Tara Brach - Timeless Heart Wisdom for our Times – Tara Brach and Dan Harris

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

How do we meet the violence and suffering in our world with a quality of openheartedness and wisdom? In this interview, Dan and Tara look at the teachings from the Bodhisattva path (path of awakening beings), Tara's early draw to this path, and the perspectives and practices that can help us all in responding to our world with as much clarity, equanimity and love as possible. Learn more about Dan Harris and subscribe to his new substack platform at https://www.danharris.com

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. A few weeks ago, I did an interview with Dan Harris on his 10% Happier podcast. And for those of you that didn't catch it, I wanted to share it with you. and I'll tell you a little bit about it, but first I want to mention that Dan has started a new membership community, and subscribers get guided meditations and brief emails with simple happiness hacks. I've received some. They're really good.

The text chats with Dan and his podcast guests and bonus material from the podcast. He has a live Ask Me Anything video. more. And the cost is $80 a year and he's also offering it free for anyone who can't afford it. No questions asked. So if this is something you're interested in, Danharish.com is the way to join up. Okay, our conversation. So this came out of our shared deep worries for the world. and I'm imagining many of you listening share whether it's fear or distress or anger or feelings of despair or just a recognition of how much is going on that is really scary and is really difficult. Climate catastrophes, huge amount of violence, human violence, political divide.

And as we talk about, there are certainly strategies that we need to address what's going on, whether we're calling on science or the best policies or electing fit candidates. And our real hope is involving consciousness, evolving growing wisdom and compassion in our collective of humans. And so we talk about this how our world is entirely interdependent. How can we really go on having enemies? It's not like after a violent conflict and one side dominates that the others go away. And we're in this together.

We have to work it out because if we don't, there'll be continued violence and suffering. So in our conversation, we really frame it with the Bodhisattva path, which is path of awakening beings, beings who realize we're in this together, beings who are dedicated to cultivating compassion and how we can really wake up on this path. And we talk about the training that's required, the kind of practices that wake us up. I want to share that at a recent, event, Kazuhaegu is a friend and a teacher. He talks about loving those we've habitually considered as the enemy, as bad others. And he says that for himself, he says, it may not do anything to change that person, but it does something to me. So on this path,

and this is really the core of what Dan and I talk about, We wake up our hearts and dedicate to loving each other for the sake of our world. And we can trust that it ripples out. It may not impact a certain person in a certain way, but it ripples out in a way that really does bring healing to our world. So friends, a relevant conversation for our times. I hope you find it of value personally. So we're in a tumultuous moment in American public life and the life of the globe as well. And I know you have been drawing strength from the Bodhisattva teachings.

Can you tell us what that means? Yeah. Well, the word bodhisattva means awakening being. And the teachings are really a path of understandings and practices. that help us wake up our heart and mind. And it just feels like for the crises of these times, you know, whether we're talking about the catastrophe is going on to our planet, authoritarianism, the slide into authoritarianism, inequity, they all have their roots in the human psyche. And I so often think about Ticknott-Han saying that, you know, man,

is not the enemy. It's the conditioning in our minds of greed and hatred and at the core, this delusion that we're separate. And so the Bodhisattva teachings are radical because they go right to the root of that feeling of separateness and fear that actually are what keeps, what's caused and perpetuates so much of the suffering on the planet. Just making a note of the man is not and the enemy. That might bear some more unpacking. Humans are not the problem. It's mental toxins that make humans do shitty things.

That's the problem. That's exactly right. In other words, we end up behaving in all sorts of violent ways, confused ways that cause suffering, and there's these universal kind of conditionings that have us act out. I always think of that quote by General Omar Bradley, that we're nuclear giants and ethical infants, that there's ways we have not evolved that end up keeping us at war. And it just feels so clear that if we're going to address the multi-crisuses, we need to intentionally evolve consciousness. We need to act based on compassion. And so that is actually

the training of the Bodhisattva path. It's to have us engage with our world out of caring, not out of greed, hatred, and delusion. I don't believe what I'm about to say, but I can imagine some listeners saying, well, compassion doesn't seem rugged. sturdy, tough enough to meet the demands of this particular moment. Sounds a little soft. I hear you. And it would be soft if it wasn't that compassion actually leads to action. It's what gives it soul force, actually, love in action. And so you get the image from the bodhisatt path of Kwanian, the bodhisatt of compassion responding to, to the cries of the world. But if we think of the actual examples of it in recent history,

it's really the nonviolence movements, which were not at all soft. I mean, I think about Indian independence, our civil rights movement. I love the example of Sarvo Dio, which is movement based in Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Think of anti-apartheid in South Africa. These aren't soft movements, but the outer actions that made them powerful required an inner kind of training. And you see the leaders of these movements doing those trainings. Gandhi took off a day a week. And he said that total silence, just to go inward with prayer and meditation so that his actions would be aligned with his heart. And Desmond Tutu, he was asked about his activism. I just read this down. I thought it was so interesting. Somebody said, how do you find

time for prayer and meditation with all the work you're doing? And his response was, how do you think we could do any of this work without prayer and meditation? And then, of course, Martin Luther King, His whole life was grounded in prayer and contemplation. Nelson Mandala, when he was in jail, he was practicing a daily meditation dedicated to cultivating a sense of goodness and others. So it's only soft if we stay on the cushion. If we actually let our hearts be touched by the suffering, if we feel an authentic compassion, and then act from that compassion, that's the kind of alchemy for real transformation in the world.

Let me keep pushing you on this softness thing. And to be clear, I agree with you. But I just want to put myself into the shoes or minds of the listener. I remember a couple of years ago I was in India. This is a ridiculous name drop of them about. to do here, but I was in India with the Dalai Lama. I was not like hanging out with him, but I was there when he was meeting with a group of people.

And he was actually meeting with a group of young activists. And there was this moment, actually, I'll drop it into the show notes because we actually have the moment on tape. There was this moment where this fiery young Irish activist confronted the Dalai Lama and was like, look, you know, you've been talking about compassion for decades, but the Chinese are still in Tibet. So where has it gotten you? And you can similarly, you know, you can look back at some of the movements you pointed to the nonviolent resistance in India, the civil rights movement here in the United States and say, well, look, India has profound problems to this day. So do

Black Americans to this day still facing a lot of discrimination and inequality. So, yeah, let's go back to, I would like to hear your response to this imaginary critic who I'm conjuring for this discussion. Yeah. Well, maybe I would start with the alternative, which is to act from a non-compassionate place, to act with anger, blame, hatred. Because that's, I mean, if we want to look at what keeps perpetuated. cycles of violence. It's, you know, we can go right back to that now really famous phrase that hatred never sees this by hatred, but by love alone is healed, that this is the ancient and eternal law. So if we say to that activist, what are you suggesting, there may be better strategies,

and I'm all for good strategies outwardly. But if they're rooted in hatred, anger, blame. They're just going to seed more of the same. So I think really the invitation or calling here is to have more and more of us engage and engage from a place of caring. And I know for myself, if I just take it very personally, when I pause and I actually take the time to go from, Let's say right now, all of my, you know, reactivity that comes up when I read the newspaper every single day, read the news. And if I pause and I take the time to examine what's under my reactivity, and I sense that, well, under my anger and my taking sides and blaming, under that, there's really a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear for not only the suffering that's already happening continuing, but a getting worse. And if I stay present and open underneath that fear, there's grieving, you know, real sorrow for what's happening.

And embedded in the grieving, there's caring. It's really a gateway to compassion. It's, I get in touch with what I care about. And when I then give a talk or am engaged with different activists, you know, initiatives, and I engage from caring, there's so much more power to whatever we're up to, whatever I'm doing, than if I'm angry. I'm not going to have people be receptive to me if I come right up against their defenses. But if I can come from my heart, there's more chance that I'll recharge. So mostly the response to the activist is the alternative of anger and hatred is just,

no go. It will just perpetuate violence. It's radical and revolutionary to have an inner practice that brings us to caring and then to act. We really have to act, but have that action coming from an open heart. Yeah. And I think what's happening in the minds of people who, like, I think what's happening in the mind in particular of this young man who I saw confront the Dala Lama, Ronan is his name, is a real focus on outcomes. You know, I need to see progress. And I get it, especially if you're younger than either of us, you know, you've got to live on this planet for much more time than either of us probably has. And so the outcomes feel really important.

Like what have you got to show for all this happy talk about compassion, et cetera, et cetera. And I think as I've gotten older, and I certainly have heard the Dalai Lama make this case, and I'd be curious to see what your response is, is to recognize that I'm not in control of the outcome. The only thing I'm in control of is what I do about it. So action is important. I'm not, and you're not saying, just sit on the cushion and meditate it all the way. No, meditate, take care of yourself, figure out what is the cleanest burning fuel for you, and then get up and act on it.

And then on top of all of that, don't be attached to the results. Recognize that we live in a chaotic, entropic universe and things are out of your control. So do what you can do and then like bear in mind the serenity prayer. I think that's wise and good. And I would add that to the extent that the results continue to distress us, let the distress be a portal. Like let it get us back to caring, not lock. us into anger and blame because that feels, you know, again, I'm coming back to why I feel like the bodhisattva path is such a guide for our times. And I want to make clear that, you know,

the bodhisattva, it's an archetype, the bodhisattva, of our full potential. And if we look at our evolutionary trajectory, it's a movement from us, them, from feeling separate and having enemies and dehumanizing and so on, comes from perceiving separation, the limbic brain going into fight, flight, freeze, et cetera. But a movement from that to what sometimes described as a whole integrated brain where we're full access to our frontal cortex in this capacity for empathy, compassion, mindfulness. And what that results in is that we actually can feel our belonging. So we're going, us them to we. And that is the trajectory of evolution. I mean, the human brain has tripled in volume over the last several million years, and a major cause has been those social capacities for

empathy and bonding. So I'm bringing this all up to say, we can't control the outcome, and we might not see the results we want on the timetable we want. But there can be a sense that there is an evolution and consciousness already going on. And the way, and when people say, well, how do you know that? I say we don't know. But look at our own lives. Have we gotten kinder? Generally, if we're on purpose paying attention, we find we do get kinder over time. And if it's us, it can be the world. And what else to do, but be part of a kind of collective movement to raise consciousness. And this isn't particularly anchored to one religion either. I'm using the word bodhisattva path,

but you can see the sense of awakening to interconnectedness as it appears, whether it's indigenous traditions, interconnectedness and connection. We see it in all the mystic traditions that we contemplate and open to it. This is human wisdom that's arising through the ages and that we just need to fast-track cultivating that, understanding. And the reason I draw a lot on the Buddhist tradition

is because the Buddhists are really good at explicitly articulating the practices that actually wake up that part of the brain and the heart's experience of compassion and love. And we need to fast track that. Well, you've brought me right where I wanted to go, which is, we've talked a lot about the Bodhisattah path. How do we actually do that? Good news is you have answers to that. And I believe there are four practices that you want to go through in terms of developing this.

the compassion that we've been talking about. Yeah. There's a whole lot of different practices on the path, but I'd say the grounding practice is mindful awareness that we have to have a capacity to arrive right here and now to see and feel fully what's arising moment to moment. Because if we do, if there's that presence, it reduces our identification with the different difficult emotions that are coming up and down. It reduces the reactivity. There's more equanimity, more balance, more access to our resources. Mindfulness also lets us learn to feel our feelings and tolerate them. And feeling feelings is really the grounds of compassion. We have to be able to touch and feel the suffering in our own bodies and in each other's,

in order to care and want to extend ourselves. So the first of the practices is cultivating mindful awareness. I would say the second is a real deepening of compassion. And let's say we find ourselves, and I'm bringing us back to our times, which are incredibly divided, and there's just a lot of sense of an enemy out there, a bad other, you know. Let's say we find ourselves locked in that sense of bad othering another person or a group, whatever, and we want to awaken compassion. How do we do that? And there's really two steps that we see in the bodicepath. And the first one is that we have to start with ourself and arouse more compassion towards whatever is going on inside us, because that's, will then allow us to see the other with a wider, deeper perspective. And I'll give you an example because I feel like it helps just to sense how this actually can work.

Somebody that I've mentored for a while, a woman, and she's Jewish, she's had a long time, Buddhist practice, she's social activists. So she has many Jewish friends, and she also has Palestinian friends, friends, friends, from Arab countries, she was horrified by October 7th. You know, it was really devastating. And then even more horrified by the month after month massacre of innocent people in Gaza. And she found herself getting increasingly angry at her Israeli friends or Jewish friends that condoned the violence and anger at Buddhist teachers for their silence. And she realized, as we're talking here on the Buddhist Supper path,

that anger and blame only creates more divides in a situation that is so marked by, you know, terrible, terrible animosity. So we talked. And her prayer, her aspiration was there's so much hatred and violence. I don't want to cede more with my anger. I want to be part of the healing. So here's where we started. We started just sitting quietly together, mindful awareness.

In order to deepen the inquiry to compassion, you really need some quietness, some inner listening, breathing. And then we use the rain practice, which is a really valuable way to awaken compassion. And rain, the acronym, many of your listeners are familiar, stands for recognize. allow, investigate, and nurture. So we started with Recognize, and she invited all the different parts of her that were activated, the blame, the anger, the aversion, just to recognize it, to name it, let it be there.

And allow is to fully let be what's here. Investigate, for her, when she investigated under all the aversion, she found powerlessness and fear about continued suffering. And it was really hard to stay with. She had to keep touching it and saying, yes, yes, just let it be here. And it became a very tender, intimate being with and allowing what was there. And in that tenderness, there was the ocean of grief. I mean, she was sobbing.

Then there was nurture, like how to meet that grief. that grieving with kindness. And she put her hand on her heart that often many of us as a way of nurturing, this is where compassion becomes more full, just consciously offering care inside, you know, and sensing her heart, which is basically saying, I love life. I want to protect life.

And so she calmed down some. And after that reen practice, you know, she was resting in that much more, caring, open, spacious field of awareness. And she had that sense of homecoming, where that that open-hearted space was more the truth than any of her emotions, any of her blame, any of her stories. And so it was from there that she could begin to look at others and feel more compassion. She brought to mind her friends in Israel, her Jewish friends here, and it became so clear to her the depths of their fear, of past trauma, of living with ongoing feelings of danger and insecurity.

So she was able to feel their vulnerability and be much more open. And then she was able to ask a question that I think is really important for all Bordisapas on the path, which is, what is love asking for me right now? And that question I first heard from Franco Sussesky, a wonderful teacher. And for her, love was asking her to keep caring and to speak out, you know, for ceasefire, to stop the funding of weapons, humanitarian aid, talking with others, but most profoundly to just keep focusing on the preciousness of all lives. So, Dan, I just want to make a couple of comments about that and about that.

compassion training because I really do feel like purposeful compassion training is the game changer here. It arises from a kind of dedication to feel feelings. There's a phrase I heard long ago in a movie that vengeance is a lazy form of grief. That when we get caught in our stories of blame and anger, there's something more there. Under anger, there's always something we care about, always. And if we can go through the anger into the grieving and feel what we care about, then we can begin to be part of the healing. And then the other piece about compassion training is that it's really inclusive. It's not about sides, or it's about recognizing sides and sensing what's beyond sides. It's the capacity to see the vulnerability and the herd of all, and then to act from care, not anger, and to act strategically,

but to act not from blame and anger, but from care. And that takes, to be inclusive, it means we really need to train in seeing the vulnerability in another being. You know, I often and think of Oprah famously pointing out that if somebody's misbehaving or causing harm, the question is, what happened to you? It's like, and then there's Ruby Sales, who's a civil rights icon, who when people are acting in ways, racist ways, whatever, where does it hurt? Where are you hurting? So that's a key, you know, if we really want to go deeper on this path,

this Bodhisatt path that's like learning to look at another, who might seem like the other side and say, where does it hurt? And then just to bring up a couple of other things that if we want to train in compassion when there's trauma, the wisdom is that we bring compassion to our inner life, perhaps those that are suffering like us, but not try right away to extend that compassion because we can't. It's like when there's trauma, it shuts down some of the relationships. networks that would allow us to see the other that we feels the cause with a compassionate

heart. So we start by really bringing compassion to our own being and then when less traumatized, we widen the circles. And I've been awed at the capacity of people to do it. I've taught a number of groups recently teaching people, leading groups in Israel, like in November. of last year, so you can imagine the level of trauma. One of those groups opened with a woman saying, please pray for us. My child is three years old and is a hostage without his parents. And then, at the end of the gathering, people were offering more prayers. One woman said, please, may we pray for all the children, and you could see that understanding that just swept through the group. It can be very beautiful, the widening of circles, but we start with the inner trauma.

I saw the same thing doing some teaching, facilitating some groups with Palestinian meditators. One woman at the end said, may I keep choosing love, even when the forces of hatred are so great. we can widen the circles but we start with our own pain because if you can't feel your own pain fully that's a shortcut to vengeance and lazy forms of grief that's right what we do is we bypass the grieving that actually embedded in grieving is love and then that that lets us connect in a much bigger way. And maybe just one of the examples of this that has most inspired me, Van Jones has done a lot of work of bringing people that seemingly are on different sides together. And he's a news commentator and activists in his own way. And in one of the initiatives, he brought together people from West Virginia,

professionals dealing with the op-ed crisis there, with people from South Central L.A. dealing with heroin. And so this is like really hugely different cultures, race, social history, bringing them together to see how they can learn from each other and grow. And of course, it started with that edginess you'd expect from the conditioning of you are other, you are different. and often in some way you're wrong or bad.

But this is what I want to tell you about, that at one point, he asked them each to bring out pictures of loved ones they had lost in the epidemic. And so one by one, they each are bringing out these photos and sharing them with others and talking about the person and who the person was in their life. And one man said,

he said the last, he had talked, The last conversation with his son, he said, you got yourself into this. You get yourself out. And that was his last conversation. And you could see watching how people touching into the realness of their grief also touched into the realness of their shared space of heart. that they were touching what they all cared about. And we need more of that because underneath all our differences there are things we all care about.

But it takes intention, it takes practice. It's almost like the Bodhisattva practices are what actually give us capacity for democracy. That we need ways to bridge divides. Right now we're in Jonathan Haidt describes it is the collapse of the Tower of Babel, that God's punishment was that we all would be speaking different languages. And here we are in our own siloed realities. We can't communicate with each other. And for democracy, you have to have a capacity to communicate to include difference and to be

able to work with that and to have a basic respect, a basic valuing of life. And, you know, Paul Farmer, He just says that the main thing wrong with our world is that some lives are valued less. As long as that's the case, as long as we're in our silos and can't see the human that's there, we don't have capacity for democracy. Just stepping back to the question that set us down the current path we're on right now, we talked about we were, I was asking you, okay, well, the Bodhisattva ideal is, sounds great. so about how do you do it? And I heard in your answer at least two things. One is developing mindfulness. Often this happens through, you know, basic meditation.

Feel your breath coming in and going out. Every time you get distracted, you start again. And in the distraction, which a lot of people kind of vilify, you're actually learning something important, which is like what your mind is all about, what your life is all about. And you're developing this self-awareness about the machinations of your inner life.

And so being able to have a good or some sense of what's happening in your mind will allow you to, and then to be able to sit with it allows you to see what you're feeling. And then what's beneath those feelings and it's hard and you have to keep saying yes to it or running away. But eventually you learn to settle into these uncomfortable feelings that we spend a lot of time trying to run away from. And that is the doorway to the second thing I heard you recommending, which is compassion. Once you can be okay with your own stuff, you recognize that everybody's got something.

You're dropping a lot of quotes, so I'll drop one too, which is, I think it's the name is Robert Bly, the poet who talks about how we all have a black bag. I think of it as like a shitty wedding train. We're all carrying around with us, a black bag that's just filled with all of the stuff that we've gone through in our lives. And mostly we just see the current presentation, but actually like a way to develop compassion is to look at whoever is presenting themselves to you and then imagine their black bag. And no matter how awful, deplorable their behavior is, if you can just put the black bag there, you contextualize it. We don't have to agree with it necessarily, but at least you have some context. So that those are the two skills I've heard you discuss in terms of practicing like a bodhisattva. mindfulness and compassion. There are two others I see in my notes in preparing for this podcast.

Marissa Schneiderman, one of our ace producers, spoke to you and gave me some notes that I'm looking at right now. There are two other skills on this list that I'm looking at that might be worth saying a little bit more about. One of them is meta, M-E-T-T-A, which is often translated as loving kindness. I think a better translation for me, at least, is friendliness, just the capacity to see the good in others. It's related to compassion, but meaningfully different. So can you say a little bit more about it? Yeah.

Thanks for that. So where compassion tenderizes the heart by seeing the vulnerability of another, meta awakens or brightens the heart by seeing the inherent goodness, seeing, well, everybody wants to feel loving and loved, everyone wants to feel safe, everyone wants to feel happy, to feel the, sentience that's shining through the other's eyes and so on. And it's a very powerful way, again, to experience the truth of our interdependence, of our connection, of our mutual belonging. And, you know, I've been very recently a friend of mine who's an elderly white man

and he voted for Trump last time, is voting for him again. He can speak in really disparaging terms around everybody's a leftist, and he doesn't do it so directly with me because we like each other. But, you know, just as we've gotten more divided as a society, I find in my own heart that I have more edginess in relating to him. I'm more quick to feel defensive. of our judgmental. So I've very much on purpose been practicing this meadow with him and reflecting on his goodness. I think of he was very kind to my mother when she was alive, always wanting to

help her. And he's generally kind and generous and friendly. He's a really affectionate guy. And so I watched him with his grandchildren and just how crazy it was for them. So I reflect on that kind of thing. And it warms my heart. And then it becomes so clear that my job is not to convince him, but to keep the flow of caring open between us. And the reality is that when we see the goodness, we bring it forward in others. So I can tell because I'm appreciating him, he beams more. What about people in whom it is very hard to see anything good? Yeah, and that comes up a lot, especially when we see humans with a lot of power, the strong men leaders that are causing and can cause so much suffering. It's very, very hard to overcome the aversion to be able to somatically feel meta.

And we might have an idea in our mind, will they too want to love and be loved, but it's not in ourselves. So I think the first step, I'll speak personally, is to totally forgive myself for that. Like, that's okay. That's natural. And so there's a kind of quality of self-understanding and self-compassion because there's a reason that we're armored. And in the meta-training, the wisdom is not to start with them. You know, build up capacity by starting where it's easier, where it's just comes more naturally to feel the affection with people that you can actually imagine when they're happy, when they're loving, you know, when they're awed. So start there. And then as we move towards the more difficult people, there's all sorts of so-called tricks, but they actually help us

to get more dimensionality to imagine that person as a child. and often that's going to include their suffering as a child. So we have some of the compassion in there too, imagining them wounded in some way, imagining them on their deathbed, imagining them after they've passed away. And the reason for that, and this, by the way, thinking about somebody after they've passed away is a very quick hack to sense spirit, to sense light, to sense tender, something in us can do that. Something in us can kind of sense beingness when not burdened by the personality or the black box or whatever and sense more the truth of somebody's spirit and soul.

So that's the way we cultivate it. And again, it's to start where we can. Yeah, in meta practice because meta, both meta, or friendliness or seeing benevolence, whatever, and compassion, which is the Buddhist term of art for that is Karuna. Both of these are meditation practices. I'm not saying this to you because, of course, you know this, but to the listener, there are associated practices you can do, which involve sort of envisioning a series of people

and sending them, you know, good vibes in the form of certain phrases. If you're doing meta, you would say, like, may you be happy, healthy, may you live with ease. And if you're doing compassion practice, you may you be free of suffering. And often in this practice, when you're getting to a difficult person, so you usually you start with an easy person, then you move to yourself, a neutral person, then you get to a difficult person. Often the advice is like don't start with Pol Pot. Don't start with Hitler. Let's start with a mildly annoying person. And because these are all muscles we're trying to develop, these are all practices, these are skills, let's start small and then maybe build our way up to whoever it is

is most difficult. And I would just, that's exactly right. And keep widening the circles, because we tend to pull back where it's difficult. But if we look at today's world, like what's happening, how we're descending into really the shadows of dividedness, we have to have a way of bridging the divides. And these inner practices, what they do is they dissolve the sense of separateness. They actually reveal to our hearts a much more unified field of belonging. And right now, I think our biggest problem, if I had to just, like, name a problem, is a degree that we dehumanize and demonize and separate ourselves from each other. I mean, it's really the collapse of the Tower of Babel. And if we look at human history, demonizing others has been the psychological fuel that drives warfare.

So we can look at any violent conflict across the globe and we'll see othering. And it's not like we're not part of that because it happens in most of us in our personal relationships. As soon as we feel dissed, we feel hurt, we feel overlooked, we feel offended in some way, the other becomes a little more of an unreal other. There's a sense of badness or not like me. And often we slide, and this is particularly true when we think of our world, into perceiving some people as less moral, less valuable. And it takes a lot of honesty to investigate our own hearts and sense,

isn't it true that we have some on the other side and that we've diminished their value? Because if that's the case, even though we might feel like it's not acute with us, that is the mechanism, that dehumanizing that actually it enables people to commit and rationalize killing, torture, genocide, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, the whole deal. So it feels like I can say for myself, if I find that in myself, it's so clear that I am participating in the violence of the world. And it deepens my commitment to disarm my heart. And if I had to sum up the book,

of a path inwardly, it's a disarming our heart so we can care again. And then manifesting that outwardly in our activity that our primary work, it's really the most compelling and sacred work of these times is to bridge divides. We really need to do it. Again, we can't have democracy. We can't have peace unless we do it. Let me ask one more question about disarming the heart vis-a-vis particularly obnoxious people or at least people we view as obnoxious. And again, I'm playing devil's advocate here. I think I know the answer and I agree with the answer.

But I think some people worry that that disarmament makes them vulnerable in a bad way. That they confuse that with total acceptance or, approval or lack of boundaries vis-a-vis difficult people, especially people in their world. You can have compassion and benevolence and friendliness towards somebody you're not in contact with. In other words, like, if I have somebody in my family who I need to have a clear boundary with, I can set that boundary and have it not be from a standpoint of hatred. So I think there's a really important distinction between averse of judgment, which is the blaming, the siege, the hatred, and so on, and discerning wisdom. And just to play that out a little bit, if we, let's say there's an older child who's bullying your child.

And if we really imagine that, that's what's happening. And if, for those that are listening, you can expand this metaphor to a powerful country, bullying. a vulnerable group of people. It's the same idea. But, okay, so let's say we get into aversive judging, like letting that bully be the enemy, thinking of them as a bad apple, a bad person, immoral. What does it do? It cuts off compassion. It dehumanizes. We won't be able to see that they've been bullied and traumatized, so our heart's armored. But if your child's getting bullied, it's crucial to have wise discernment that fully recognizes, okay, an older child is behaving in a harmful and unhealthy way, and I have to take wise action to prevent more bullying,

and do whatever I can to take care of both children, because that's real wisdom. That's inclusive compassion. So what I'm suggesting here is mature compassion does not ignore harm. It creates, this is from Roshi Joan Halifax. I think it's one of the best phrases ever. It gives us a strong back and a soft front. And so what I mean by that, the strong back, clear discernment, able to protect, act on behalf of the boundaries we need for ourselves, for others. That's a strong back.

And the soft front is to keep our heart open. So we're not bad othering. We're not ceding more violence. rather we're holding all with compassion, knowing that the bully got bullied, that it doesn't come out of an evilness of the human heart, it's conditioned. And that ultimately, unless we're seeking the well-being of all, we're going to be ending up in some way perpetuating the suffering of the current times. Yeah, I'm saying this too much, but I completely agree. I'm thinking about, so this language around the heart historically has been hard for me because it's just not the way I talk and that kind of language, you know, being conditioned as a, you know, straight white male never really landed for me.

And just as a digression, for my 50th birthday three years ago, my friend, Seveneigh Salasi, who's a great meditation teacher who made. know. I think she worked with you. Oh, yeah. Seb's a very good friend. Yeah. So Seb's a very good friend that she had commissioned by a friend of hers who I haven't met. But anyway, it's a very nice painting. It's hanging in my office at home. And I noticed as I was hanging it that the title of the painting is my open heart keeps me safe. And so initially there's a bit of a gag reflex there. It's like, oh, the fuck is this. Like, I don't like this type language. But I really took it on as a riddle, to put it in Buddhist terms, like a Zen

co-on, like what does that mean? And it's coming up in my mind as I'm having this conversation with you because actually counterintuitively having an open heart, meaning having compassion, understanding things in their proper context, is seeing things clearly, which allows you to make better decisions, which will keep you safe. Does that all, land for you as I say it out loud. Yeah, and I love it. I love that Seb gave that to you and that totally does. I think of there's a, from Lao Tzu, that the openness of our heart is considered to be kind of a defense against being dead, that we lose the aliveness and immediacy of the moment if we're defending against the next moment. So, yeah, it's all. It's all the same. It's all the same. It's

also has to do with trusting reality that you can't experience reality directly if there's not a quality of trust and openness. And the more we trust reality, the more, it's not like we trust that we're not going to die. It's not like we trust that others won't hurt us. But there's even a deeper level of trust that allows us to draw on the fullness of our wisdom and of our care. I don't want to forget that there was a fourth skill or quality of mind that is on my list here from you as it pertains to developing a bodhisattva mindset. And you did reference to this before, but I think it's worth reemphasizing, reflecting on your aspiration. What does that mean to you? Yeah.

You know, the Buddha said that our whole life experience comes out of the tip of intention. So, yeah, we always have in any moment something we're wanting, something we're intending, something we're not wanting. And the question is, are we in touch with our deepest wants and longings and aspirations? So it's actually a practice in the bodhisattva tradition to reflect on kind of the question, and what most matters. It's sometimes described as a prayer, you know, may whatever circumstances arise, may they awaken wisdom and compassion. Sometimes it's kind of that kind of a prayer. But even under the prayer, so that it's not just words, there's that inquiry of what do we really care about. And what I've seen is that our day-by-day life can get very hijacked by less than

our deepest aspiration. You know, we get hijacked by wanting to control things or wanting certain outcomes to be a certain way or checking things off our list so we don't have to be anxious. It's such a nice way to resolve anxiety, you know. And so it becomes actually a essential practice every day on some level after probably we've quieted some so that we actually can connect to sense what our deepest long. is what really matters to us. And when we do, more and more of our actions get really guided by the compass of our hearts. And to put, because I always do, to put a self-interested spin on this, you know, I think about it as what, what's the most effective and cleanest burning fuel? And so if you

can be reminding yourself frequently throughout the day, like, what do I care about? What actually matters, that is going, that helps with performance. That's absolutely true. So in a way, you're, you're adding on, say, to reflect on aspiration and then sense what actually serves this aspiration the best, which is, which helps to anchor it in day-to-day life even more. I just notice this in my own life because I love what you were saying about the to-do list. I'm a compulsive list maker and checker offer, and it's all based in anxiety, of course. and, you know, I have, along with my straight white male conditioning, you know, capitalist conditioning.

And so I, and I'm not trying to vilify any of that. It's just part of part of the makeup. But it's very easy for me to get hijacked in any number of ways. And to the extent that I can remember what I actually care about, my anxiety in those moments goes down. and my effectiveness goes up. I just see it over and over again. And it's not complicated, really. It's like, what do I care about?

Okay, I know what I care about. It's being useful, right, in this simplest, most plain English version. And as long as I'm in that mindset, everything's okay. I'm right there with you. I'm the shame. even before I do interviews or do anything, if I can remember, if I get sincere, it's really actually a felt sense. And it helps me even say the word because right now I feel myself, oh, yes, sincere, that matters.

Fear goes away. And it really does make sense because we know from neuroscience that when we're feeling connected to our heart, when we're feeling any of those love feelings or care feelings, what goes along with it is a quieting of some of the limbic activity. And we're actually, it stimulates the learning centers in the brain. I've noticed that, that I actually take in information more, there's more of a flow through where I can take in more of what's going on, I can listen better, and I can offer out from a cleaner place. So there's a lot of power to remembering what most matters. Yeah, the Zen masters say the most important thing is remembering the most important thing, which I really like. I'm writing it down.

What you just described is a case study in the open heart keeping you safe, that when you're feeling compassion, you can see it on a brain scan. It reduces anxiety. Yeah. So I would think even for you, although I think you hold on to the story of, you know, straight white guy, not into some of the soft language. I think that you have been cellularly transformed since I've met you years ago. I truly, I say that sincerely. And it does help that science kind of confirms this stuff, doesn't it?

Yes. Well, for me, for sure, given the conditioning, and I agree with you. I mean, some of it is like schick. this point, but the conditioning is there. And also, I, there's, you know, I haven't been meditating that long, but 15 years of it is non-trivial and it does, it does compound. So yeah, a long way of saying, I totally agree with you. And putting it in science terms, given said conditioning, really does help me. And I think it helps a lot of other people too. Yeah. This kind of brings my mind as we're saying this back to the core teaching of the bodhisop a path, which is interconnectedness.

And science, it's like there is one branch of science that doesn't say the same thing. You know, whether you're talking about biology, what we are biologically, or whether you're talking about quantum physics, you know, that this is a relational universe, that there's this web of aliveness that we're inextricably a part of that's influencing us. us that we're influencing, and to pay attention to that in a way that's not abstract, and this is the hard thing. When we hear the word interdependence, it's usually an abstract concept. So to get the felt sense of it is life-changing, whether we do it through meditation, psychedelics, feeling love with another being, feeling absolutely intimate with nature, the felt sense of us, of it changes

everything. And I often think of Ticknat Han saying that we will not save the earth unless we fall in love with the earth. And, you know, he talked about how we really need to feel the cries of the earth inside our hearts. And to me, that's such a beautiful example of the, how crucial it is that we actually have a lived experience of our interdependence with this living world because that's what motivates us to act. We will not act on behalf of the earth unless we love the earth. And that's the same thing with each other. It's the same thing with animals. It's so easy because we are so conditioned to hierarchy. And I come back to Paul Farmer saying some lives being valued less is what's wrong with our world to consider non-human animals

as less valuable, less worthy of care, and what it's led is the cruelty to billions of animals each year and also something that's not sustainable on the earth, which is the way we consume meat. So on all fronts, science says it, the great spiritual traditions say it. We belong to each other. And the more quickly if we wake up to that, the more chance we have at creating the world that we believe in. Well said. Let me go back to anxiety for a second. because this is also in in this document that Marissa put together for me in preparation for this interview.

One of the other things that you recommend in terms of getting through this tumultuous period of time with minimal fear and outrage and bad behavior on our part is to not do it alone, to have other people that were, you know, going through it with. Can you talk about that? Yeah. You know, if I had to say what's most important in dealing with the fears that we all feel. And having a nervous system means that we are sensitive to the decline of our larger body, the earth, and we're sensitive to all the suffering that's around us.

We might numb ourselves. So the ways, I mean, one of the big ones for many of us in the United States right now is kind of eye on November and a huge amount of fear as to what's going to happen. And for me, it's woken me up at night. So I know it, you know, inside out, a real sense of trepidation. So, of course, as we've been talking all along, Dan, like the first piece is we need to do the inner meditations, you know, know how to quiet our mind, know how to quiet our mind, know how to. breathe, know how to down-regulate the intensity, and also know how to get in touch with the caring. That's huge. Let me toss in another quote that I really love, which is Bill Hook said, the moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways

that liberate ourselves and others. So meditation helps us to remember that love matters, to choose love. The second part of responding to all the fear that we have about our world is to act, to engage. And there's a whole sense of, as Angeles Arien says, that action absorbs anxiety. I would go beyond that and say, compassionate activism seeds the world that we long for. So action does absorb anxiety, but we could be very very very much. very busy just like caffeinated squirrels just checking things off our list and think we're a little less anxious, but it doesn't really uproot. But compassion-based activism is the beginning of uprooting. And then we go to what you're just bringing up, do it with each other.

And in Buddhism, the triple jewel of what awakens us is Buddha Dharma Sangha, is Buddha's awareness, sensing the awake awareness that's our source. The Dharma are these practices, the pathways to freedom. The Sanga is our interdependent, interrelated, loving connection with each other. We need to take refuge in that. And if I, just to speak personally, over these last months, I've been very involved with a number of people who are, you know, just working on initiatives, you know, to save our democracy. and it has helped me immeasurably to actually reduce anxiety to just feel other people caring, you know, just to feel the care.

And then to sense there's people all over the planet that care. And there's something if you just pause and sense there are people who care all around the globe. There's this larger belonging. We're not alone. and there's this movement of caring humans. Doesn't matter the outcome in particular. There's something in just remembering that that soothes and opens our heart.

And it feels to me that if we do the inner work, the meditating, if we act, because we need to engage, and if we act together, we can more and more realize that the caring is all-inclusive. We're not just caring about my side winning kind of thing. I sometimes think about the great-grandchildren of people we might call the other side. I mean, her heart has to break for everyone and care about and value everyone. And that's when there's a real sense of peace, belonging, and freedom.

I love that phrase action absorbs anxiety. That's Angelus Arian. When it comes to action, I think a lot of people, and I actually feel this way a little bit too, feel, do I have time? You know, what, what, I've got my own shit going on? Like, how, what can I do when it comes to getting involved politically or on the climate or whatever? Yeah, I feel like it's an important question because most of us feel already over the top. And activism has the kind of comes with a sense of a should or more, more. obligation. I heard a phrase called slackivism, which I thought was really good. It's a new word

for minimal output through the internet. I wish I hadn't heard it because I can relate, you know, but it means doing what's convenient. So, you know, again, what can I do? It starts with just that practice of deep aspiration that you know you want to be useful. So there's a part of you the gets in touch with that, and then just ask that question, you know, what is that longing, our aspiration calling for right now and let that be the compass? The other piece that really helps is to get a bit more proximate with where suffering is. And what I mean by that is, you know, with others in our close circle, just leaning in a little, so that we actually let ourselves be touched. Because if we want to engage, we have to get touched.

You know, I have a Jewish friend. Over 50 years we've been together. And so part of, you know, as just my heart was crushed by what's going on in Gaza, part of getting more approximate for me was we talked and I really, listen to how, for her, because of anti-Semitism, she has never felt safe in any situation that's always been in the background. And to let that in, our, you know, for racial, if we're wanting to get more involved with, you know, racial violence or racial justice, for me, it's really helped to just be, I was involved for several years with a very diverse group

where we listen to each other, and I'll just never forget. I had a teenage son, another woman did. She described how, and she lived in her city here in this area, every time her son would go out, she was absolutely panicked that he wouldn't come back. It's like, get proximate, what's it like for others because that actually will help us sense some level of engagement to ask, you know, what really is love asking from us? And then in terms of if we're really busy, do what we can, you know, whether it's write a postcard or talk to others. One of the big things that feels important, Dan, that I'm working on and I have a long way to go is to communicate with those who really have difference in their view. We tend to get much more comfortable and stay in our

silos. I mean, it's much more fun to talk with you and have you say, you know, I agree with you on that one too, but I need to ask, you know, that's a lot more fun. But, you know, I think of how to widen it. You know, John Pollletter talks about conflict transformation. And he says, I think the difficult work of peace building is to create a quality of relationships among people who don't think alike. I mean, how are we going to, you know, when we think of the elections in the United States, it's not like somebody wins and the other side disappears. If we really want a more just, compassionate world, we have to find a way to open up those silos

and talk to each other. So that's just another, when you say, what can the everyday, meditator who's really busy do is just stretch somewhere, get more proximate with the suffering, bridge some divides wherever possible, see whatever resonates with your heart to do, and know that you'll actually feel better. You'll feel much more connected to the world and much less fearful. There's kind of a fearless heart that opens up when we engage. every time you come on it's great this is no exception um is there something you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to well a little bit about um how we talk in the world because again i feel like

the work of our times is bridging divides and our words and our language matter and it's it's always but especially in this moment when there's a lot of fear and animosity and so on. It's so easy to feel that exceptions or justifications can be made for just, you know, saying what we want to say. But it's actually just the opposite. Because these are, these are the moments that our words can actually most lead to more violence. They feed violence if they're othering, bad othering. And so to use our words responsibly to not dehumanize others, to really ask, does this serve wisdom? Does this serve love? Does this serve healing? So that feels just really important to say because, you know, I feel like the power of the bodhisatt path, and again, I mean it in the

broadest terms, is that it just keeps on inviting us to reground in presence and in caring. and what we start discovering is that we're not alone, that we're in it with others, and that just knowing that belonging is really what helps to free up the world. Tara, thank you again. This is fascinating and also just really fun to do. So thank you. Oh, totally my pleasure.