Tara Brach - What is Love Asking from Us? Reflections on Palestine and the Bodhisattva Path With Tara Brach & Gabor Mate

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

In this conversation, Tara Brach and Gabor Maté come together to explore the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza through the lens of the Bodhisattva path. Drawing from the Bodhisattva path - the commitment to alleviate suffering for all beings - they explore the importance of compassion and engaged spirituality in responding to the oppression and trauma experienced by the Palestinian and Israeli people. This conversation is an invitation to examine our own spiritual practices and to consider how we can embody the Bodhisattva spirit in today's world, breaking the silence and standing in solidarity with all who are suffering. It was offered as part of a series of conversations that accompany a poignant and heartbreaking film - "Where Olive Trees Weep" - about the struggles and resilience of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.  whereolivetreesweep.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. This week I'm sharing a conversation that was recorded earlier in the summer with Gabor Matte. And it was entitled, What is Love Asking from Us? Reflections on Palestine and the Bodhisattva Pate. path. Our conversation focuses on the qualities of hardened awareness that go beyond taking sides and truly hold all who are suffering with compassion. And I can say that I don't see any other pathway to healing seemingly intractable violence than over time humans evolving consciousness, learning to stop dehumanizing and instead waking up to that realization of the preciousness of all lives

but caring is what gives us a future worth living for. So many of you know of Gabor who is a friend, colleague and someone I feel deep, deep honoring of. He's a Canadian physician, an author. He's done groundbreaking work and trauma. addiction and war. And he brings a very deep, wise, caring, understanding to the horror that's unfolding in Palestine. And he's a key figure in the film where the olive trees weep. And it's about the Israeli occupation of Palestine. And this conversation that we had is one of a number that he had with many different types of people.

For those of you who are interested in the film and the conversation, you'll see the links here. So I hope you find this helpful. It was a truly meaningful and opening exchange for me. Thank you, Tara, for joining us. This is not Tara's in my first meeting. In fact, just a few months ago, I invited Tara to speak to my students in the therapeutic course I facilitate called Compassion Inquiry,

and particularly on acceptance and compassion. Before we get into the main topic of the conversation, I just want to speak to you a little bit about your own background and relationship to this whole issue of Palestine, Israel, and what's happening there and what's happening here in relationship to what's happening there. you have a large following in the spiritual world in the mindfulness community. And in December, you published a blog where you began to talk a little bit about your personal history

and your personal relationship to this whole issue. And just I want to hear a little bit about that. So I take it you from Jewish background and Holocaust survivors in your extended family, but you were not brought up Jewish particularly. Can you tell me about what was your relationship to Jewishness as you were growing up? Yeah, yeah. So as you mentioned, Jewish on all sides, really. And my father spent some time in a kibbutz.

He was very starry-eyed, you know, kind of socialist-leaning leftist guy who was very excited and inspired by what was possible. And, yeah, some of the extended family were lost in the Holocaust. that my parents ended up being Unitarian. I didn't even think of myself as Jewish until more recently, you know, as the sense of my ancestry. But I did go to, you know, holidays and so on with cousins. So it was, it's, you know, kind of the background of my family. But for quite a while, I've been, as I kind of get a growing, had a growing sense of what was going on in terms of Israel's

occupation of Gaza, West Bank, and so on, a growing alarm. And I started, you know, giving to Jewish Voices piece about 10 years ago and just starting to learn more. But really, it was not until October 7 that I began to immerse myself more and sense really the tragedy of how trauma creates trauma. And the scale of it was crushing. And so it felt, and this is what gets interesting with teachers on a spiritual path. My basic understanding of a spiritual path is that it's as much about inner cultivation of love, compassion, and awake heart, and how it's outwardly expressed.

And that includes how we're expressing it collectively. and when there's huge suffering, part of the path is to respond to it. So it felt really important to start naming more actively. This is going on. And what is our heart's response to it? And that brought forward that first blog post, which received a huge amount of criticism and also gratitude. and the second post way, way more, way, way more pain, hurt, reactivity, and so on. So maybe I'll pause there and see if that kind of responded to what you were wondering about.

It's impossible not to notice how many of the leading Buddhist teachers in North America have a Jewish background, including names that are, I know, are friends of yours, close colleagues of yours and well-known to a lot of people. Any good thoughts as to why that's the case? I think that the practices that are very contemplating the nature of reality and that have both a mental and a heart component are really appealing to certain kinds of minds, but not really. I don't want to make that broad a generalization.

But what I thought you were going to say is it's striking how few people have been speaking about what's going on, the horror of just the massacre and the scale of it. And it's beginning to shift. I was at a meeting, a Zoom meeting, a couple of weeks ago, with 300 people who are deep practitioners and also teachers, really about breaking the silence. But it's slow because there's a,

You know, some people are very, very concerned about that anything they say will create the kind of injury that will prevent people from feeling that they can then learn from that person. So that's caused a lot of tension in the community. I was going to bring, come to that issue of what to me has struck me as the conspicuous silence of spiritual leaders, whether of a Jewish background or whether or not. or whether even if a Buddhist background or other spiritual paths. Let me come to the spiritual argument, as I understand it, if it's an argument, the point of view, and I'm certainly no spiritual adept. But as I understand it, some people say,

I haven't spoken out because I don't want to take sides. I haven't spoken out because we're in favor of peace and unity and not creating more division. And as soon as you bring politics into it, you're creating division. And we're all about unity and togetherness. Now, is that a fair characterization of how some people might think about it

and why they don't speak? There's a lot of different... That's one. And, you know, people spoke up a lot about Ukraine and spoke up a lot with Black Lives Matter and spoke up a lot with the Rohingya, the oppression of the Rohingya. So it wasn't so hard to take sides on those. I think that the real thing going on is that

so many of the students of these teachers would experience any sense of calling for a ceasefire saying that we don't want to spend our tax dollars on weapons to kill children, that kind of a statement as being, you don't care about me. And that's just to say, Gabor, that, you know, I've gotten a huge amount of email after saying those kind of things. This is what love calls me to say, that we, you know, to fight and work for, you know, permanent ceasefire and this and this, that that translated as a hateful post,

that they interpreted as meaning, I didn't care about their suffering. And I think that's the fear, that in some way, anything you say will be interpreted by some as, I don't care about your suffering. I think that that may come up, but I don't think that's enough of a reason not to speak, but I think that's the concern. Well, as the Buddha says in the first very statement, of the Dharamapata, basically everything is mind in the lead, everything has thought in the lead, and he's implying, I think, is that basically with our minds and with our mindsets, we create the world that we live in.

And if you have a certain mindset, then it doesn't matter what somebody says. You're going to interpret it a certain way through your particular perspective. And from a certain perspective, any criticism or what strikes people as criticism of Israel is an attack on Jews. That's right. Please go ahead, yeah. That's on the side of the recipient. Their mindset totally filtered. If you ask, what does the Buddhist Dharma teach us in terms of what's wise speech?

and it's to say what's true and to say what's helpful, and that takes a huge amount of wise discrimination. So I think for some teachers, they are assuming it's not going to be helpful. That's their judgment call, that they can serve more by teaching people how to find an inner refuge in the midst of a chaotic and violent and, you know, incredibly cruel world. But that's what they can do. They can teach people to find some inner refuge.

inner balance and then hopefully people will act out of that in a wise way. I think that's probably the best summary of how it's being interpreted by teachers who are being silent, that it's not for them wise speech. Well, and one can certainly salute anybody who helps other people attain in a state of inner peace and balance. But I found, I'm just speaking for my and I'm not standing behind this point of view because I kind of let go of it now. But for the first months, I was just enraged at the silence. I was just enraged.

Now, my rage is my own problem. My rage is my own not dealing with my own mind, I suppose, you know. But I was very judgmental and I was very disappointed. And frankly, frankly, angry. What you just said is probably, well, it sees an accurate explanation of what people think, but it's also the most charitable explanation, you know, and there's less charitable ones,

which is that people are just afraid of losing followers or people are afraid of losing faith. I'm not going to ask you to comment on that one unless you want to. Well, I do. Actually, yeah, no. I like being as real as possible. I think that's true. I think people want to preserve their standing, their image, and their student numbers.

And if we, and I just also want to name that, like you, I have had to process my own judgment. I think it reflects something really deep, which is that there's a kind of narrow interpretation of what is a spiritual path. and that the spiritual path is meant to focus on our inner work. And to me, the hope for the world is that we do this inner work of waking up our hearts and caring more for the benefit of our shared belonging for the world that we're part of. And that without that piece, you know, what is there to hope for in terms of, you know, any real evolution?

So to me, a very evolved spiritual perspective is one where you don't separate the inner and the outer. But it takes a lot more courage and it forces you to face a lot of vulnerability. I know I've been having to work a lot with, you know, I'm not super thin-skinned, but it hurts to have people that I care about feel like I don't care about them. So I've had a view with that. The thing I do get is that the change, people changing and opening and taking more risk isn't going to come out of me judging them, but more me having the capacity to be in communication in a way that they trust that I basically love them and respect them, even if I don't agree with the stance they have. And that's the only way that, at least in my little circle of different teachers, it's going to emerge. that people take more of a step out.

You know, what's really difficult is to get across to people, that by speaking truth, you're not taking sides. You're actually just taking everybody's side, because the people that might believe that by speaking out, you are not recognized that they're suffering. What they don't get is what I'm sure you believe, certainly I believe, that the path that they're following is going to increase

their suffering. So that it's not that you don't care about their suffering, it's that you see that they're going down a path that's going to create more suffering, not just for the other but also for themselves. So by speaking the truth, it's not that you're being a partisan. It's that you're saying people, this is going to create more suffering in the world. You and I agree, and I don't think it's about sides either. I think the real healing comes when you truly authentically in your heart care about the well-being of all. The problem is that's a nice idea, but many people that feel they're speaking in the

truth also have energetically some bad othering of a side. And I feel like that's part of our work collectively, those of us that really care about what's going on is to do the inner work that helps us to disarm our hearts where we, even though we're saying the right things, are angry, blaming or feeling hatred towards those we feel are the oppressors. And that's really hard work. I mean, it takes a real dedication. But I don't feel like it's enough to stand up and speak the truth of what's going on, it requires a kind of heart energy that conveys, that really conveys that it's rooted in caring.

And that's my attraction to the bodhisattva path, which is it's fully dedicated to the inner work that becomes the roots of transformational activism. And I think we have to have all of it. Let's talk about the bodhisatt path then. and your first blog, I think, was related to the question of what does love require from us? You know, so, well, words are just words. Historically speaking, the Buddha spoke to all kinds of leaders. He spoke to kings and economic leaders as well as those of the low caste.

he didn't make distinctions. Did he ever take what anybody could call a political position as far as you can tell? A position on... Some social issue that might have been seen by others as radical or inappropriate? Not so much. I mean, the caste system survived and women were oppressed. And there were, I mean, there was a lot of hierarchy there. He tried to resolve some conflicts between warring groups, you know, but then that didn't work out so well, so they went on a reins retreat.

You know, so I'm not sure except for that he taught about compassion more on an individualistic level. And this is something else I wanted to bring up because, to me, a lot of the ways that Buddhism and many spiritual paths get interpreted are very individualistic. It's about how do I work with my fear? How do I open my heart? How do I, you know, improve this relationship? How do I get realized spiritually? And I think part of the shift that I really love in the bodhisattapath, which is the Mahayana tradition,

is it becomes more of a collective understanding that we are inextricably belonging to each other, that anything I say or do is going to influence ripple out and influence the world and the world's influencing me or inter-influencing every moment and that if we can realize that then we know that we're acting to relieve it's never my suffering it's our suffering and when there's suffering that seems out there it's part of the suffering that my heart's trying to hold And so the Bodhisattva path widened it to make it more collective, that we're really waking up for the sake of all beings. It's not an individual project.

And that feels in these times, and I feel like indigenous teachers really teach it beautifully too, that it's the flourishing of all that's necessary. And you find the bodhisattva teachings, I think, in every major religion. They're just not highlighted often, you know. So the key emphasis really is sensing our interdependence, knowing that it's not about a separate self, it's about we, and doing the inner cultivation that really gets it in a cellular way. The deepness I'm speaking right now, I'm feeling a sense of we with you,

and I saw the messages coming from others, that there's a sense of the field of belonging. And when we have that sense of the field of belonging, it becomes quite natural to serve into it. But it takes, it takes training. It really takes training because this culture is so, we are so imprinted with self-concern. And we go around the day and most of the time our thoughts are about, wah, you know, like what I need to do and how am I going to impress and what I'm afraid of. and so it takes training. And so there's, I think the attraction again of the Buddhist path for me has been that

there are actually very well-articulated trainings of the heart-mind that help us to wake up into that collective belonging in a way that brings a huge amount of joy and peace and also motivates us to act, not because we should, not out of obligation, but because it's for us. It's for all of us. Certainly in a Jewish tradition, I think any tradition, there are different strains, there are different dynamics, and some are quite contradictory, I mean, directly contradictory. So in the Jewish tradition, there's the beautiful, prophetic tradition of justice for all, of not oppressing the stranger. Dikun Olam. Yeah.

of not coveting other people's lands, of speaking the truth to higher authority, like kings, like telling kings that your desires and lusts are not paramount, but there's a higher truth, which we call God, you know? So there's that tradition, and in Judaism, that tradition is actually enshrined in the official teachings. But at the same time, there's a very chauvinistic, even genocidal, narrow tradition that makes it all about us and our right to do anything we want to anybody else, including to kill them all, if that's what it takes to take over the land.

So, you know, Buddhism that's less apparent, but let's face it, you mentioned the Rohingya. The Rohingya were being prosecuted by people that are nominally Buddhists. By the Buddhist, exactly. Yeah. So that tension seems to have existed forever in spiritual teachings and religious practices. Exactly. Ticknod Han said it so powerfully that our enemy is not man. It's this conditioning we have that when we're afraid,

when we're caught up in that perception of separation, we tend to hurt each other and hurt ourselves. And so that's the conditioning to pay attention to. And there's no way to wake up from that trance of being separate without practicing. It takes a training to wake up from that trance of separation. Yeah. So what does love demand from us?

And in your first blog that you published in December, you end with a I just want to run through them with you and ask you to speak about them, you know, and you ask about what the heart, was it the heart? What is the love asking for me, you say? And then you share what came up for you

in pondering the question of what love is asking for you. And you say, my heart knows that I need to keep connecting inwardly so that you're aware of your own habitual fears and biases. This is where you're talking about training, isn't it? Exactly. And just to share an example, because we were talking

about our judgments, and I was working, and this is a friend of mine who, this was, I think, November, and she was horrified by Hamas's attack, but then it became crushing to see the scale

of, you know, just the massacre that followed. So she really angry and blaming and this is a Dharma teacher. And so she knew that she did not want to be caught in anger, hatred, and blame. And, you know, this is her prayer. It was like there's so much of it. I don't want to see more. And so we practice with it together. And just to give you a feeling for how that can be, because so many of us get in that grip of what it's like when we really feel innocent beings being violated at the scale. So we talked for a few moments, and there's this Buddhist phrase that many are familiar with,

that hatred never seizes by hatred, but by love alone is healed, that this is the ancient and eternal law. So we took some moments to get quiet. So part of the training is to breathe and feel the present moment, and then you know you leave and you come back. and you keep coming back until there's some sense of here. You can even mentally whisper the word here. You're here. And then we began what I call the rain practice, which is really mindfulness and compassion

brought to the tangle that we're stuck in. And so rain is an acronym. The R is recognized. And so she recognized the blame and the hatred. She could sense the parts of her that were making certain people an enemy. the A of rain is to allow, is to let that energy be there, to not fight what's going on, rather to bring a kind of curiosity and caring presence to it, which leads to the eye of rain,

which is investigate. And when she investigated, she found under the anger, the blame, the hatred, she felt hate, there was this powerlessness. It was really hard to stay with the sense of, There's no answer. I don't see an answer here. I don't see relief. And maybe some of you can relate to that, because I run into that a lot. And so she investigated and just being with that and letting that be there. And what emerged under that powerlessness and fear, that not knowing, was an ocean of grief, just went into grief. And that's when the end of nurture, you know,

to meet that pain with kindness. And so we breathe together and she felt it. And she felt in that grief, because there's always something you care about, some love that needs attention. She felt how much she loved life. And she wanted to protect life. And that her prayer was,

may this life be in service of love. So I share this because she went from an armed heart that was blaming an enemy, you know, the Israeli military, or Nizanahu, whatever, to a sense of this tenderness that still even more felt like it wanted to help. And so that's when she could ask the question, what is love asking for me? And it was partly to be able to keep not knowing and yet keep cherishing life to speak out, you know, to teach on the preciousness of all life to be active.

But so here's the thing. People are often afraid that if they disarm their heart, they're not going to be active. That if they're too compassionate, you know, that everything will be equalized, that'll get neutralized. And we can open our hearts and absolutely respond to the scale of the suffering in appropriate ways. But what's going to happen is we're going to be responding from care, not from hatred and anger. and that makes all the difference. So that's just an example, Gabor, that I wanted to share because when I had that commitment, it was to really, when I find my heart judging to disarm,

take the time to disarm. And I have to say that that's been the greatest challenge for me, and it's not a challenge that I was able to rise to a whole number of times in the last several months. including despite me agreeing with everything you just said, I created some very difficult scenes for people very close to me because of my lack of just being to hold my grief and hold the pain and hold the even helplessness.

And instead going into rage and kind of an aggressive energy that came up for me because I was unwilling just to grieve. It's a difficult one. just what you said, it just really hits me. It's that there's that phrase, vengeance is a lazy form of grief that it's so much harder to sit down into the vulnerability of grief will do anything. And our default is always to create a bad other. It's always to aim at, and just to mention, because you know this, and you know this more explicitly than I do, the habit of blaming dehumanizing, demonizing.

It's universal. You know, it's biologically rooted. It's part of our survival brain. You know, it's just so much simpler and faster to create an enemy, that default to black, white thinking, then to open our hearts to this complexity that whoever's causing suffering is suffering. It's really hard to remember that.

And I have a very simple little metaphorical story, that helps me over and over of just imagining you're walking in the woods and you see a little dog by a tree and you go to pet it and it lurches at you with its fangs bared and you go from being friendly to being really angry and then you see that it has this paw in a trap and you might not get close to it you might keep your boundaries to protect yourself but you're no no longer hating or anger. It's not hate or anger. Then there's caring again. And if we can, every time our hearts get armed in some way, look to see how there's a leg in a trap. And I want to say that first we actually have to feel what's under the armor within ourselves. First,

we have to pay attention to our own fear, hurt, and then grief. But then we start having the eyes to see the other with much more sensitivity and depth. It's very freeing. We can start seeing how they're family and they're hurting. I read a citation ascribe to the Dalai Lama. If it's not accurate, it should be. But it's one of those stories that if it's not true, it should be true. But he's supposed to have said that when it comes to to Hitler, kill him but don't hate him. It's not his fault that he's become this creature that he is. Now I want to go to the next point, because this is a difficult one. I mean, the first one about self-exploration and getting to our own biases and not projecting our own fears and frustration onto

others, at least conceptually that's, it's not easy to do, but conceptually easy to understand. There's not a whole lot of disagreement there. The next one, I think is difficult for a lot of people that you wrote back in December, which is that my heart asked that I continue to deepen my understanding of the historic trauma, causes and conditions leading up to conflict, violence, and suffering. And that's when you remember that humans are not your enemy. Well, to a lot of people, and this is, I find is the case to an end degree to, let's see if you're a Jewish person or a well-meaning, non-Jewish person of that matter, if you don't know anything about the history of Palestinians and what happened in Israel, Zionism going back to over 100 years now, and especially the 1948,

then October 7th just seems like another pogrom, like another massacre of Jews because they're Jews. by people that hate us and want to destroy us. That's how it will appear. But the Israeli historian, Ilan Papi, with whom I'll have the privilege of having a conversation later on today, he talks about ahistoricism, being a-historical. A-historical means you don't know the history.

And it takes a lot of research to actually find out what really happened in Palestine, going back to the beginning of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, and then particularly in 1948 and ever since. And that research is, of course, discouraged by the media and the major institutions. It's not known to a lot of people what's really happened here, so that there is another narrative, and there's another people there whose experience is being totally ignored

and denigrated and invalidated. So doing that research, which is the second point of what your heart demands, that's a very difficult task for a lot of people because it asks them to challenge a lot of what they believed and they've been told for a long time. Yeah, and it's the reason it feels so intractable because living in different cocoons or realities makes it very hard to wake up empathy,

and have any communication communing. So it's going to be up to those who can. And it doesn't have to be, I mean, you've, Gabor, you've got a certain kind of mentality that allows you to grok a huge amount of information. I don't have that, but I have a willingness to expose my heart to pain. And I think that's what it takes. And what I mean by that, the word proximity is what kind of, comes to mind is just the power of this film where olive trees cry is that it helps people

become more proximate with a reality that they weren't familiar with. For those that have a very hard fast reality that this would threaten, they're not going to be the ones. It's going to be up to others who are not as traumatized and have some part of their being that's got a longing for truth that wants to be explained. and we need to be exposed. It really has... And it takes practice to get exposed.

And if you even think of it in your personal life, we don't incline ourselves to want to come as close to the suffering that's there. I mean, there's one wise stage that when people were struggling, he'd have one question, and that is, what are you unwilling to feel? So it takes a courage to get proximate with the suffering. And, you know, I witnessed that courage in people that aren't as immediately traumatized because empathy really, the capacity for empathy are opening or having an interest in a large reality.

Everything shuts down when you're in survival mode. So it's really important not to judge people for hanging on to their realities, but just to know that we need to be reaching to all those that are wanting to care more about truth than they do about feeling safe. You know, I think I've taught a few meditation groups from Israel, Israelis. I've taught a few Palestinians, Palestinian groups, and I've witnessed in both those who are willing to lean in and touch a larger reality. And it totally inspired me.

You know, I witnessed with an Israeli group, one woman was talking about, she said, please pray for my son. He's two years old, and he's a hostage, and he doesn't have his parents with him. And so the group was with that, but by the end, the prayer was for all children and invoking the pain that was getting close in with the realness of a body and a rubble is not just a body in a rubble. It's a human life that was innocent and it's gone. Getting close into that. And then with the Palestinian group, the closing prayer that one woman gave after, and this is after a group was sharing whole families, extended families, because most of them, they weren't in Gaza.

They were actually several hundred people part of a meditation group that is online, that with people living in different our countries. But at the end, the prayer was, there's such a strong, strong pressure to hate, please. May I keep my heart open, please? You could feel the courage to be touched. And that is really the characteristic of the bodhisattva, which is this willingness to have our hearts touched

so we can feel a tenderness of response. to come to the suffering you know I'm just reading rereading a book by Biko Boti called the Noble Eightfold Path and you mentioned safety and there's a site that he says in it that real security lies on the side of truth and Biko Boti has spoken up in a very powerful way he's been really a leader in Buddhist teachers speaking out so I want just honor him for that. Yeah. I'm glad to hear that. I didn't know that. I'd like you to comment on something else you wrote in your blog in December 26th. You said, my heart realizes that how we seek what we long for determines what unfolds in the future. It's interesting that you don't

say that what we seek or what we long for determines it is how we seek what we long for. Can you comment on that? Yeah, it's a bit what we were talking about before, that if so many of us listening here deeply want an end to the violence and the violation now, you know, that's the prayer, that's really what we long for, how we go about speaking, like our words and our actions in that direction are going to determine how much transformation is possible. And this is why on the bodhisattva path, it keeps coming back to re-grounding in an awake heart. Because if we speak with each other, we speak out, and there's that visceral transmission of caring, that's going to inspire. That's contagious.

But if there's animosity and blame and we're not including some others, we're seeking the humanity of one at the expense of the other, you know, we might end up politically. getting something, but it's not the kind of transformation that seeds the future, that really is a future of reverence for life, which is, I think, what we all really long for. What evolved for you between the time that you published your first blog in December and then five months later you published another one? Some of the tone or the intention is the same, but I also get the sense that something changed for you. Is that the case? Yeah, probably like most everybody listening is it just became more horrific and more urgent.

It's like every day I'm aware of, and I try to let myself be aware of, of, how much is going on. I think often of one woman's beautiful Palestinian woman who, in one of the groups, she's living in Israel, and she says that, and I did a class with them around Ramadan, and it was right at the end of a long day of fasting, and she saw this image in a paper of a woman who is surrounded by her near-starving children, and they're silently watching her, and they're all around a pot, and the pot just is empty with a stone in it. And her dedication was to every day bring to mind that woman and her starving children

and that pot because she really wanted to not forget so that her actions would come from caring, but they would come, they would be active. And there's a beautiful image about compassion that I love to share, which is that we try to embody a strong back and a soft front. And this is from Roshi Joan Halifax. And so just to feel that in your body and what it means, that a soft front means that you really are holding all with care, that you get it. You get it, that humans are hurting and they're in reaction and your heart's tendered towards all of them. That's the soft front. The strong back is that clarity, that discerning mind that knows appropriately to act on behalf of the end of suffering for all, as you said.

And the image that helps me or the metaphors to think of a, you know, let's say if you're a parent, your child's been bullied. And you know, you're aware of that. And if you, if you immediately start thinking of that bully as an unreal other, and I use unreal because you're angry, blaming, and they're no longer, you know, a dimensional sentient being and just a bad person, that creates the armored heart. So you want to sense that that bully has been bullied, that that bully has suffered. And you want to sense that that bully has suffered. And you want to sense that, strong back that says, and my kid is not needs protection and I'm going to protect them because right now, this is a difference between judgment, which is aversive and discerning wisdom

that says, hey, I got to do something and has that strength and power and clarity. And I think people are afraid of compassion because they don't think of compassion in its fullness as that strong back that we can go do something and do it together, but keep our hearts open as we do it. You know, as a former Zionist, when I look back on it now, certainly one aspect of it is having the strong back without the tender heart. That's right. Because of what happened to us, now we need to be basically ruthless. And to the point we even deny our ruthlessness, but we may have to admit it, be admitted,

but we don't care anymore. You know, we just, you know, and it's a kind of, it's not a work in through of trauma. It's more like a solidification of trauma. That's how I see it in retrospect. That feels really accurate of war, that that's what happened. And I just want to speak to, I've mentioned a few times,

people feeling like there's really no answer, and I think it's when we detect just how locked in, that trauma and reaction is when we hear the statistics of how many Israelis actually think there wasn't enough, there has not been enough force. It's like, how could it be? Because I know so many,

I mean, I have tons and tons of French who are Jewish who completely are horrified by what's happening and wanted to end. I mean, this is not Jewish, non-Jewish. This is the mindset of the most traumatized that are, you know, and those that are most relating to it, And it's really hard to see that and sense, how can there ever be a resolve?

And I often think of, you know, the Sarvodaya movement, which is a Sri Lankan Freedom Movement, and Ariatine, who presented a police plan to bring together these, you know, it was civil war. But he presented it as a 500-year plan. Just to take that in for a moment. that we have to stop the violence now, but there's going to still be all the energies of living in different realities and more violence. There's just going to be. And yet, if a growing number of us can commit to the inner practices that keep disarming

so we can act from an awake heart, over the generations, that's the evolution of consciousness that can make a 500-year kind of plan towards people. peace be a possibility. So I just found that time frame really important to let my body feel. You know, this is a surprise a lot of people. But the Jewish critique, you know, I'd say, of Zionism didn't begin October the 7th or even November in 1948. In the late 19th century, early 20th century, there was a Jewish spiritual writer, his name was Asher Ginsburg, but his pseudonym was Ahara Am, which is a Hebrew word for one people, Ahara Am. And he wrote in 1897. In 1897, when there was only a few Jewish Rathos speaking in Palestine, he said that if we continue to treat the Arabs like the way we're treating them,

all we're going to create is one small Levantine people tormenting another Levantine people, he said, and if this is the Messiah coming, I don't want to see him arrive. He already sensed the energy. Even before the historical events, he sensed the energy that was dominating the scene, and he said, this is going to lead to nothing but suffering. You mentioned Joan Halifax. She's one of the Roshe Halifax, is one of the spiritual teachers who have spoken out on this issue. I was really glad to see that.

You kindly agreed to lead us in a mindfulness practice of all exercise. But before we go, there is anything else you wanted to say that I haven't asked you about? No, I'm sure whatever, if there's something else, it'll come up. I think the emphasis is that the inner work of letting ourselves grieve, letting our hearts be broken open is necessary. And it's not to be done alone. Part of the path is to realize that we're in it together and to feel that pain together.

The first time I really was able to break down and cry, it was some weeks after October 7th, I went to a vigil in Washington, right near the capital where there were Muslims and Jews and it was very mixed and people

were standing around it was beginning right at sunset and just speaking of the losses one woman who an Israeli who was just regularly making you know bringing carting people back and forth

from Biazza to get them to hospitals and she was killed and she was a good friend of somebody there and then another who woke up one morning to hear that his whole family was gone. There was something in people grieving together, and we were really weeping. That was one of the most important moments. I don't want to even say healing because it sounds so privileged, but it was important. It was important to have my heart broken like that. So just to know that when we do the inner work, it's really to get tender.

so that our strong back comes from love. And I also want to honor Frank Osseskeskesh, who's a wonderful Buddhist teacher, teaches about death and dying and much, much more. And the phrase, what is love asking came from Frank? He just said, ask that question to yourself, see what happens. And I've just found that to be, it's not a useful question if I'm not already in some presence,

but once I'm in presence, it brings forward a lot of clarity. So that's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. And if you'll kindly lead us in this practice. Yeah. So for all of you, and I'm feeling you all in the field, it's actually very tender and sweet and powerful to feel us together and caring together. And so this is a brief meditation on disarming the heart.

Because it feels like the work for all of us, really. So wherever you are, just take a few full breaths and let the breathing bring you into presence. And it might be that it's a very full in-breath. And then a slow-out breath, slow enough so you can feel the release of the breath. And then another full-in breath, filling the chest and the lungs. Slow-out breath. A sense of letting go with the out-brath. however it's possible to let go, let go.

One more breath, inhaling deeply, slow out breath, releasing, relaxing down the length of your body, letting go, and then now as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm, just gently scan your body and see if there's anywhere that you've been habitually holding tightness that you might soften, perhaps loosening the shoulders, letting the hands be soft. Softening the belly, the breath can move fully through the torso.

And from the space of presence, you might bring to mind anywhere that you sense that you're in the habit of creating an other of a group of difference, of a group of people, whether it's some of you might be politically in the United States or it might be politically elsewhere, it might be race, religion, it might have to do directly with the horror that's unfolding in Gaza and more in larger scope with Israel. Any othering that brings up judgment, aversion, anger, hatred, and you might let yourself even tune into a specific example, a behavior or event that really triggers what I'm calling bad othering, in some way, making others less, feeling they're less valuable,

less moral, less good. So really let that example be there. So you can feel honestly what goes on, what the kind of reaction is. And then make what I call the U-turn where you bring your attention. and right inward to where you're feeling feelings. You might sense what you're believing, just as the background thought. What are you believing? Maybe they're creating terrible suffering in some way.

They're hurting me or someone I love or people I care about. Let the background thought be there, but feel into your body where the feelings are. This is the important part. You might even place your hand on your heart to help. bring the full attention into the body. And that's part of nurturing actually, just to put your hand gently on the body, recognizing what the feeling is. Is it fear, hurt, anger, hatred?

Just name it, mentally whisper the word. Allow it to be there and investigate more deeply. What's the most deep feeling that you might be unwilling to feel? what's really difficult to feel and see how fully you can bring a tender presence to that sensing what you're really caring about and you can ask yourself that

what am I most deeply caring about mind anger behind bad othering there's something we care about always what is it and sensing how you can live and act out of that

caring and what that might mean, what is love asking? How does love want you to be? What does love want you to do? Might be to speak out more, to write, to offer time, money, to pray, to keep disarming. And let your attention go to the other, to the group, to those that you've felt are less, are bad in some way. There's always dehumanizing, less than human.

and just take a moment to sense them as conditioned imperfect beings just like us, and see if it's possible to sense the leg in the trap, to sense how they might be traumatized and hurting. And you sense them as hurting members of our human family, as parents, children, siblings, friends who like you want to feel safe, want to feel valued, feel loved, feel free. Just notice what happens when you let your heart include them. You might very physically sense what it means to have a soft front and a strong back.

Just sense what it's like to have that boundaryless belonging that informs your action. And again, just to sense, what is love asking? I may take a few breaths and if you feel like continuing to reflect or to write or journal, in some way, please feel free. So thank you for practicing together. Thank you. Tara, you instructed me and not just your words, but your presence.

I feel changing me from the beginning of the conversation to the end of it, which is due to your, how you showed up here and how you speak and how you breathe and how you look. So thank you so much. much. That's all. Thank you for inviting me because it enlarges me. Yeah. Well, great.