Tara Brach - Trusting Your Basic Goodness

Episode Date: March 3, 2010

2010-03-03 - When we don't trust who we are, we are unable to be at home in our world. This talk explores how we come to be at war with ourselves and the pathway to realizing our basic goodness.

So last week I spoke on really how we align our behavior with our heart and just acknowledging that there's really no freedom if we're moving through the day and we're kind of blaming people and judging people and getting angry or violating our own body with addictive behaviors. It's very hard to come home to who we are when we're acting in ways that don't really connect with who we are. And if we investigate, because every one of us acts in ways that in some

level we feel this isn't the way I want to be, and if we investigate what's behind those behaviors, we will find that in some way we're hurting. Always, whenever we cause suffering or harm to ourselves or others, there's hurting underneath. There's unmet needs that we haven't become conscious of and that we haven't addressed. And there needs to feel safe. And in a very deep way, we each have the need to feel lovable and worthy. And if we don't feel that, we end up behaving in ways that make us feel less lovable and less worthy. We get into this cycle. One of the ways I like to put it is that we each have a need to trust our basic goodness. That term basic goodness brings up questions for people,

so I just want to just take a moment with it. You know, according to many philosophies, we are not basically good. I mean, starting from Eden on upward, right? You know, we got kicked out of the garden because of, in some way, being sinful or bad. And then you've got Hobbs, who says, without laws to govern us,

we live lives that are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. So, basic goodness. And I got very interested to find that the derivative of the word good, the root of the word good, it comes from the same Indo-European root, GE, as the words gather and together. And goodness really implies the realization of our belonging. to the whole, that when we feel a sense of I'm part of this earth and I belong to others and I belong to presence and I belong to life, there's a natural sense of goodness. There's an inherent sense of goodness. And sometimes the metaphor is given that no matter what weather systems are going on,

if you, you know, flying a plane and you get above the clouds, it's again, there's light, there's warmth, there's sunshine, you know. And that sometimes the clouds of our conditioning make it hard to see that. So we don't trust that basic goodness. And of course we can look around the world and sense the horrors that go on and say, wait a minute, are humans basically good? I can speak from my own experience that for me, beginning to sense that no matter what conditioning was playing out, deep down

we're basically loving each of us. When we're not afraid, when we're not freaked out, when we're not stressed out, love is there. And the realization of that is homecoming. If you can more and more

trust that what you are is loving presence, you will more and more live in a kind of inner freedom. And it helps the conditioning to quiet down in some way. So this is what I want to talk about tonight more of really how we find our pathway back to trusting our goodness,

especially when we're caught up in feeling unworthy. And I use a lot of the metaphor of forgetting and remembering that each of us forgets. We forget presence and we forget what matters and we get caught up in reactivity. And each of us, times of remembering. So you can just watch a single meditation sitting. And you can notice how the mind drifts into trance, how we get caught in planning what we're going to do tomorrow or

remembering what happened and the thoughts meander and we're just to forgotten. And it might not be huge suffering. Like we're not connected to presence, but we're just kind of drifting. But we also know how in our daily life we can disconnect and really get caught in a chain of reactivity where we become really small or mean-spirited, are self-centered in a way that we really don't like. And we don't like ourselves and we don't trust who we are. And I think that trust is, that mistrust of our okayness is about as deep in anguish as humans know. When we we really distrust ourselves. In general, when we're disconnected from presence, the body is inclined to then vigilantly fixate on what's wrong. That's just our habit. It's evolutionary.

When we're not in some way really remembering, we tend to conclude that things are off. and one of my favorite more recent little cartoons has two women on a park bench and one of them says oi and the other one says oi and then the first one says okay enough about the children and they go on

the Buddha described the noble truce you know he basically began with it's our universal predicament that we forget that we disconnect from presence and that we're feeling separate. It's just our conditioning. This is just how it is. And that out of feeling separate, what happens is we think we have to grab onto things and we have to push away from things. So we get caught in most of our day, we're trying to

get more comfortable and we're trying to avoid discomfort. That's what we do. What locks us into trance, and I call this adding insult to injury, is not only do we go through this reactive chain of pushing away and grasping, but we make the conclusion that I'm the one doing it, and it means that I'm wrong, I'm bad. And I've described this here before as the Buddha's term was the second arrow. It's as if we got shot by an arrow, the arrow of the arrow of discontent and grasping and avoiding. And then rather than investigating are pulling out that arrow, we shoot another hour saying, I'm so bad for this, I'm bad that I'm anxious, I'm bad that I'm greedy. We add on I am bad, I'm wrong. And what I've found in working with people, and I find

this, you know, whether it's, I'm doing a session just during daily life, or at a longer retreat, is that if we don't catch that layer of how we've turned on ourselves, we've locked the prison door. We've locked ourselves in. If you're moving through life and on some level, there's a conclusion underneath of your own not-okiness. Not seeing that and not facing that means, that you will continue to be caught in a reactive mode of behavior. So what happens is that because most of us have unmet needs, because most of us, if you had to say,

what is a child most need, you know, a young, young child, there's two things. One is to be seen, to be understood, and the other is to be loved. and we have to have both it's not enough just to be seen if you're not embraced for what's seen and it's not enough to have somebody embrace you

unless they get who you are so those are the two needs and for most of us because of the culture and our parents as messengers of the culture it was done imperfectly so we have insecurity about am I understood am I okay

and then we go through life with strategies to get more comfortable about our not okayness. And I sometimes call these false refuges that we're trying to in a way compensate for the something's wrong. So what happens? We try to numb or soothe ourselves with food

or are we overconsume. Are we spend time trying to prove ourselves in different ways and we pretend some? You know, we exaggerate and, you know, mislead sometimes because we're trying to present a person that will get approval. And if you observe yourself in any interaction, usually there's an agenda in that interaction

in some way wanting the other to experience you a certain way. So from a very early age, we kind of stretch and manufacture and present. I've shared with some of you. These are letters, Dear Abby, admitted she was at a loss to answer. And a couple of them I like. Dear Abby, I have a man I can't trust.

He cheats so much, I'm not even sure the baby I'm carrying is his. See, I think that one's a sleeper. Dear Abby, I've suspected that my husband's been fooling around and when confronted with the evidence, he denied everything and said it would never happen again. So we have our false refuges, and there's the kind of covering and protecting, and one of them is being very aggressive and blaming others.

biochemically we get addicted to anger because it feels so much better than sinking into feeling in some way powerless or inferior. And then we fixate on self-improvement. Most of us go through our life with a kind of chart in our mind of how we're doing and how we should be doing and how we're trying to get to how we should be doing and that's another fixation. And then we fixate on how other people can solve our problem, the perfect mate. Somebody sent me this a few years ago. It's described as one of the best single ads ever printed. And it appeared in the Atlanta Journal. Single black female seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a very good looking girl who loves to play.

I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping, fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candleight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I'm yours. Call 404. Da-da-da-da. Ask for Daisy. Over 15,000 men found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society about an eight-week-old black lab retriever. So we fix it our hopes on things, right? This will make it so I'm okay. If only, it's called if only mind. The most fundamental of our false refuges,

the most fundamental ego strategy that we have to try to get better, ironically enough, is to blame ourselves. We're not blaming ourselves to be mean, really. We're blaming ourselves, because if we get an edge on it, if we catch on to what's wrong, maybe we can fix it. We're afraid not to blame ourselves.

We're afraid to trust ourselves because then we might get worse. So it's a very basic addiction, self-blame. So this is the second arrow. I read in The Washington Post, they have these T-shirt awards, and one of the winning T-shirts, this was a number of years ago, is I have occasional delusions of adequacy. So this is, the trance that we are mostly in. And sometimes it's not, it's not like, oh, I'm a piece of

garbage, you know, and this kind of real overt. It can be very subtle that we don't really allow ourselves to relax or rest because there's some sense that we need to still change or improve or be different. We cannot, it's not as if we can say, I really accept myself just as I am. Now let me just say by that phrase, that doesn't mean it's cool if I go around, you know, pillaging and plundering and raping. It's not like that. It means that in some deep way we sense the who we are. And in some deep way we cherish and honor this awareness and presence and heart that's right here. But the trance doesn't let us do that.

we don't get to rest in that deep trust. So how to come home, given that? And I'll read you first, just a very brief verse from Sri Norsar Gadata, who's an Indian teacher that has been a wonderful inspiration for me, no longer alive. He says this. He says, all you need is already with it. in you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.

Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this, make love of yourself perfect. Make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them. You are beyond.

You might hear the words, make love of yourself perfect. And maybe what comes up is saying, well, I thought in Buddhism there was no self and what's the self we're loving? And my understanding is that if we take the spirit of that, make love of yourself perfect,

the invitation is to make love of this life that's right here perfect. And that if we truly want to fall in love with life, if we really want to embrace this life, it has to begin with a life that's right here. I mean, doesn't that make intuitive sense that if we can't really honor and cherish the life that's here, this aliveness right here that we call self,

how can this heart really embrace this world, make love of yourself perfect. So there are really two pathways that are totally interwoven that we train in in really opening our heart to the life that's right here. And they're described in Buddhism as the two wings of the bird

that's awakening to freedom. And one wing is the wing of understanding that we can't love this life right here unless we see clearly what's happening. So we ask the question, and you can just check in, just what is happening inside me right now. And that wing of wisdom and understanding

is to see what's true in this moment. Now, the other wing is the wing of compassion, which is to profoundly allow what we see with tenderness. The understanding is that if we, We really accept the life that's right here. That very acceptance is tender and loving. So the wing of seeing what's here

and the wing of profoundly allowing what's here. So give you an example. We often will use the acronym Rain and how to really wake up those two wings. And the rain begins with recognizing and allowing the two wings. Rain, R-A-I-N, recognize and allow. the eye of rain is an investigation. It's a deepening of presence.

What's really happening? And it's an intimate investigation. Can I really open to this with kindness? So recognize, allow, deepen it with investigating, with intimacy. When we open with that kind of presence, we get to the N of Rain, which is non-identification. No longer am I identified with this bad self, this unworthy self, this grasping self, because instead we're inhabiting natural presence again.

Rain is a homecoming to that natural goodness, that basic goodness. So an example, and one I thought I'd share with you tonight from my own life is about 10 years ago, I was at a holiday gathering. It was over Christmas holidays with my family in New Jersey. And I found that I was in reactivity and judging everybody. And that's always, by the way, a flag. If you notice you're judging everybody. But anyway, I was so in it that I didn't quite get it right away.

You know, one person wasn't helping out with the meals and clean up. Another, my family was sniping at the others. somebody was withdrawn and sulking and my son was exiting out with friends and anyway, so I was in judgment and I had made a commitment months earlier to whenever I got caught in judgment

to pause and practice rain this presence because it became clear to me in a very kind of heartbreaking way that whenever I'm judging I feel separate. I just am not that good that belonging is not there. So this was kind of a wake-up. I saw I was judging everyone.

So I went out for a walk and started practicing rain. And the first part of rain recognizing allowing is just saying, okay, feeling angry, feeling tight. And allowing is just like pausing. It's like saying the gestalt of it is, okay, it feels crummy right now. Let it be. Don't try to fix it. Don't avoid it. Just let it be. Recognize and allow. Okay? Then I began the investigating. And there was this kind of hot, compressed, squeezed place in my heart. So allow that, let that be there, investigate some more. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll ask that place in me if it could express something, what's it feeling, just to express it, what's its view? And like if my heart could speak right now, And what my heart said is, I'm actually not liking myself.

You know, it's like I'm not doing what I can to make everything work as if all the disharmony going on is my fault, and I don't like myself for being judgmental, and basically I'm falling short. It all came back to me. Now, that happens with blaming. You'll notice if you're in a lot of judgment, it's pretty easy to have it turn back on yourself.

But when you're in the middle of judging, you forget. So this investating was revealing the trance of unworthiness I had turned on myself. And I kind of then sensed how many moments of this life, how many moments on some level have I been at war with myself, not liking how I am. If you ask that question, there can be this real soul sadness that arises because you can get almost the shape of your,

incarnation and sense how many moments in some way you have not been at home with yourself. And it is sad. It's like it doesn't have to be that way if we really were awake, but it just is that way. So that's what came up and at that point I did what I often do and I teach about which is I put my hand on my own heart. Because what is that hurting place, need, the place that does not feel good, contact, connection, the way back to feeling intimate and at home. So I put my hand on my own heart and just offered a kind of presence

and a kind of kindness to that part of me. And as I did that, there's a shift in my sense of self. And the shift was, not to this great self, but more from a, you know, angry judging self to a self, it's my fault, to a sense of presence, not identified. It didn't mean that the currents of sadness and of pain weren't there. The currents were still

there, but the what I was had enlarged and relaxed back to being at home. So this is just to give you a little bit of a sense of how we can bring presence to when we're seeing. stuck and re-arrive in the who we are beyond that small self. I want to say a little bit more about this hand on the heart piece. I was teaching up at Insight Meditation Society last weekend, and I was about to talk about this self-compassion, and somebody sent me this article from the New York Times that last week in the times there was kind of research that validated the power of touch and the research basically said that more than gestures more than facial expressions more than tone of voice or words

touch can communicate in a highly subtle and discreet way all these different experiences and we know when touch is compassionate and when it is compassionate it totally alters our biochemistry, it changes us in a more powerful way than anything else. And there's been so much research done on how fear levels they can track it, you know, because there's so much good scanning of the brain now, how fear levels get settled out when somebody is being touched by a loved one. In this research they described how if you go to a doctor's office and the doctor, other than just the examination, you know, just gently puts a hand on your shoulder or something.

You'll leave feeling that you had been in that appointment twice as long as if you hadn't been touched. That was good. Of course, they also researched last season's basketball games, and they monitored every touch that basketball players did, you know, whether it was the high fives or the bump hugs or whatever, and then compared it to success and individual players and teams and clearly where there was more touch, there was more in the flow, more success competitively. So I thought that was kind of interesting too. But bottom line, touch, we secrete oxytocin. We feel better. So that is all to say that there's a real power and when you experiment, you might close your eyes for a moment and put your hand on your heart right now.

and as you do, begin to vary the pressure until you get a pressure that feels tender so that you're actually communicating and just imagine in a sense you are communicating at least your intention to make love of this life perfect. It may be that there's something going on in your life right now and just even a few moments right here, of acknowledging with your own touch,

okay, I'm aware of this going on right in your life, that maybe there's some message in the touch that you offer of forgiveness or acceptance or just showing up for yourself. So touch communicates and we can offer it to ourself. And sometimes it can be just a light touch on your own cheek. That's got a bit of a different but profound. kind of tenderness to it. One writer describes finding all the untended wounds within her.

And she says, and lifting them one by one close to my heart and saying, holy, holy. So we're talking tonight about really how to return to a sense of basic goodness. When we've gotten caught in some sense of, I'm not good, I can't trust myself, something's strong and the two wings that we train in. And this is really the whole of practice is this mindfulness or understanding where we notice what's going on. Oh, okay. Heat, squeezing, anger, judgment. We notice it. And the other wing and the gestures the hand on the heart, but it's energetically forgiven, accepted, cared about. These are the two wings.

Now many times when I'm working with people, what they'll find is that they'll realize that they're caught in shame or self-loathing or something and yet it's so gripping that there's no way of offering a gesture of self-care. It's too opposite the current state. and it's really important to say that sometimes we need to imagine and sense and feel that that care is coming from a source beyond this self. There was one woman I worked with many years ago who had as an adult her daughter had let her know that she had been abused by this woman's then husband. and when this woman realized that her daughter had been sexually abused by her husband

she went into not just a profound anger and depression but a quality of self-loathing that made her suicidal and you know we can all in some way relate to when you feel you've caused injury to someone you love it's very hard to tolerate and this was her daughter and so she went to a Jesuit priest that had been a teacher of hers once and told her how the misery she was in and the anguish she was in

and he took her hand in his hand and he drew a circle in the middle of her palm and he said right now this is where you're living and it's a place of anguish and fear and horror and self-loathing and he said you have to feel all that you have to see it and feel it but also remember this and he put his big

priest hand over hers. And he said, and this is the forgiveness and mercy of God. And he said, if you can feel what you're feeling, but also remember this, you will discover a freedom that you never knew was possible. He was telling her the two wings, okay? Feel what's here, but also remember this. Now, for many, many weeks, When she would go into that anguish and that self-hatred,

she would imagine this field of loving, and she would feel the priest's hand on hers, and imagine that she was being held in this field. And that would soothe her, not so that she didn't forgive herself, like saying, oh, it's okay, I did that, that I was oblivious, that I didn't take care of my daughter. It wasn't that.

It was more that the basis, the goodness of who she was was intact. She was still a worthy being. Many, many weeks of having to feel the priest's hand as the comfort, as the compassion. And then gradually she began to sense that that kingdom of mercy was really her own awakened heart. But it took first feeling it from the outside. And that's why I share this story. Because we're not meant to do it on our own. And sometimes the pathway back to trusting our basic goodness is when somebody else that we trust looks at us and reminds us, you are good. You really are good. You are lovable. Your essence is dear. And it's like when someone else, when the message comes in,

then that can help us reconnect with that and us which knows that truth. For some people, the Divine Mother is a kind of bodhisattva of compassion. Kuan Yin is that energy of being able to say holy, holy. We can in some way sense that there's this field of tender loving that surrounds us. And you can meditate on that and feel it's almost washing through you. And then as you relax and let it wash through you, that love and that compassion, there's a relaxing into realizing that is what you are. You are that loving presence.

So it's a stepping stone. This is a life practice. We are very conditioned to get caught in a small sense of self and in a trance where whether we're overtly at war with ourselves are just on a subtle level really not trusting the divine that lives in us, whether it's overt or subtle we live in a small limited sense of self

many moments of our day many moments of the day there's a kind of inner dialogue that's going on that's telling us what we need to do and what's wrong and has this person thinking and what else there's just not a trusting and a resting in goodness

so it's a life practice to begin to notice that we're in a trance where we've created a separation from our inner life and from others. And then to bring those two wings of presence in a very deep way to what's happening. As we do, the truth of our basic goodness becomes more real. It becomes more the reality than the story that we usually live in. And this is the blessing of spiritual practice. It doesn't necessarily happen all at one.

Some people might have a sudden, voila, realization that just stabilizes and they're there. But for most of us, we get these glimmers, these times where we really feel opened and loving and sense, yeah, that is who I am. And then we recontract. So the practice is to start noticing that, to be committed to making love of yourself perfect. Committed to it. committed to not staying in a trance that demeans your spirit. When we begin to do that,

there's a kind of awakening where we have certain blessings that come to us. And I want to name three of the blessings tonight. When you start to trust your goodness. One of the blessings is that your body and mind become more alive and open, more vibrant. There's a kind of aliveness because it takes to put yourself down squelch's energy,

tightens energy. So the opposite happens. There's this kind of vitality that becomes available. There's a cartoon I saw that as a man's up in heaven talking to God in the afterlife and God's just shaking his head saying

no, no, that's not a sin either. No, no, not that. My goodness, you must have worried yourself to death. That was really cute. So there's this kind of thing of like we kind of deaden ourselves. And then, you know, the opposite is a little boy who's

overheard praying, Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it. I'm having a real good time like I am. So there's a sense of we start being a little, as the Zen master say, without anxiety about imperfection. The given

is imperfection. We're still going to have all the tendencies to grasp onto things and resist and get self-centered. But if we're not anxious about them, if we trust our basic goodness, there's this freedom that energizes us. So that's one. The second blessing that gets revealed, this is inherent parts of our being that get revealed, is this natural warmth and affection is free to flow. Because when we're down on ourselves, that gets tightened, our heart gets armored.

So there's a kind of dissolving of the armor, and we're free to love without holding back. Now, that's a blessing. It comes directly from forgiving and accepting ourselves. You'll find it out in any moment that you notice, okay, if there's really forgiveness, there's this like open space of warmth and tenderness. A story on that I wanted to share with you. Some of you might remember. Here at the Vietnam Memorial, there's a book that got put together called readings,

our offerings from the wall. And it's different letters that Vietnam vets left at the wall, at the memorial that got put into a collection. And one of them was a letter that came with a picture. And the picture had a Vietnamese man in and his daughter. And this is the letter. Dear sir, for 22 years I've carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day.

We faced each other on the trail in Chulai, Vietnam. Why you didn't take my life, I'll never know. You stared at me so long armed with your AK-47, and yet you didn't fire. Forgive me for taking your life. I was reacting just the way I was trained to kill VC. So many times over the years I've stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt.

I have two daughters of my own now. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland. Above all else, I can now respect the importance that life held for you. I suppose that is why I'm able to be here today. It is time for me to continue the life process and release the pain and guilt. Forgive me, sir. For many years, I would share that,

and that was the end of the story. But about six months ago, I heard that that wasn't the end of the story, that after he left that letter, his name is Robert, Robert Lutrell. The book's offerings at the wall, got put together and then he got sent back the letter and the photo so he had it again

and he decided at that point that he wanted to go find the daughter of the man he had killed so he went to Vietnam and he found her and this is the story that that happened through an interpreter he introduced himself and he said tell her that this is the photo I took from her father's wallet the day I shot

and killed him and I'm returning it. And then he asked for her forgiveness. And then after a moment this woman burst into tears and fell into his arms and there the two held each other sobbing and embracing. And her brother was there too. And he basically said that their father's spirit lived on in this man. He said they expect we'll think it's just superstition and perhaps they say it is, but for us today is the day our Father's Spirit has come back to us. I share this story because, you know, if we think of all the things we blame ourselves for, the horror of being part of a culture and a system that leads to aggression and taking lives and being one who takes a life and then finding a way to go

forgiven, forgiven. It's so necessary that we forgive ourselves, no matter how much we think we have caused harm to ourselves or others, it's not our fault on one level. It's conditioning. And it doesn't turn us into a better human to hate ourselves or blame ourselves. In fact, as this man, his story shows, when we can come to saying, okay, forgiven, please forgive me. it actually frees our heart so we can give in a way that really is healing for others. So that's the second facet of what we are that gets revealed when we begin to trust our basic goodness. There's more aliveness, openness, than there's that warmth. The third is just in the most profound way that we realize who we are.

In the deepest way in the Buddhist tradition, it's called Buddha Nature. that we realize underneath that something is wrong with me feeling, we realize who's really there. And you might even ask yourself, who would I be if I didn't believe something was wrong with me? If you leave with any reflection, that's one that can carry you for a lifetime. Who would I be if I didn't believe something was wrong with me?

This is Rumi. I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. The universe and the light of the stars come through me. I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival. As we open to presence, we're not divided from anything. We become connected with this goodness. So let's practice just a little, a very short meditation to close the evening. As you just settle and come into presence, just sense your own sincerity,

that in you which really does long to trust who you are, to have that freedom. With an honesty, just scan through your life right now and sense if there's some place that you are at odds. where you're divided from yourself, where you're mistrusting, or you're carrying the story and feeling of something's wrong. Just let it be a gentle inquiry, knowing that this is an opportunity to have a little more space and wakefulness to wake up a bit out of the trance. Where is there the second arrow of making yourself wrong

for something that you're doing regularly, some addictive behavior, something in a relationship with someone where you act selfish or aggressive, or just some way that your own capacities aren't the way you think they should be, your mind or your body. Just sense making yourself wrong,

sense who you are, your sense of yourself when you put yourself down. as I described in my own story that kind of soul sadness can arise when we realize just the tightness that happens when we're putting ourselves down

I want to put your hand on your heart or your cheek and just offer presence to wherever there's a kind of dividedness wherever there's a place in you that you're rejecting in reaction to a part of your life and in some way just to send that message

of presence, acceptance, as that one poet said, bringing the wounded place and saying, holy, maybe forgiven, forgiven. But mostly let your energy, your presence help to carry you back home again.

What would it be like to know that this, as with all humans, of course there's imperfectness, but that it's possible to trust basic goodness. Who would you be right now if you didn't believe that anything was basically wrong? I've gotten free of that ignorant fist that was pinching and twisting my secret self. the universe and the light of the stars come through me I am the crescent moon put up over the gate to the festival namaste well I thank you for your presence and your attention tonight the teaching you have received has been freely offered

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