Tara Brach - Turning Toward the Light

Episode Date: December 19, 2012

2012-12-19 - Turning Toward the Light - This solstice talk explores how, in the face of darkness - unconsciousness, ignorance, violence - we can call on the light that is within us. The two pathways are to courageously look directly into the places of suffering, and to include in our gaze, the intrinsic goodness in all beings, in life. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!

These three weeks, the last two, and then today, we're doing what I'm considering a kind of a series that has to do with the middle section of True Refuge, the book that's coming out. It's called The Gateway of Love. And on the first class we did was really how do we begin to forgive ourselves and open our hearts to our own being when we've locked into being at war. And the second class was how do we open the world? that forgiving heart to others. And tonight is really on this theme of how do we embrace our life? How do we really fall in love with life without holding back our love in any way? And the underlying

understanding is of love as a refuge that no matter what comes up in our lives, no matter how much pain or how much beauty. It's this heart when it's open that has space for this living, dying world. So the solstice is a powerful time of year to explore what it means to open our hearts. I mean, I think everybody has this notion of, yes, opening hearts is good. But there's something, and especially around the northern hemisphere now, the shortest day of the year, and throughout the world there's these holidays that in some way are honoring the reality that we go through these seasons of outer and inner periods where it gets dark and there are really two kinds of darkness if you reflect on it and one of the darknesses is what you might sense the darkness of a kind of the

fertile void it's the winter where the seeds are underground we can't see what's there's a kind of silence and a stillness or a seeming lack of activity out of which arises new life and it's a beautiful kind of a darkness and silence and stillness and there's something instinctual in us that kind of knows that there's a power to getting more still and touching into that and letting then more of the creativity and truth of what we are blossom into springtime That's one of the kinds of darkness and the other kind of darkness, which is also a very real part of our conditioning, is the unconsciousness and the ignorance that gives rise to violence, gives rise to greed, gives rise to hatred. And this is the kind of violence that we see, let's say, in this week in Connecticut, that one friend is, described as the destruction of innocence.

Yeah. That breaks our heart because it's so, we relate to it in such, again, a kind of instinctual way. It's heartbreak. And I've been reading, you know, even before this week, I've been reading about the Congo.

And, you know, it's been in the newspaper a lot, but somehow rather it doesn't, we don't get the riveting attention, the killing fields in the Congo are the worst since World War II. Hundreds of thousands of children are right now deemed at risk for either being raped or recruited into armies or killed and displaced. Their families are gone. It's horrific. And then we read about the ongoing violence in the inner city that more, African-American children lose their lives to shootings, inner city, than anything else.

So there is something, there's this inquiry that goes on that, you know, we begin to wake up and sense, well, how do we, how does our hearts hold this? And how can we hold the most recent violence in our country that has really broken us open? And since these are our children, because for me, that was, it was, this is my child, you know. And how do we think of the Congo? These are our children. And the children in the inner city, these are our children. That's the inquiry.

How, when the darkness is thick, again, this is really what our practice, how do we call on the light? So what, what is it that helps? to wake us up and knowing that the same darkness is in every heart, what serves to wake us up? What will help us wake each other up in a way that lets us inhabit our full potential, lets our hearts break open so there is that openness and that love that senses everybody as part of our hearts? What serves that awakening? So what I'd like to do tonight is, explore two pathways that are both, I think, ways that we pay attention that help us to touch truth and free our hearts. And I love the expression to love without holding back, because I think

each one of us can sense that we hold back, that out of fear, that there's a love that's possible, and out of fear our hearts get armored and we hold back. So there's two pathways. And one pathway I sometimes describe is not averting our gaze. That when there is suffering, when there's pain not to look away, whether it's our own or others. I was thinking about Ram Dass. Many of you know, Baba Ram Dass, who for many of you, for many years,

for this generation, I think of spiritual seekers is one of the first that he wrote Be Here Now, and he really has taught so much about the practices of presence. Well, he was teaching a course in Oakland some years ago, and it was a series of classes on how to serve from that presence. And one woman at the end of the series reported that the classes had profoundly affected her life, And she described how every day in the morning for years in this area, she would walk to work and pass the metro station. It was a homeless person that always was kind of camped out there.

So she put money into a cup. This happened day after day after day. And then she described how she realized recently that she had never looked him in the eye. She had never looked him in the eye. and she was afraid to. And then when she started to inquire, well, why am I afraid to look him in the eye?

What she realized, it's because if I really looked at him, he'd be sleeping on my living room couch. So in some way, we're afraid. We avert our gaze because we're afraid of being overwhelmed, we're afraid of being powerless. And yet, if we look away, it actually. actually increases suffering. So there's this invitation or calling on this spiritual path of awakening the heart to have the courage to look right into the source of the suffering, to sense that

deep down there's a feeling of separation. If we're willing to slow down and feel it, a feeling of fear. and if we're not touching that, if we're not courageous enough to touch the fear and the sense of separation, what happens is we don't touch the place that's really the source of our caring. So our compassion gets abstract. We can respond to things, and unless they completely hit us over the head, we don't completely avert our gaze.

We kind of take in the information, but we're not willing to really touch. where the pain is so we don't touch where our heart's tenderness is and we're not able to respond and inhabit our wholeness. Jesus said, if you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you. I think that's really a powerful statement because it, refers to the language I often turn to is unlived life, that if we don't bring forth the aliveness and tenderness that's within us, that bottled up unlived life leaves us cut off

and suffering. We stay asleep. We're disconnected from the awareness that's here. So out of that, out of unlived life, out of that cutoffness, violence. We don't violate when we feel connected. We just don't. What comes out from that cutoffness is greed. We don't have to grasp on if we feel connected. I love the teaching that if you remember the ocean, you can trust all the waves, you know.

And if you don't remember that you're the ocean, you get seasick every day. But isn't that true? that to the degree that we feel separate, we're seasick, we're kind of uncomfortable, we're upset, and then we react. And when it gets really severe, react in ways that can feel really horrible. So what we find is that one of our main ways of sleepwalking, of averting our gaze and keeping away from that core feelings, is to then get aggressive. When we don't touch the fear, we get either aggressive or we are in some way running away.

And in this culture, you can feel it. We're a nation that celebrates violence. I mean, I think of Rambo and Terminator and what really attracts us around the world. The Americans are thought of as cowboys. We solve all our problems with guns. Just the reputation. And in a more subtle way, there's judgment.

I mean, if it's not the physical gun, it's the aggression of judgment. that we all, and we're honest, know how many moments our minds have that form of violence of creating separation. So when we don't face what's inside us, what happens really is a kind of developmental arrest where the limbic system and reptilian brain, the parts of us that are in fight, flight basically are dominating. If we don't face what's in us, it's developmental arrest. then there's the cycles of violence. This is last year, a woman that lives in Uganda sent me an email,

and she said that she takes a weekend trip periodically to Rwanda, and she visits the genocide memorial center there. And she described this quote engraved on a plaque in the memorial center that struck her so much that she wanted me to know about it, and I've read it a few times. And it's by a man whose name was Felician Nacaggengwa. And I'm sure I am not pronouncing it right. He said this, if you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me.

Okay? So if we touch what's here, if we don't avert our gaze to what's here inside us and inside each other, there's a connection then. We don't, we will not cause harm. So much of our practice is really training not to avert our gaze. And I really think of much of the practice of mindful presence is this kind of, it's a courageous training and just stay with what's here, even when it's hard. And we start finding that the more we stay, the more we realize we can handle it, and not only that, we find in staying that there's a presence that has space and compassion

and creativity and humor and perspective. I mean, we come home to a refuge. But our conditioning is not to want to. So it takes a kind of training. And yet we have the capacity to, I mean, our most recently evolved part of our brain has the capacity to be mindful of its own conditioning. The most recently evolved part of our brain

has the capacity to be empathetic, to be compassionate. Mother Teresa said it's so memorably we have this capacity to see Christ in that distressing disguise. We can see past the veil.

This is our capacity. So the key is training our attention and being committed to it. And I was thinking about that and thinking about children I remember my son for his sixth birthday I gave him an aunt farm.

And I probably was the smartest present I ever gave him because he was absolutely fascinated in this. He would just watch. And, you know, this again, I'm thinking of a meditative environment. Like he was so engaged with watching these ants build their little tunnels and their graveyards. I remember they have a graveyard and they would drag their comrades to the graveyard.

He couldn't believe it when he first showed me an aunt dragging another aunt to put it in the graveyard. You know, he really was in it. And I remember picking him up from school one day, and he was, he got into the car, and he was really, really upset. And he told me that in the playground, kids were stamping on ants, and that he could not understand how they could do it. And he kept trying to make them stop, and they wouldn't stop. And as I reflected on this, I was remembering, you know, just this sense of, you know, I can't remember we said it, that attention is the deepest expression of love.

And it wakes up love. Whatever we pay attention to, if we really give it our attention, we discover in that presence that it's part of us. We know how we feel about our dogs, and then everybody else's dog is really a nice dog, but our dog is this special, you know. It's because we've paid so much attention that the sentience of that being has become part of our hearts.

It just happens. So it becomes, it's a training and attention and whatever we pay attention to we connect with, but it's very hard when what we're paying attention to is filled with suffering, whether it's our own suffering or another. It's very hard to stay with our own loneliness, our feelings of shame, when we feel in some way like a failure.

When we can avoid it, we will. So we find that when we do pay attention, either because we're forced to or our training, like happened this week for so many of us around the country, we couldn't not pay attention. It broke our hearts open. Our goodness, we could touch our goodness because there was such sincerity and is such sincerity.

I could feel it with so many of you as we're starting in tonight, it's in the room. There's just more inhabiting the fullness of who we are, more tenderness. So we know that it's there, and yet it's hard for us to open to. I thought I'd share that, you know, for myself, when I first heard the news about Newtown, you know, I was jarred, stunned, horrified, teared up some. It wasn't until I got really quiet and I started thinking of my son at six at five. I remembered a picture of him that I completely broke down.

There's something about when it's personal that our brains are designed to connect and relate. And I think our potential is to widen the circle of what feels personal. so that truly we get to, they're all our children, all of them, the ones in the Congo, the ones in the inner city, the ones in Connecticut, that we're all a part of each other's hearts. That's our potential. So I started by talking about developmental arrests, that we avert our eyes. The training is to stay and pay attention. But the good news in this, I think, is that as much as there's been developmental

rest are more. It seems that as a species, we are getting better. And I'm encouraging many people to read Stephen Pinker's book, Better Angels of Our Nature, which I've only read pieces of. And I'm just curious how many of you are familiar with it or have started reading some? I'm seeing a scattering of hands, yeah. He goes through human history and he really talks about how much violence there's been and how much evidence there is that there's less, that we're having fewer wars, that there's improved conditions for most subjugated minorities, less people are being killed. So we fix on what's wrong, and it's still a huge amount of violence and injustice, and yet there's a movement in a certain direction. And I feel like the fact that

that more and more people are practicing training their attention to come back into the moment, to be with what's difficult, to open our hearts to each other is probably the most beautiful, encouraging sign of this. Okay, so one of the trainings is don't avert the gaze, you know, kind of paying attention. The second training is to include the goodness in our gaze. because our conditioning is to fix on the trouble. So we have this deeply built-in capacity for collaboration, for empathy, for compassion. We see it in kindnesses all the time to include that.

I mean, not to get arrogant about the progress as humans are making. Some of you might remember that study last year. I mean, I spoke about it in here in Chicago, rats and rats in empathy. Somebody remember that? That when one rat was trapped in a kind of a small pen, another rat when it was given a treat saved part of its treat to give to the other rat. I mean, empathy. So, you know, they've got it. Even the rats have that capacity, us too. And then, of course, as humans, we get the spiritual ego thing that, you know, you can even see it in reality shows this week on. the amazing race to enlightenment.

Can Jim and Susie achieve right mindfulness? And will Barb and Candy be eliminated for relentless clinging to the self? So, you know, we tend to fixate. And even on ourselves, you know, when we, in some way, when we start, you know, I often will ask, you know, just to think of kindness as you've done. Sometimes we'll do a kind of a hand-raise and sharing. and often what comes out of when we think, well, when have I done something kind,

inevitably we find, oh, but there were mixed motives. I was kind of doing my good personhood project. It's very hard. I remember that story about some children in a school bus, and one of them brought a handful of peanuts up to the driver, and he said, oh, thank you very much. And they were sharing with him. The little girl went back, and kids were talking and doing this.

and she came back with another handful and he goes, wow, that's, you know, they're sharing. Third time, he says, no, no, no, honey. You keep the peanuts for yourself and your friends. And she said, oh, that's okay. We're just sucking the chocolate off of them. So sure, we have mixed motives, but, you know, there's still some benevolence in it.

Okay, so this second training, being willing to include in our gaze the goodness, to see past the veils, it both familiarizes us with goodness and it helps us really not only trust it in ourselves and each other but it calls it forth and I think that's the most important piece I remember

oh this is probably now about 10 12 years ago I participated in a teacher's meeting at Spirit Rock on the West Coast and the Dalai Lama was attending and he was sitting there I was really lucky. I got to sit right up front. I got to watch how he interacted with people and how every single person that he was with felt special

because every single person he just saw in them and treated them with tremendous respect and care. And it was interesting. One friend described him going to a hotel. And before he left, he asked that everybody that had helped in some, way, including those that had cleaned the rooms and those that had cooked the foods. He had them all there so he could thank them and say goodbye to them.

And even the Secret Service, and these are Secret Service guys that had protected all sorts of dignitaries and, you know, well-known politicians and so on. They said that they loved to be with the Dalai Lama. And the reason why was because he treats us as if we really matter. were special. You know, he really, every single person. Soon after that meeting, I remember coming home and seeing a picture of him

hugging Jesse Helms in the newspaper. It was just so, it was very sweet. There's a quote that says, Saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to us. admire everyone else, seeing with the eyes of the divine, seeing past the veil. So we look at each

other and yes, we see the particular body form and yes, we see the personality and the conditioning, but we see who's looking through those eyes. And we see the heart that's tender, that has this incredible capacity for loving. We see that. Nelson Mandela says it never hurts to think too highly of a person, often they become ennobled and act better because of it. It isn't it so? I think of this as parenting. This would be like parenting 101. If we could remember the goodness, really see the goodness, really let children know we see the goodness. That's who they are. It comes out. It brings it out. But it's not only Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. You know, it's not just saints that are capable of recognizing goodness.

It's in each of us. Each of us cherishes goodness. So a short story for you. Dante was standing near the Ponte Vecchio. Thank you. A bridge that crosses the Arnault River in Florence. It was just before 1,300. Okay.

Dante saw Beatrice standing on the bridge. he was a young man she even younger and that vision contained the whole of eternity for him Dante did not speak to her and saw her very little and then Beatrice died

carried off by the plague Dante was stricken with the loss of his vision she was the connection between his soul and heaven itself 650 years later during World War II the Americans were chasing the German army up the Italian peninsula.

The Germans were blowing up everything of aid to the progression of the American army, including the bridges across the Arno River. But no one wanted to blow up Ponte Vecchio because Beatrice had stood on it and Dante had written about it. So the German army made radio contact with the Americans, and in plain language they said they would leave Ponte Vecchio intact if the Americans would promise not to use it. The promise held.

The bridge was not blown up and not one American soldier or piece of equipment went across it. We're such hard-bidden people that we need hard-bidden proof of things and this is the most hard-bidden fact I know to present you. The bridge was spared in a modern, ruthless war

because Beatrice had stood upon it. There's something in every human heart that perceives goodness, loves goodness, really wants that goodness to flow through. There's something in us that wants that, that longs for that. So I like the word beingness. It kind of gets to be, it's the expression of our beingness itself, some very pure innocence beyond our egoic conditioning. and that cherishing of goodness is actually requires a training

because we have so much conditioning not to see it, not to see the goodness in ourselves and not to see the goodness in others. Robert Johnson has an interesting way of describing this. He's a noted Jungian analyst. He acknowledges how difficult it is for many of our us to believe in our goodness. He says, we're more easily, we more easily take our worst fears and thoughts

to be who we are, the unacknowledged traits called our shadow. Curiously, writes Johnson, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. It is more disrupting to find you have profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum. So why is this?

You know, why is it easier to subscribe to a limiting story of who we are than to sense that soul or beingness, that essential beingness that is intrinsically radiant, loving, awake? Why is it that we subscribe to something smaller? We might sense that it's just the familiarity, that there's something in us that would rather have ground to stand on even if it's very hardened ground, even if it's an armored heart, then sensing this open-endedness and groundlessness of being. That there's something in us that wants to feel safe and we're safer if we think we've already figured out all our flaws, then we can protect ourselves. Nobody else is going to reveal it to us. We can then

cover it up. We're so organized around feeling flawed and covering it and trying to compensate and trying to in some way be better beyond a self-improvement project. We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if we really trusted what Thomas Merton calls the secret beauty. Only secret because we're just not accustomed to it. That part of us that really understands about Beatrice on the bridge, that there's something sacred when there's love. There's something sacred when we feel our belonging to the eternal. That's a realm. We'd rather stay in a smaller realm. It's disorienting. So there's an active process when we include in our gaze the goodness of training ourselves to let go of this habit of self-suspition, just to recognize it. Okay. Second-guessing

myself, judging myself, putting myself down, just to get it, and to intentionally look towards the goodness, what Buddha called the inner nobility of spirit. Now, the training, and this is sometimes called the loving kindness, training of looking towards the good, it's sometimes wise to start with where it's easiest. And for many of us, the easiest place is children. because we sense innocence. There's innocence, innocence, and my sister and I were talking about this recently. It's when do we get to that point where all of a sudden that we don't detect that anymore, when the ego's solidified enough so we become suspicious.

We spend more time seeing the mask of ego than that tenderness. When does that happen at what age for ourselves? You know, we can hold the inner child that we perceive inside us up until it's a certain age, and then it becomes an ego we don't like. Does that make sense? We can sense it in the child, though. Friend of mine, a very dear friend in New York, just sent me a picture of her granddaughter,

and her granddaughter is named after a flower, and you just saw, I mean, I just teared up when I saw it. It's just like the light of spirit was shining through us. She was just this blossoming being. So easy to see the close. goodness. So this friend's a grandmother and I pulled out a few things that grandmothers had written I wanted to share with you. One writes, my young grandson called the other day to wish me happy birthday. He asked me how old I was and I told him 62. He was quiet for a moment and then he

asked, did you start at one? I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet so I decided to test her. I would point out something and ask. what color it was. She would tell me, and always she was correct. But it was fun for me, so I continued. At last, she headed for the door saying sagely, Grandma, I think you should try to figure out some of these yourself. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, I'm not sure. Look in your underwear, Grandma, he advised. Mine says I'm four to six. I also love some of these Some children were quizzed about love

And with their descriptions of love And one was when my grandmother got arthritis She couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore So my grandfather does it all the time for her Even when his hands got arthritis too That's love Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody Most of your French fries without making them give any

of yours. Love is when Mommy sees daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he's handsomer than Robert Redford. Love is when

your puppy looks your face even after you left him alone all day. I know my older sister loves me because she gives

me all her old clothes and then has to go out and buy new ones. When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars

come out of you. One more. You really shouldn't say I love you unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget and it's good for them to get reminded. So it's a training to remember. It's a training to see that inner beauty. And it's a challenge often with ourselves, as I mentioned,

and also with others, because again, back to that survival brain, we make divisions. We look around and scan for who might, be causing trouble. You know, we scan for who's letting us down in our own families. We lock into blame. But we also have this very painful thing of tribes and this is me and the other is different. And it's a deep habit. We're not even aware of often that we have really stopped seeing the humanity and others. It's not with a stereotyping. It's not our fault so much in the sense It's just in the culture.

We're breathing the air. It's the conditioning of the culture, and yet when we catch a whiff, how toxic it is, which leads me to maybe my last story for the evening. This is told by a Unitarian minister. It was Sunday Christmas. Our family had spent the holidays in San Francisco with my husband's parents. But in order to be back to work,

we had to drive the 400 miles home to Los Angeles, Christmas Day. So we stopped for lunch in King City, a little metropolis made of six gas stations, three diners, and it was into one that the four of us trooped, road weary, and saddle sore. As I sat Eric, our one-year-old, in a high chair, I looked around the room and wondered, what am I doing in this place? The restaurant was near empty. We were the only family and ours were the only children. Everyone else was pretty quiet, where perhaps we were all out of place on this special day. My reverie was interrupted when I heard Eric squeal with glee.

Hi there. Two words. He thought, or one. Hi there. He pounded his fat baby hands. Wack, whack, whack on the metal high chair tray. His face was alive with excitement, eyes wide, gums bared, and a toothless grin. He wriggled and chirped and giggled.

And then I saw the source of his merriment and my eyes could not take it in all at once. A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone eons ago. dirty, greasy worn, baggy pants, both bay and the zipper at half-mast, over a spindly body, toes that poked out of woodby shoes, gums as bare as Eric's, hair uncombed, unwashed, whiskers too short to be called a beard, but way way beyond a shadow and a nose, so varicose it looked like a map of New York. I was too far away to smell him, but I knew he smelled, and his hands were waving in the air, flapping on loose wrists. Hi there, baby, hi there. big boy I see a buster my husband and I exchanged a look that was across between what do we do and poor devil eric continued to laugh and answer hi there with every call it was echoed i noticed waitresses eyebrows shoot to their foreheads and several people sitting near us out loud this old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby i shoved a cracker at eric and he pulverized it on the tray i whispered why me under my breast

Our meal came and the nuisance continued. Now the old bum was shouting from across the room. Do you know Patty Cake? Outta boy. Do you know peekaboo? Hey, he knows peekaboo. Nobody thought it was cute. The guy was probably a drunk and a definite disturbance.

I was embarrassed. My husband, Dennis, was humiliated. Even our six-year-old said, why is that man talking so loud? We ate in silence except Eric, who is running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum. Finally, I had enough. I turned the high chair.

Eric screamed and clamored around to face his old buddy. Now I was getting really mad. Dennis went to pay the check, imploring me, get Eric and meet me in the parking lot. I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked toward the exit. The old man was poised and waiting, his chair directly between me and where I was trying to go. Lord, just let me get out of fear before he speaks to me or Eric. I headed toward the door. It soon became apparent that both the Lord and Aaron.

Eric had other plans. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back, walking to sidestep him, and any air he might be breathing. As I did so, Eric all the while, with his eyes riveted to his best friend, leaned far over my arm reaching with both arms in a baby's pick-me-up position. In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came eye-to-eye with the old man. Eric was lunging for him, arm spread wide.

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

His aged hands full of grime and pain and hard labor gently, so gently, cradled my baby's bottom and stroke his back. I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment, and then his eyes open and sat squarely on mine. He said in a firm commanding voice, you take care of this baby. Somehow I managed, I will, from a throat that contained a stone.

He pried Eric from his chest unwillingly, longingly, as though he were in pain. I held my arms open to receive my baby, and again the gentleman addressed me. God bless you, ma'am, you've given me my Christmas gift. I said nothing more than a muttered, thanks. With Eric back in my arms, I ran for the car. Dennis wondered why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly and why I was saying, my God, my God, forgive me. So we might wonder how many people in our lives each day and through the week, we just don't see.

It's just not our way of taking in the world that we see who's there behind our ideas, behind our projections. And what this world will be like if we made a commitment just to slow down a bit more and see who's there. see the goodness and when we do each time and you know what the experience is like when you kind of have an idea about someone then you begin to get to know them

and feel oh that's not what I thought and there's that surprise and we become larger we become larger every time we step out of our comfort zone and begin to engage and take more and more

in our hearts so we really realize they're all our children. Each person here is a part of my heart. We become vast. So this is the last piece, then, the gaze that includes the good, and it's a life practice, and we'll practice together some. I just to say, one of my very dear friends, a teacher from Spirit Rock James Barras, described early on, and when I was just training to be a teacher, how his practice was when he worked with anyone to first just slow down enough to see the Buddha nature, the beauty and

goodness shining through that person, and then to go ahead and work with all the conditioning and so on, but established in that recognition. What if we did that with each other? Can you imagine the freedom of our hearts? So we look towards the good, and we start where it's easiest. sometimes. We start with ourselves, with others. Practice a little bit right now. So in this pause, letting your breath come to your heart, just to feel that you're breathing into your heart, smiling into your heart,

feeling the aliveness in the heart area, including whatever mood or feelings are here in the moment. And sensing what happens when your intention is to appreciate the goodness of your own being, For some you might reflect on attributes that you like, how kindness gets expressed, how there is care, honesty, humor, wisdom. You might also sense your aspiration, our heart's intention, the decency and sincerity and goodness of your heart's longing. I think our deepest longing reveals who we are. You might look through another's eyes at someone that you trust and that you love it yourself

just to experiment a little and sense what that person's appreciating. And take a chance that it's true. Just take a chance, letting go of old habit of being suspicious. So in a way, you're looking through the eyes of the divine at your own being, giving yourself beyond the benefit of a doubt, just sensing the awareness that's in here, that which is listening, the aliveness that's here,

and this heart that's tender and has the capacity to respond to life with care, offering yourself whatever blessing you'd like in this moment on this solstice evening, then bringing to mind someone that's dear, someone that you care about, and letting your gaze include, goodness. You might imagine that person when they're loving you. Imagine that person when they're

happy and just sense how that person's a part of your heart. Taking a moment to sense what it would be like if you let that person know your appreciation of their goodness. You might mentally whisper the person's name and whisper thank you. And then again, imagine how that person would respond if they could just feel your appreciation, sensing that field of oneness and tenderness and warmth become more intense and alive, letting a few others in your life come into the field of awareness, just seeing the goodness, the secret beauty, with each sensing how they're part of your heart, this vast heart, letting that sense of heart widen in all directions. including all of life.

And relaxing the breath in the quietness, feeling free to look around and seeing the lights, the candles, sensing the hearts and spirits to fill the room. For those that are listening

or watching, feeling this field of light, sensing on this shortest day of the year, this light that is timeless within each that we can call on, that we can express, so that we feel our shared prayer, taking these moments first in silence, to feel your own prayer for this world, for the healing, well-being of all, the sense and the silence and the stillness, the light of your own being, the truth of this

inner radiance, oh mani padme hum, this compassion and love, that really is a field of loving presence, so that collectively we can offer our prayer, prayer to those, very particularly those in that heartbreaking grief of loss in Newtown, feeling our hearts hold that, keep company with to not avert our gaze and to also see this radiant, tender, loving presence that can offer company and solace in our connectedness. The sense this heart-feeling, feel of heart space that includes children everywhere, that they're all our children in the Congo, in the inner city, our own children, to sense this heart space that includes all beings so that we sense this earth. We sense those that are struggling in different ways with

hunger, with disease, those that are in places of war, those who are in places of war, those who experience loss, fear, aloneness. We hold all beings in our heart. And we hold the earth, our mother in our heart. All beings everywhere. May all beings experience the loving presence. That's the very essence of what we are. Find refuge in that loving presence. May all beings touch great and natural peace. May there be peace on earth. May there be peace on earth. May there be peace on earth and peace everywhere. May all beings awaken and be free. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my

website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.