on. we've been warring in our own close in family units to get our needs met okay the others not just the other tribe it can be our sister or our mother if they're not meeting our needs and then finally we war against ourself because we see how we get in our own way and we become and the parts of ourselves become the enemy so we live a lot with a sense of an enemy So again, the genesis of this unreal other

is that bottom line we feel a conditioned perception of separation and insecurity and unless there's sufficient understanding in the way we're brought up, sufficient I see you, I love you, that kind of understanding that creates belonging

that mistrust locks in and it influences how we relate to ourselves and how we relate to others. We can see it in the family systems. One of the stories that has always touched me is of a family going out for a meal and the parents make their order. And then this little boy says, I'll have hot dogs, French fries, and a Coke. And the father says, oh, no, he won't. He's having meatloaf and carrots and potatoes and milk.

And the waitress looks at the little boy. boy and says, okay, hon, so what do you want on that hot dog? She leaves, and they're just stunned, you know. She leaves, and he looks at them and he says, you know, she thinks I'm real. What happens when there's mistrust is we develop an unreal self, because we have to mold this self to make it. Does that make sense? We have to kind of create a self that's going to get excessive.

approved of, in some way, get some benefits. So we mold the self to get what we need, to elicit positive responses. And if we're trying to be somebody that'll get a certain response from the world, we're disconnected from our authenticity, from our realness. So we mold a self that's going to get sex or money,

power, safety, comfort. We kind of shape ourselves. And we shape a self that, defends with blaming and lying and avoiding and numbing you know we have to fit the cultural expectations of what it means to be okay you know the gender expectations one one person wrote my ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for 40 years because even in biblical times men would not stop to ask for directions you know so we know it you know there's a certain thing and again that I was so struck when this

woman telling you about her son who he wasn't athletic well it matters to be athletic or if you're a male you know there's a lot of pressure to appear successful and strong and not reveal vulnerability and it's in this culture and then women they have the so much pressure on appearance so as to cause all sorts of disease out of that trance of separation there's comparing mind there's this real need to be superior. Even in spiritual life, there's a sense of

competing to be better than others in some way. I like this story. This rabbi's on his knees and he's pounding his chest and going, I'm nobody, I'm nobody, you know, kind of really being humble. And so the canter then's impressed by it.

So he joins the rabbi in his knees. He goes, I'm nobody, I'm nobody. And then the custodian sees them from the corner. He can't restrain himself. So he joins the other two on his knees calling out, I'm nobody, I'm nobody, I'm nobody, at which point the rabbi nudges the canter with his elbow points at the custodian says, look who thinks he's nobody, you know? So it's a competitive thing. So I call it like,

I've referred to this as the space suit self, that we create a self that is to get what we need in the world. It's an kind of expression of the ego. And the more we're in that self, trying to get our needs met, the less we see who others are. We just see their space suits. Mark Twain writes, when I was 14, my father in particular was such a fool. It embarrassed me to have them around. I marveled at age 21 how in seven years the old fellow had learned so much. So our lens, you know.

And we know that when we're caught in feeling inferior, that we see others as the source of judgment. And when we're caught in feeling threatened, others are the oppressor. When we're caught in feeling lust, others are the object of desire. And one of the biggest ones is that we get caught in feeling that we're right and needing to be right.

That's one of the most key expressions of the separate self and the spacesuit self. Okay? that we get caught the unreal self is really hooked on out of that insecurity being right there's a saying that the world is divided

into those who think they're right and that's the whole saying you know it's just that's it we think we're right and I love this story of this Taoist master sitting naked in his mountain cabin meditating a group of Confucius enter the door of his hut

having hiked up the mountain intending to lecture him on the rule of proper conduct. When they saw the sage sitting naked before them, they were shocked and asked, what are you doing sitting in your hut without any pants on? The sage replied, this entire universe is my hut. This little hut is my pants. What are you fellows doing inside my pants? So, in a way, I'm giving a little bit of silly examples, but the point is this, that when we're insecure, we have to create a self that can make it. And we get identified with the

spacesuit self. We forget who's looking through the mask. We forget the heart that's here. And when we look at others, all we see are their defenses and their strategies. And you can

sense this when you if you reflect on a recent conversation you had when you were stressed out. And if you'd like to close your eyes and see if you can sense into this. Some time recently in the last day or two when you were feeling stressed or anxious

and you were with someone in the midst of feeling stressed or anxious and talking to them, about anything, but just talking to them. And if you go back to that conversation and just sense, how were you perceiving that person in your stress state?

Did you take in a state? anything about them. Do you have any sense of what was mattering to them, really, what their needs were in the moment or in the day? Or were they in some way a two-dimensional character in a play that starred you and you were just paying attention really to your world? How much were you picking up? You might contrast it to a time when you felt relaxed recently when you were with that person or someone else, when you really were relaxed and in a conversation where you didn't have to prove anything, defend anything, get anything. For some of us it can take a while to come on to one of those, remember one even. But sense when that was, when you felt relaxed without an agenda,

and sense how you were perceiving the other person. What were you noticing? Our perception, our capacity to sense another's realness is totally linked to our quality of presence. you can open your eyes if you'd like science has shown that we have mirror neurons that can sense in others experience and the way it really works is that when we're paying attention when we're present and in touch with our own experience

there's a part of the brain that lights up if it's being scanned called the insula which basically is the same part of the brain that's responsible or corresponds to empathy What that means is if you're able to pay attention inwardly with some sensitivity and presence, you can tune in to where another person is. If you're connected right here in this moment contacting your own experience with some presence, that awakeness and receptivity will include the other.

So the flip side is when instead we're afraid we're reactive and we're not intimate with our own experience. In other words, if we're afraid but not being with that fear, our way of relating to others is going to be, they're just a character on the stage. They're not going to be real. The suffering of that is war, is dividedness. When we're afraid but not present with that fear,

we end up making war. So I'm going to say as a preface that I don't feel, I don't have a kind of a pretense of having a solution for our current, the wars that we're in right now. I don't have a solution for how we're supposed to deal with them or get out. But there's no hope in moving towards peace unless we start asking some really challenging questions. And so I'm just going to put a few out there in the room. And one of them is, how do you feel? when you hear that drone missiles have killed members of the Taliban. Like, what goes on inside you when you hear that?

Just to kind of ask yourself that. And is there a sense that, well, that's the enemy, and maybe even that's good, like maybe in some way, you know, my team won one. Or is there, well, I'm not going to even ask you. Just sense what you notice. What happens inside you when you hear that one of those drone missiles killed 24 Afghanis civilians in a strike. Really, what do you feel?

Is it anger, sorrow? Is it visceral? Is it abstract? What do you feel when you hear that civilians were killed? What about if your son, our daughter, our brother, our sister was there and was one of those civilians?

Einstein says that we're in this optical delusion of separation that restricts our heart, our affections, to just a small circle. Can you sense in a visceral way how that can be true? That the more unreal the other is, the more okay it is to kill them, that they're not like us in some way, that they're bad, that they're undeserving, or maybe they deserve to be killed?

You know, that the video games, has actually decreased empathy capacity. And there's research last week I saw in the science times. I think it was. With video games, there's more sense of an unrealness, less capacity to be empathic. So if another person is unreal, out of our insecurity or out of our needs,

we can and we will violate them. We will purposefully avoid that person, maybe not sit next to them, we'll neglect a person, we'll make that person invisible, we'll judge them, we'll deceive them. And the opposite, of course, is also true. This is Longfellow.

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. So this is, probably the crux of the bodhisattva path right here that if we're willing to slow down to pause and to read someone's secret history in other words to get to know them okay that's what reading someone's secret history is is contact who's really here reality will decondition that unrealness reality will actually allow us to care.

So a story read about a camp called Building Bridges, Teen Camp, and this has been going on for about 10 years now, where Palestinian teens and Israeli teens are brought together, the particular one I read about, took place in New Jersey, but they've been all over, brought together for I think a week, two weeks. I'm not sure exactly. And an environment that's made very, very safe, very held well. And in those two weeks, that was a chance for them to find out the secret history, the who you really are. That was their chance to step out of their ideas about an enemy and find out who is here.

Who is here? So at the first of these camps, a Palestinian girl shared how Israel. soldiers had barged into her family's house, beaten up everybody, and then after finding out that they were at the wrong place left without apology. The group facilitator used compassionate listening, which is where the Israeli girl was then asked to repeat the story. And not only that, in the first person, and include the feelings, you know, the rage and the terror, she might have felt. And after listening to the Israeli tell her story, the Palestinian began. began to weep and she said, my enemy heard me. My enemy heard me and the girls cried together and through that time together became close friends. So reality when we let it in dismantles the

grip of our beliefs that create separation. As one Israeli girl put it, if I don't know you, it's easy to hate you. If I look in your eyes, I can't. So just to say, it's not easy to step out of centuries of conditioned reactivity, you know, my race against yours, my tribe, my ethnicity. And yet the, if it matters to us, if peace matters, if freedom matters, the only way is to commit to deepening our attention, deepening our presence.

It's the only way to, again, this is Einstein, free ourselves from this prison. So how do we do it? I mean, the beginning is that we practice as we're practicing so that we get real with ourselves. We learn how to bring the attention inward so that we actually, rather than reacting from fear, even know how to say, fear here, fear here. You know, we begin that way. We begin by finding people that where it's safe enough for us to begin to explore together

how we create separation and how we feel separation. For those that are here regularly, you hear me announce many weeks that we have affinity groups that meet. People of color groups, LGBT groups. And sometimes people will say to me, well, Tara, if the Dharma is the Dharma and everybody's all one, why are we having these separate groups? These separate groups are incredibly wise and precious part of our community because they create the kind of safety. where it becomes possible to begin to have that intimate connecting

so that there's actually a possibility of then enlarging the circles. You start right where you are. You discover presence and safety where you are and then you can begin to widen the circles and widen the circles, which is the hope and the prayer here. So we begin to deepen attention.

And if we take a closer look, on the Bodhisattva path, on the path of an awakening being, the beginning is a sense of aspiration, that something matters to me. And you would not be here tonight. No one would be here tonight of anyone that's come unless something mattered about waking up,

about having your heart more open, about being more present, being more free. You wouldn't be here. As we start sensing that matters, we start paying closer attention, and then we begin to notice the ways that we're keeping ourselves from being free. I remember for myself some years ago

when I realized that I wasn't doing the kind of judgment of other people where I was just kind of like putting them down in an overt way. It was more of the subtle commentary of the slightly demeaning commentary of either feeling superior or just making little critiques And I realized that any judgment where I was making a person wrong and that doesn't mean the discrimination

that says oh when they do that that creates that painfulness but making a person wrong in some way putting down okay and we all know what I mean by putting down a little I realized that any time I did that I was locking into a sense of false self

and I had created an unreal other I was not able to see who was there and I was unfree so I went on this sodna as a spiritual practice of committing myself when I saw the judgment to pausing and feeling what was under it

to being with that experience inside me and that's what I mean by aspiration that it gets to the point that we realize any time we're needing to be right and making someone else wrong, any time there's a putting down, we're not free. And we're actually part of creating strife and violence on Earth.

So I'll give you an example of one time. This is earlier in this community's development. I had a very edgy relationship with a member of our board of directors. and I found him difficult. And he was, in my mind, very irritating. He was very aggressive about his agenda, and he was very hard to work with. He always thought he was right.

And I was right, and I knew it, but he didn't see it. And basically, he wanted IMCW to change faster, to do things faster and better. And he actually had a lot of good ideas. he wanted us to be a more professional, sophisticated, well-organized organization, and to offer more and to serve more, you know, good stuff. And yet we were volunteers primarily, and we weren't able to go at that pace. But I was very personally involved because he was badgering me

because as a founder and senior teacher, you know, if it was going to happen, I had to kind of take the lead, and I didn't have the time and the energy to go fast as he wanted me to go. So one morning I was meditating and this horsefly kept landing on me. I think you know where I'm going to go with this idea. And it was very irritating and interfering with my meditation and my peace of mind and I got it that this is how I was experiencing him. He was like this horsefly that was kind of nagging me. And he was this unreal other in my mind, a horsefly with a really big ego, you know. So I allowed my ego's annoyance to be what it was Because everything I'm saying,

I'm trying to give you a sense That's how disparaging my mind was. I'm not saying that was right That he was anything was wrong with him. That's what my mind was thinking. Okay, I want to make that clear. So anyway, I allowed my ego's annoyance To be exactly what it was

Just to feel really annoyed. And the larger I let it be, the more I felt underneath it, what was there which was I was feeling this was make he was making me not okay I wanted to push him away because he was making me feel like I wasn't okay

and I wasn't doing enough and so he was in my mind he was making me wrong and then I got down to the place of I was feeling wrong I was feeling not okay and when I got to that just that okay

quotes unquote it's like this not feeling okay, not feeling okay. That was when there was enough space and presence for there to be some tenderness. Okay, not feeling okay. Not feeling okay about myself. So there was some self-compassion, and it wasn't until I got to that presence with myself. So I was no longer an unreal other. I was connected that I could then begin to look at him. And really asked that question that's so important, which is when he is being like this, what's he needing? You know, what's his unmet need?

Where's his vulnerability? And I could sense it as, you know, when I really checked that out, that in some way he had a need to feel that he mattered and that he was appreciated. Just needed to feel appreciated. It's like all that badgering underneath it was like in some way It was love me, appreciate me, let me feel like I matter, you know. So my experiment, as we then moved forward at meetings and so on,

was to be slow down and appreciate what I could appreciate authentically. And it wasn't so personal. Like I had delinked his pushiness with me being wrong. So he could be the way he was and I could appreciate him and not be so reactive. and it started lightning up and we talked and we were able to name what was going on for us it's not always possible but it was possible and he's a good friend of mine now

it still wasn't like easy to work on the different temperaments but the point is this that when we're in conflict the only way to step out of this conditioning we have to be right and to make another wrong is to be willing to feel what's really here underneath. If we're needing to be right, underneath that there's vulnerability.

If we can be courageous and honest with our own vulnerability, we can begin to see beyond the spacesuit mask of the other. We can see who's there. So I'd like to invite you to just try this out a little. in a reflection. And as with all of these ways of trying on the Dharma, very consciously pause right now. In other words, invite yourself to arrive right here. Just take a few full breaths. And you can let this

be an opportunity to bring to mind a relationship that's important to you. And one where you're aware of regular tension or conflict or distancing, one where you'd like to have more realness, but you get caught, where it's maybe a dance of reactivity you get caught in. It might be a close personal relationship or one at work, but some relationship where you know there's that reactive dance and we know when we're reacting, the other becomes unreal other. We're not sensing who's really there in their wholeness. And we're not coming from our wholeness. So just take that relationship and pick a kind of one of the routines you go through,

as if it's a movie that you're watching right now, where that person's behavior or their words, whatever it is, might set off something in you, where you get stuck in reaction and as you're watching the situation and see it see visually what might be happening and if there's words, hear the words that could be spoken

where you really find you get kind of in that trance in that tightness and stop the movie right at the place where you're most stuck in reaction when you've kind of frozen the frame just take a moment just to acknowledge

Okay, so this is a stuck place. Just almost as if this pause right now, just it's a chance to examine something with interest. This is the stuck place. Just to recognize and allow, that's what's happening. So you can begin to investigate what's going on inside you. What is it right when this is going on with this other person that you're believing

about yourself or them? Is it, as I experience, that, I'm believing that something's wrong with me or something's wrong with the other person. Are you believing that you're not being loved or respected or understood? When you're in that place of reactivity, what is it your most feeling? Is it hurt? Is it fear? If it's anger and you just let the anger be as much as it is, what might be under it?

Just to begin to sense into your own vulnerability, perhaps your need to feel that that you're okay or cared about. Just take a few moments in the silence now just to feel really the unmet need or vulnerability and just breathe with it and offer kindness to your own experience. If it helps you to do that by putting your hand on your heart, just as a way of keeping company with your experience, please do so. So you're slowing down this chain reaction and pausing and just feeling your own heart a bit. what's really happening in this kind of trancy dance we get into. So you can begin to look at the other person now and see past the space suit and sense,

well, what's this other person feeling? What might be the unmet need for this other person? Is it to be seen or understood, cared about, safe? See if you can be this space or awareness that includes you both, that awake, compassionate space that sees the needs and the humanness, perhaps the longing for safety or love or understanding, and know that as you pause and are willing to investigate and open in this way, you're planting the seeds for peace, not only in your own own life but in this world. Keep breathing and know you can come back

to this. I'd like to say a few more words about this because truly it is our human conditioning to be, to get into this kind of reactivity to make unreal others and it's our potential.

It's not the end of the evolutionary story. It's our potential to be able to see beyond the conditioning and see the human heart that's there. I was thinking about after 9-11 how I remember hearing about Madison Square Garden, Richard Gere, at some point stood in front of a crowd and spoke of compassion and understanding of not quickly reacting in a violent way and he got booed. It was one of those moments that was just

really notable. Everybody was just so traumatized that the only thing that made sense was to strike out in violence after 9-11 to so many people. And yet, I was thinking about a few years later What happened, and many of you will remember this, I think it was about four or five years ago, that schoolhouse shooting in Pennsylvania, some of you remember, which five young girls were murdered,

and it really shocked the nation. It was horrible. And what was astonishing was the response of the Amish community. I remember reading about it that they had lost five of their own children, and yet they didn't hesitate to comfort the family of the gunman who had taken his own life. They attended his funeral. And it just couldn't have been a starker contrast to Madison Square Garden.

This is just to point to the possibility of our human consciousness that it's not our fault that we create unreal others. It's not our fault that we live in the beliefs and assumptions of our culture. and it's our capacity though to deepen our attention and to begin to get to know the life within us that's reacting and take the time and have the care

to get to know the other whether the other is someone very close to us that we're in kind of a cycling dance with or the other is someone we don't know so well so this is not an abstract spiritual goal. It's very immediate. It's truly, if we're on the spiritual path,

it is the question we can ask ourselves, how am I creating separation? And how can I deepen my attention? So, final reading, if you want to just come, we'll just take a few moments to sit and close. So the Bodhisattva aspiration is really, may whatever happens in this life,

made awake in this heart and mind. That means whatever relationships we're in, can we find the ways we create separation, the ways we insist on being right and making others wrong, the ways we defend ourselves or control? And can we seek to wake up from that and find out who's really here? And can we go and expand our circles

so that perhaps even as you leave tonight, you might stop and connect with one person you've never spoken to before. Whether there are a person that seems different or seems similar to, it doesn't matter, but to seek to see who's behind the mask. From the Yoga Radiant Sutras, there is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there.

Are you there? enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart give yourself to it with total abandon quiet ecstasy is there and a steady regal sense of resting in a perfect spot once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return again and again and be saturated with knowing I belong here I am at home here

There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Thank you for your attention. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation Community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.