Tara Brach - What is the Path to Peace? A conversation with Tara Brach and Assaf Katz

Episode Date: February 8, 2024

What is the Path to Peace? A conversation with Tara Brach and Assaf Katz - Assaf Katz is an activist and Buddhist teacher in Israel who opposes the Israeli governments' devastating military action and long occupation in Palestine, and is dedicated to finding a path to peace. This conversation was part of an event for the Tovana mediation community in Israel. We talk about the inner process behind my circulation of a short piece responding to the violence in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel; how we can work with strong reactive emotions and trauma; what helps us to speak and act in a way that is truly serves the greater good, and what can give us hope for eventual peace. This offering includes the recording of a question/response period and a sharing of prayers. Read the article "What is Love Asking From Us?": https://www.tarabrach.com/blog-what-is-love-asking-from-us/

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Welcome, friends. As some are aware at the beginning of last December, I circulated a short piece of writing in response to the violence in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel. And in that, I voice my support for an immediate ceasefire, return of all hostages, and expedited humanitarian aid for Gaza. And if you're interested, you can find that on my homepage. So it was translated into Hebrew, and I was recently invited to have a conversation with Asafkats, who's, this is part of an event. for the Tovana meditation community in Israel.

So Asaf is an activist and Buddhist teacher for Tovana, and he opposes the Israeli government's devastating military action and long occupation in Palestine, and he's dedicated to finding a path to peace. So in this conversation, he opens by asking me about my own inner process behind taking a public stance and something that so painfully divides many of my friends and students. And so we also talked about how we can work with strong, reactive emotions and trauma. We talked about what helps us to speak and act in a way that

truly serves the greater good. And what can give us hope for eventual peace? So our time together included a question-answer period with those who are present at the event and a sharing of prayers. Okay, friends, I appreciate you tuning in and I really understand and honor the differing views in our very diverse community of listeners and hope you find something in this that support your heart and your spirit. Okay, blessings and love. So when I asked you to have an interview, it was after you wrote a text regarding the situation in Gaza and the West Bank and Israel.

And I know it's been, I looked just before we started a meeting, I read it again. And it showed the 26th of December. So it's already a month. Information and things changed since then, but I feel that the essence of it is actually. not bound in time. It's in a way it's a, when we spoke about the meeting, we talked about the space of prayer in a way, the space from which that text arose in a way.

And which is beyond time in my understanding of life. So I thought just to begin, if you would like to say what brought you to write that text, or if you want to, talk about the text and what brought you to write it. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that question. In particular, thank you because it was really one of the most challenging processes

that I've been through in a really long time. And usually I feel very, it's not like I'm deciding. It's just a natural feeling of, oh, this is a call for this. a call for this and then an offering. But in this situation, I was really struggling because, you know, many know I co-lead a teacher training program. We've got a couple of thousand people from around the world. And I also have a large network of students and friends.

And there is so much trauma. And I was hearing from so many people, my Jewish and Israeli friends. with just the torment of what went on and what is going on, with hostages so many still there. And then I was also hearing from Palestinian Arab Muslim friends with just the increasing growing trauma of the enormity, the scale of violence in Gaza and West Bank. And so nothing I could say would not deeply upset.

some people that were finding refuge in me, or not really me, in the teachings that they were finding through me. There was nothing I could say that wouldn't be hugely distressing, feel hurtful. So I was caught because it's been so integral what I teach that you can't talk about spirituality without talking about how we speak and act. on the planet, the compassion and action is right at the center and here I was not speaking. So it was hard and mostly the process was I had to keep getting quiet and have enough equanimity so I wasn't caught in the charge of my own anger and distress and from that place there was a single thing I knew was true, which is I need to speak and it has to come from a very pure heart.

You know, it really, it just had to, that's, I just had to keep saying, what do I truly care about, what really matters? In the same way I asked you your aspiration. And so I felt the calling was really strong so that's what I just did. I kept saying, what does this heart really care about what matters? and then there was another step to say, which is I leaned in to talking with my Jewish and Israeli friends so I could really feel what people were feeling. I really wanted to be intimate.

And I did the same thing with my friends from Jordan, from Lebanon, those who spent a lot of time in the West Bank. I really wanted to feel what it felt like to be directly impacted. And that was really painful. I wanted to be touched so I could grieve and really inhabit a space beyond us them, that I could truly care about everybody that was suffering. Because I knew I couldn't write unless that was the case. And I want to share with you just a few other things. I haven't really spoken of this. There were a few things that I heard, sentiments actually

from some in Israel that really were powerful for me. One was a YouTube of a 19-year-old from a kibbutz. I think it's very famous and viral in Israel where this woman talks about the horror of what she went through. And then she says, and I'm going to read this, how am I supposed to get up in the morning knowing that 14 4.5 kilometers from kibbutz and i don't know i'm not the pronunciation but be airy yeah and got that only 4.5 kilometers from here there are people for whom this event has not ended who are going through what i have been through with nowhere to glee so she expressed her grief and her fear for those still held hostage from her community.

And so then she called not for more violence, but for a lasting solution. You know, in her grief, she's pleading for a different way forward. So that, oh my gosh, that was just so powerful to see. There was a journalist from Israel who said that if you believe that Israeli children and Palestinian children are equally valuable, go out and cry this on the streets. Yeah, so it really kind of just grounded me in that knowledge. The Buddhist scriptures say it so well that hatred never sees us by hatred, but by love alone is healed.

This is the ancient and eternal law. That violence, the vengeance, it just won't create future safety. It only creates more of the same, which is I suspect something that's a shared understanding on some level in a very particular way. For me, it meant, please, cease fire now, you know, release the hostages, release the hostages, and do whatever is possible to get in humanitarian aid. It just, it was so compelling. So I really felt in writing that this, this is what's necessary to protect the lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, and to plant seeds for a better future. And I just,

I just want to also let you know since, you know, I've heard, gotten a lot back. You know, I got called a Nazi sympathizer and that I was betraying my people. I am Jewish ancestrally from all sides, you know. My father spent time in a kibbutz, you know, there's that. And then I also heard from, and people canceled being on my newsletter. And I heard many people that said, yeah, I'm Jewish. I totally am with you, or I'm from Israel, I heard from Israelis. Not as many.

Not as many. So that's a little bit of the background. I mean, one of the things that's so clear to me is that it's going to take all of us in some way planting seeds. You know, to keep connecting with what feels most moral in the core of our hearts and then having the courage to engage. It's going to take all of us. And I so honor you being here. I just feel like there's such a beauty and this willingness to be in a space where we can share views, maybe not agree. It doesn't matter about agreeing, but just dedicate to not hardening our hearts, to staying open, to looking. I mean, how else are we going

and bridge divides if we can't do that. Yeah, so I think that's enough of a response. That was a long response. I hope that's, yeah. Thank you. So you mentioned the place you wanted to write from, or you wanted to express yourself. And one of the questions we made before the meeting,

he wrote, how do I work with strong emotion and trauma and guide others? So I can say that being in Israel, it's already close to like three and a half months. And I think most of us are still in a way traumatized. And like emotions are not stable. And at the same time, we have the feeling that I think many of us, that we need to act, we need to do, and we have responsibility, maybe also for others and the situation. Maybe if you have something to say about that from what you went through, or, yeah.

Yeah, it's a really important question because I'm aware that the more traumatized we are, the harder it is to speak or act in a way, that can be helpful. This is just, there's research all over the world on this. With the more trauma, the harder it is to empathize are being compassionate towards those that are perceived as the cause. I mean, it's just natural. It's human nature. So it takes some processing. I remember reading very soon after October 7th, Uval Harare, saying, we're really traumatized here. We're not going to be able to have the wisdom or perspective to speak right now, we're counting on those that aren't as traumatized to hold the hope for peace and to keep taking steps, you know. So I kind of want to name

that that it's not fair to expect too much and we have to take steps both. So for me, you know, and working with it wasn't trauma. It was anger, horror. you know, then eventually grief, like really deep grief. My own process is that when I'm really caught in the intensity of the reaction, including the fear of what's to come, which is a big one. And I have, and I'll just want to say that I have in relationship with this country I'm in, a huge amount of fear of what's to come. And it's for the globe. I mean, the whole globe seems to be in a deep lean towards authoritarianism, fascism, a real inability to go beyond othering

in a way that causes huge violence. So, you know, as many of you are aware, we're in an election year that could be a real horror show. I know you know. So I'm having to work with my own reactions all the time. And when they're strong, I take space. I try to find as safe a space as possible. Sometimes it's, usually it's alone. Sometimes it's with another person. If I'm really shicken up, I'll immediately in some way call on what feels like a resource to me. It's kind of a prayer to the beloved. For me, the beloved means the universal formless love that lives through all of us, but I'm not always in touch with. So I'll call on the beloved, you know, just to feel that some sense of that presence. And if I can feel enough of that presence,

then I can begin to go right to where the pain is, right to where the anger is, right to where the fear is, and I'll find under it, and what I kept finding was powerlessness. You know, this awful, awful, right now unfolding horror. and that sends that small ego cell part that says, I've got to do something, what can I do? Oh, I can't, you know, I can't make it different. So the powerlessness. And if I can get there and really open to it, then I find underneath it is a great grief and even embedded in that is caring, that I care.

that's homecoming to come back to the fact that the ego may be powerless, maybe afraid and anger, but deep down it's caring. And if I can touch into that caring and hold my own being with kindness, then I'm able to have a bigger view. I'm not so identified with the angry self. and from that bigger view, I can speak and I can act. So that's just a little bit of my own process again. I hope it's helpful to others because to me the key elements are if you're feeling trauma,

you need some pathway to safety, a safe space. You need some pathway to some resource that brings some sense of connection. And then this is a critical piece because, you know, our issues are in our dishes. We need to contact directly, intimately, perhaps what we've been unwilling to feel. And I invite people once they feel resourced enough to ask themselves that question, you know, what am I unwilling to feel? we humans organize around not feeling what's difficult and unless we care more about truth than we do feeling comfortable, we will sidestep it. So there's a kind of courage once

you're resourced enough to say what am I unwilling to feel and then to feel what's there with as much presence and kindness as possible. Maybe the last thing to say is that when we're traumatized, we're not supposed to do some deep processing by ourselves. We need each other. And related, once we've done some processing, action helps. Action absorbs anxiety. Asaf, I know you know that. It's healthy.

Once we're in touch with ourselves to act, actually empowers. and on the deepest level here's what we can trust. And I love the way the Dalai Lama put this. He was asked by some Western teachers at one meeting, you know, what is a message we can bring to our students? And he said to trust the power of your heart and awareness to wake up through all circumstances, all circumstances. We can heal through trauma.

And it takes patience and it takes each other to be with each other through it. And that what you're talking about is it's like taking to a different level of consciousness to really absorb it. And that many times it's, okay, so what do I do with it and take it and kind of to really stay with the words and give it some time, especially in when. There is so much triggering going around. And now when you were talking about this, I don't remember the exact word,

but kind of like this hopelessness, the feeling that I can't do, which feels very, I found it generally my feeling towards what's happening now in Gaza. So there's a lot of doing. And then at some point there is this feeling of, it's just this horrible thing, which I just can't stop.

And to be a witness to something which is really horrific is very difficult to have this feeling that I can't stop such a thing. And what arises in me many times is this fear that if I stay in that place, I won't do anything. And although I know from experience already that actually what happens is that I truly come into contact with what I'm feeling and that now when I did it what actually arose was gratitude gratitude for just being conscious

to what the experience is so the experience is actually very sad and a lot of grief but there is something deeper which is has gratitude for

knowing or not in a way not being ignorant to what I'm feeling and I feel that's like a whole different transformation like the heart is being transformed that's right and from the level of consciousness I had before I cannot I cannot act in the same way or have the same information needed for my action than when I come in contact with that thing And from coming in contact, something completely different I could never imagine can arise. And I feel that needs a lot of trust in a way. Kind of trust that when you come in contact with that severe pain,

something that I try just not to meet, to stay there, not to jump into something. And then trust that action will come or not come from that place. From experience, I can say that when it's, comes, I think maybe what you wrote, the text comes from that place and I feel that what it brings to the world is of a different magnitude than what I could do if I was more anxious. Because it brings in a way the truth of that, that ducca, that pain holds a lot of truth. And then it comes to the world and it brings, yeah, it changes something deeply. Like the place in the heart changes something in the heart of others, and that goes beyond time and space in a way.

I love what you're saying in a way. It's talking about what really creates transmission and transformation. And our anger is intelligent. It's intelligent. It's wired in for a really good reason. Something in us knows that there's something we have to pay attention to. So it's initiatory of that action that you're talking about, but it's not transformational itself because it has not yet unfolded through awareness.

It's only when it's a portal, when we feel the anger and then whatever, the fear, and underneath that, feel what we haven't been willing to feel, what's difficult. and if awareness is the superpower, it really does the work, it's not the self, if there's awareness of that sense of I can't do anything and there's awareness of it's out of control and then there's awareness of grief, it transforms. I have a lot of trust in sorrow. I don't know if that sounds strange, but I have a lot of trust that when we're touching sorrow, we're touching into that place in our heart that is feeling the pain of separation and knows that our freedom is in recognizing our belonging. And sorrow is that sense of,

that we know that. And if we can open to that, then there's a purity that flows. It's almost as if we're no longer identified with a reactive ego self and the truth and love of the universe is flowing through. And that's when I heard you say, you know, then the actions, they're more transformational. It's because we're not there. Something else, something larger than a self is flowing through. And that is transmission. That is what creates true evolutionary change. You know, I want to, as I'm saying that, share a story that really brought this alive for me. And I first heard it in a movie. And in it there's an African people called the coup, Kew.

And they had a ritual called the Drowning Man Trial. So if someone was murdered, the way it would go is there would be a year of mourning and then the killer would be put in a boat and bound and dropped into the water and so he could drown or she could drown. And the family of the murdered person had to make a decision whether to let the person drown or swim out and save them. And the coup believed, this is what's so powerful, that if you let them drown, that you'll have justice but spend the rest of your life in mourning.

But if you save the person, that very act can take away your sorrow and that they say, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. Vengeance is a lazy form of grief. Wow. We can sense it. that when we're caught in the anger and the fear and the vengeance, we're not home. We're reacting, but we're not in a place of healing. So it feels very clear that for me that when I'm triggered and I'm reacting,

the other has become unreal. They're like a body being bound out in a boat, but they're not real. They're not a real human. and that to get back to realness I have to drop in and in and in with a lot of presence. And the challenge also is to realize that it's not the person or the group that's an enemy. You know, it's the unprocessed fear that gets us caught in the greed and the hatred and the delusion. It's unprocessed fear, so we have to go within. If we don't, we're part of the cycle of violence.

Today I was, I'm part of this group of activists working now against the war and mostly to change the government. And I had a ride back with one of like a very leading psychotherapist who's part of also of the demonstrations. And we talked about what is happening now in Israel. And I said that I felt, I feel that we feel that we. we lost our humanity on the 7th of October. That many of us saw things that made us lose contact with humanity, with what is human and what is life.

And that made us actually disconnected from life and now we, so now we, we don't have such respect for life in general, not for a life of that person or my people, like generally, like our connection to life was diminished. And that we kind of need to bring back our humanity. And I told her that there's a lot of rage now or depression. And actually what gave me a lot of hope or inspiration was reading or listening to Martin Luther King. which for me

I'm listening to him in the last days and I feel that he's he's a remarkable human being and I listen to him a few times and this connection between an amazing magnificent activists

and at the same time a real spiritual human being like you he talks about the war in Vietnam really clearly about finishing it and getting out of Vietnam and all this stuff and at the same time talks in words of deep spirituality of non-duality and for me it was really like um feeling life coming and i think that meeting in a way it's like so humanity has these worst parts in it which we saw

and we still for me we saw on the 7th of october and we're still seeing what is israel doing in Gaza but there are also these magnificent things in humanity that we we now i feel in israel we need to see it in israel and palestine i think we need to be immersed in what is good humanity and and maybe also this is kind of like what i felt in in your text kind of this potential of being human has both of these. And we need to really, I see now also from kind of from the dust comes. Amazing people are arising now in Israel and Palestine. People who manage to go beyond all this discrimination and all this violence

and manage to really bring a wider future. Yeah, a future that wasn't talked about for, a lot of time in Israel. People just didn't talk about it. And now people can imagine from this time can imagine a future which is completely different. When people say, how can you imagine peace in the Middle East

in this time? And people say, no, I imagine peace in the Middle East. And like, I have a vision. And I know it's going to take time, but I'm going there. I think that's very much needed now and to see this part of humanity. love what you're saying. I'd say we need to see both our potential and also with clear eyes

the naturalness of where we get stuck. And I say that because when we're dehumanized, we dehumanized back. It's just the way things go. We cut off from our humanity because part of our humanity is seeing the preciousness of all lives. We cut off. So that's just part of trauma and it's natural. The challenges that violence and violations don't exist without dehumanization, you have to in some way disconnect from the other being real. You have to disconnect. You have to disconnect. And this is like you can see it through history, through, and whether it's the Nazis or the U.S. with our centuries of slavery and then white supremacy and genocide of indigenous people, whenever there's genocide, whenever there's wide-scale

violence, there's dehumanization going on. Humans are not perceiving others as real. So, one of my students who lives in East Africa went to the Genocide Memorial Center, in Rwanda. And he sent me an inscription that was on a plaque. And this just affected me so much. And here's what it read. It said, if you knew me and you really knew yourself, you would not have killed me. We act violently because we are cut off. And so it feels to me that we need to sense what you're describing is this possibility to perceive our shared humanity, to receive and revere life, the possibility of building a new world out of that, and also understand the compelling grip of what happens when we dehumanize and how often it happens. And I speak that, I'm saying

this because every day I see it in myself, which is why I think it needs so much attention. Every day here in the United States, I'll hear the news and I'll immediately divide up the world into the good actors and the bad actors. Every day. And with it, there's a version. So I'm sharing this with you, friends, because it's in my psyche, so that tells me it's in the culture psyche, that there's a culture of contempt politically and we can sense it wherever there's violence. So part of waking up into that consciousness of Martin Luther King, who was an amazing model of not making the other side bad of really sensing the humanity and sensing the possibility of beloved community of us all. That was the beauty of it.

That the first step is having the courage to sense, how is my heart biased? How am I putting others down on some level? One spiritual teacher said to not put anyone out of your heart, including your How am I doing that? Because if we have the honesty to ask that question, then awareness will carry us into a larger sense of being and belonging. I have this feeling of immensity that where you're leading can actually has is boundless. It can go like opening myself to the other to the other can go.

it has no boundaries and it can open myself it's immense and for me it gives a lot of hope in a way hope which

have a problem with the word hope maybe but it's more a sense of knowing that something is possible rather than hoping for something but it's a feeling that that is possible I just want to say, I'm right there with you. We need to have the courage to stay open to possibility

because that makes us available to that immensity that to sensing, hey, you know, the truth is we do belong to each other. That's the deepest truth. It's one source, one aliveness, one consciousness in a multitude of forms, we're all from the same source. That's the truth and awareness keeps waking up to itself. So that's the possibility.

And then we start asking the question, well, what helps me to align with that and to deepen it, to build it? And it feels really important our words, how we speak. Now, I want to kind of come back to the beginning here that, It became important not that just in my meditations I felt like, okay, we're all one and I can feel the preciousness of all the beings and the suffering of all, you know. It also mattered that I expressed that in action and that my words be an expression of that. You know, there's, especially in this moment, words matter, you know, mid the deepest grief

and fear and anger. You know, it's easy to feel like now exceptions or justifications can be made everyone's distressed, but the fact is it's the opposite, that it's in the charge and sensitive moments that our words can either feed the violence or plant the seeds of peace. And so it feels important that we speak

and that we talk to each other and that we sense, you know, from the Dharma, what guides us in talking to each other? You know, how do we talk with someone who really has a different view? And I know I'll just say for myself, if a person has a different view and they're not open to consciously speaking, you know, that, okay, we're here to, that we have different views, acknowledging it that that's okay and we're here to wake up together to learn to practice listening and speaking. If that's there then there's some hope that we can do that and then if we genuinely listen to understand and for me it helps to ask people what makes you

feel that? What's behind that? That I really want to understand. That makes it possible to bridge some. And, you know, if we get reactive to invite a pause, you know, but in the deepest way to seek to find what we have in common because anyone I talk to when I really spend time with, we all care about people not getting hurt more. On some level we want not to have suffering. and you know I'll just share one of my friends

who's a commentator his name is Van Jones some of you have heard of them maybe he works a lot with having people bridge divides by talking to each other you know I really he's really a master

and at one point he was talking about how he was he's African American and he was confronted by some white supremacists in a very aggressive way. And he kind of modeled what I'm talking about, and okay, it's okay that we disagree. Let me understand better why you feel what you feel. And by the end, there was a lot more presence there.

And what he said at the very end, and this just really got me, because they were talking about how much violence is, in both directions. He said, if you can cry as much when that black man died in the police car, and I can cry just as much when that horrible bigot shot down the police, white bigot. And if you're crying and my crying, if we're crying just as much and we're crying together, then we can find a way to get our cops to be better and to take better care of our children. You know, he's speaking in this young man, this white sperm is just nodding, and they end with a hug. It's really hard.

And I feel like we need to bring our hearts, our longing for peace, our yearning for a better world into words that help to bridge divides. Thank you. So if anybody has a question, you can write me or Anel, and we'll try to gather them. a bit late with it a question for Tara how can we trust the gold the big I think it's the good

the basic goodness of the people who murdered and kidnapped our friends and the people in our government who put us in this divided and weak place that allow this horror to take place yeah I love that question

and it's probably one of the most important questions we can Like, how do we trust the gold? How do we trust goodness? How do we trust reality? You know, how do we trust life when horrible things happen? And I can only speak for myself, which is, I don't trust that horrible things won't happen. I don't trust that humans will act from the gold. In fact, I know they don't a lot of the times. And the worst, person's conditioning is, in other words, the more fear and violence and hatred they grew up with, the more that's conditioning is going to lead them to the same. I don't trust that I wouldn't

be killed by somebody or my child wouldn't be. That's not to me what trusting the gold is. It comes to more what Saf was talking about with sensing our potential, what's possible, that there is a love and an awareness that's intrinsic and lives through everyone. Sometimes it's shut down so much that they commit heinous, horrible acts. Trusting the gold doesn't mean that we don't get shut off from the gold. And the more we touch that goodness in ourselves, and the more that I look at you and I'm looking at you, in your little boxes online and just see the hearts that are here.

I trust what's possible and that gives me more power to bring it out in myself and others. So I hope that's helpful because it's not some Pollyanna as they say in English, it's not some you know what's the other word, naive kind of thing. It's sensing, as the Buddha talked about, that we all have Buddha nature. It is our potential. The only reason to have a Buddhism is because it puts forward the possibility of Martin Luther King, opening his heart to all beings and being a model of nonviolence. It makes possible that each of us in our lives can keep on waking up to love, to creativity, to wisdom.

It's what's possible. So, even when I am most discouraged and, you know, I'm seeing what seems like the basic badness so much, I keep remembering that it's not a bad human. It's a force of ignorance. It's the not knowing. It's the cut off from the gold. And that's the suffering and that very suffering has the potential to wake us up. It has the potential to wake us up.

And if I can keep turning towards the light, if I can keep turning towards the possibility of goodness, then I become more a part of that goodness. I often think that the Majima Nakaya, the Buddhist scriptures, it'd say, others will be cruel. We shall not be cruel. We have the capacity to feel right at the center of our hearts what's true and what's moral and to live from that. in that capacity. And thank you for the question.

I took a while on it because it feels so important. Wow. I'm amazed that you brought up that phrase from the Magimaniqa because I love that Suta and I never heard anyone quoted. Yeah. So I'll take another question that was written. We have generally, we said we had another 10 minutes. So when you feel you want to move into the closing parts, just do it.

So somebody asked, how do you deal with the guilt of continuing on the path, even of looking for the better place or safe place, when there are people still in this event which are in the continuous suffering? So if I hear that right, how do you, in your own process, of taking care of the trauma inside you, work with the guilt that comes up, the people are still in the raw horror of what's going on. Yeah. Like to allow myself to continue,

while people are still going through what they're going through. Yeah. I think guilt also needs to be brought into what we're paying attention to. If guilt's what's arising, when I feel guilty, it's not just, oh, I'm powerless. It's like I'm guilty for not doing more, and I know it really well.

You know, if I go into that guilt and I go deep into it, it's in some way a sense that I'm not, I'm unworthy, I'm bad, I'm flawed. And if I really open to that, I can see it as a life pattern and know that never ever do my actions that come from guilt serve as a transmission, serve as a healing. that they don't have the power to be helpful. I do a lot of it that's dutiful, but it's not as helpful. But when I can get under the guilt back to the caring itself, then it can be helpful. So let guilt just become an object of your meditation.

And by the way, that's not a way to say, therefore you don't need to act, you can spend your time on a meditation cushion. This is not, that's not the point. Sometimes we have to act before we're clear. Sometimes we have to act before we feel great equanimity. Sometimes we have to act before our hearts are wide open. And all we can do is just try to feel our deepest aspiration and then act. Sometimes we can't wait.

Did you want another question before? Yeah? Sure. We'll take one more. I love your questions. They're so right on. People on the chat. Way to go.

So can you ask Tara for an advice on how to manage or which state to be in when I wish to disagree or to point a different view from someone on social media? Like for Tara, both Israelis and anti-Israelis heavily criticize my views. I typically manage not to be in too much of a reactive mode, but rarely manage to bring the other person to dance with me. Yeah, it's a great question. When do we engage when someone disagrees? For me, the criteria is, is there some potential for us both waking up or for us as groups of people or people with certain views to wake up? If we feel like we're going to put something out there but the impact is going to be just that people get more defensive or that it just deepens the divides,

it's not so useful. But if we can put something out from as pure a place as possible and know that there are other people that are wanting truth more than to reinforce their opinions, then it can be valuable. So I hope that's helpful. And again, maybe just a closing word because I do think this feels like a really good time for us to have a kind of final prayer together to say that the point isn't to navigate perfectly, there's no perfect way to navigate to navigate, there's no real formula, it's to keep coming back to what matters to our heart. that's a spirit that we really wanted to close in, that we all have care in our hearts and there's an enormity of power. It's the Bodhisattva path. If we keep remembering what we

care about, I trust our actions will end up having, being beautiful, having healing to them. So is it possible that we open the chat and is it okay to go over? by a couple of minutes and to open up the chat? Yeah, it's open. Okay. Let's see, because I'm not seeing the chat. Oh, there, I got it. Okay.

And if you're not ready, come on to gallery view so that we can just really all see each other, be with each other. I'd like just to do a kind of inner process and then an outer meditation. and the inner process starts with the invitation to go ahead and let your gaze lower and let your attention go inward and bring a fresh interest, okay, so what's it like right now? Real honest. Am I hopeful? Am I tired?

Am I sad? Am I peaceful? Am I bored? Am I curious? Turning inward and perhaps now. taking a few full breaths to really gather and collect your attention. Nice full deep in-breath and a slow-out breath. Deep full in-breath. Slow-out breath. So you can feel the sensations of releasing the breath. Let go, let go. Inhale deeply. Slow out breath, letting go. Letting go.

and as your breath resumes in its natural rhythm, observing the breath, feeling the breath, and as we did at the beginning, feeling the breath at the heart, so you can be intimate with the state of your heart right now. And in the context of what we've been exploring, you might ask your heart, what most matters? What do I most care about? What is my prayer? What is my prayer for what unfolds? What is my prayer? And if you feel inclined, you might share in chat just in a few words. You know, I'll say the words, my prayer is dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

And just share the dot, dot, dot part. You know, what is it that you really are wishing for our world right now? may we find our way into each other's hearts, peace and love. I'm feeling more reassured, trusting there is a path being confirmed, wishing for us more often to see, heart, humanity, similar in each other rather than different identity, being sure with the path, to find a way that will reduce suffering and bring peace and presence into the world. May we be free of fear and hatred. Peace, silence, that compassion wins, compassion, moments of connection. So beautiful, all of it, all of it, ways that we might channel

our pain and grief into speaking and acting in ways that end the cycles of violence. Listening. All beings throughout the world living in peaceful and respectful environments, having their needs met, may all children be raised in love and peace regardless of race and religion. Taking in each other's prayers and you might as you feel ready just sense that you can open your eyes and take in each other for a moment, just enjoy taking in and you might even land on one purpose. land on one person and just sense, you know, we talked that question about trusting the goal, just sense the goodness because we need to be reminded and here we are awakening, caring beings.

Can we remind each other? Just to see another person and know, okay, this person cares. Understanding, tolerance, peace, being close. Nirvana. And maybe another person, this person too, and bowing inwardly, just sensing the goodness and bowing to it. Namaste. Maybe opening wide the sense of the space of awareness and sensing all of us and millions and millions of others that are consciously waking up, everybody's waking up, but consciously waking up and feeling prayers for peace, for compassion, for connection.

I read you as a way of closing my part here, a prayer by Rabbi Sheila Weinberg that touched me. Prayer for Peace. Two peoples, one land, three faiths, one root, one earth, one mother. one sky, one beginning, one future, one destiny, one broken heart, one God, we pray to you, grant us a vision of unity. May we see the many in the one and the one in the many. May you, life of all the world's source of all amazing differences, help us to see clearly. guide us gently and firmly toward each other, toward peace, praying together. Okay, my friends, really good to see you.

I see some old friends here and some new ones. Beautiful to be together. Thank you. Thank you. I feel a lot of joy. I feel happy when I said, no, it's not happy. It's called joy. It's a different thing.

Thank you very much. I made a mistake and I forgot to ask you if people wish to offer Dana, how can they do so? I can say that for Tovana. If anybody wants, you can go into our website and the NL. I think we'll put a link here. Here it is. And if you wish to receive Dana in any way or to ask people to send it in any way, I can just say, sorry, I didn't ask before. No problem. Not to me personally, but to offer to any program organization you feel will serve the path to peace. That would be beautiful. And I want to thank you, Asaf, it's just a total delight to be in conversation with you. I feel so much your presence and your sincerity and goodness. So thank you. Enjoy.