Tara Brach - Widening the Circles of Compassion (retreat talk) (2015-12-31)

Episode Date: January 15, 2016

Widening the Circles of Compassion (retreat talk) (2015-12-31) - The archetypal figure of the Bodhisattva ("awakening being") reflects our potential to realize our connectedness with all beings, and care for this living world with an open tender heart. This talk explores the four types of patterning that keep us stuck in the pain of separation and the key heart practices that evolve us on the bodhisattva path. "Compassion arises when you see the truth behind the veils." Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With thanks and love, Tara

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely, and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. I'm a stay. Perhaps as a beginner for this talk, a little story about the fruit of practice or fruit of the path, and on a terrace of a monastery that's high in the mountains, an old Buddhist monk stood next to a much younger monk. they're just contemplating the void, you know, contemplating the great emptiness of existence. And the old monk at one point gently declared, ah, my son, one day, all of this will be yours. So we contemplate the blessings of the path. And as we've been exploring together, You know, there's the wisdom that recognizes this existence as empty, groundless, changing,

and there's the love that arises that really experiences in a very simultaneous way, as a sense the emptiness of it, this quality of fullness, this quality really that all the waves arising belong, to this awareness that's here, and there's a deep, tender sense of being part of this field of loving. And it's described as a kind of radical belonging, a radical interconnection that really is a gift of the path where we're able to be intimate with all things because we belong to all things. In the evolution of consciousness, this fruit of wisdom and love is described through the archetyte of the Bodhisattva. And many of you are familiar with the word, Bodhi means awakening, satfa's being, the awakened being. And the awakened being is an archetype. Arctite means a kind of

original patterning. And it's really a spiritual DNA that's in every one of our consciousness. We're all awakening bodhisattvas. This capacity to realize to deeply realize the nature of reality and that we are that reality and feel that sense of oneness and belonging and love is in each of us. And so this archetypal figure is something that these practices actually bring into our immediate senses

that the practices cultivate and awaken these capacities for us. So it becomes painful when we're living in a more small egoic self because in a way, in the most basic way, we're not living from the fullness or truth of who we are. There's something in us that detects that. So what I'd like to explore tonight are four types of patterns. that slow us down or interfere in discovering and realizing this bodhisattva beingness that is us.

And I'd like to then explore a few of the practices, in particular emphasis of practices, that help wake us up to our bodhisattva being. There's a story, Jarvis Masters is a man on death row in San Quentin. And I'm going to read you a little bit of something that he wrote about. But just as background, he's a Buddhist. He's taken his bodhisattva vows, his commitment to live for the sake of helping all beings be free and awaken. So he's taken his vows. and he's really well known in the prison community and beyond

for being quite a loving, awake being. So he wrote this. He tells a story of being in the prison yard one day and a seagull lands in a puddle of water. And a big young inmate next to him picks up the rock to throw it at the goal. So following his vow of compassion, Jarvis instinctively raises his arm to stop the stone thrower. And the young inmate shouts, what are you doing?

Because you don't interfere with other people in the prison yard, that's like a violation. So everybody in the yard gets quiet and they're alert to see what's going to come down. Because he'd messed with this guy's private space. and as they say you do that at your peril. So Jarvis describes looking back and then spontaneously responding. He said, that bird got my wings. That bird got my wings. So maybe this is a good thing to do when you're in trouble,

to say something a little crazy. But anyway, what happened was the young men peered at Jarvis quizzically And then he lowered his stone. Everybody relaxed. So for the days afterwards, Jarvis described how inmate after inmate would come up to him and said, what on earth did you mean by that? That bird got my wings like a Zen Cohen.

He never answered. He only smiled. But, you know, when we listen and, you know, if you just take that in, that bird got my wings, we know, right? There's this sense that every being we encounter has the same vulnerability that Siegel's body could be dead in a moment and that we all sense the wings that are really a part of all of us

that the wings that allow us to really look and see what's true the wing of wisdom and the wing of heart or compassion that cares. We've all got those wings. So to me that's kind of an amazing

bodhisattva story because he, just in a moment, it was kind of like that's wake up to recognizing the innate vulnerability of all living form. It's all coming, going, passing,

can be hurt, can be stoned. and the wings, these bodhisattva wings, that allow us to really manifest love. So our suffering comes when we're caught in the trance of separation. When we're hurting, when we're suffering anyway, it's because we're in those moments feeling and believing that we're separate. And then this is the basic veil of illusion where there's a sense of identification

with the story of and the feelings of a separate and usually in some way deficient self and others in those moments whenever we're feeling that selfness others become to some degree unreal. I like the term unreal others. They become more two-dimensional. So when we're in that trance of separation, we're kind of cut off from our own full

aliveness and awareness and beingness and others are out there and we forget what it's like to be you. We can't sense how that bird has our wings. We forget other subjectivity, that their longings, that they're also insecure. One of my favorite descriptions is Ajan Amman. who describes that when we're driving and there's like a whole lot of traffic, everybody else is the traffic. It's never us, you know. So we're in this trance of separation, if we're honest, many, many moments of our life.

It's the existential reaction to the stress of life. In the moment we're stressed, we contract, and the brain's organized to perceive separation when there's some unmet need for safety, or an unmet need for nourishment, or unmet need for bonding. In other words, when we're fearing or we're wanting, there's a sense of a problem and there's a contraction, and we get organized around the ego self and everyone else's other out there. And at those times inside the brain, what's going on is that the limbic system is more activated, the prefrontal cortex is less activated, and so our circuitry, our compassion circuitry is not in full gear.

The mirror neurons, the stuff that lets us remember, oh, yeah, here we are. Okay? So that's going on to different degrees, a lot of our moments. And when that's happening, the other, the unreal other, fits into one of three categories. And that other is either a being out there, they can in some way satisfy our needs, in which case there's some level of grasping, or it becomes an unresolved, other out there that is going to further interfere with our needs, some sort of a thread, judgment, whatever, in which case there's some aversion or resistance,

art doesn't fit into either of those two categories, in which case the other becomes irrelevant. We don't notice them. Does this make sense so far, this unreal other business? Okay. So when there's unreal other, by the way, there's also unreal self, of course, because we're identified with just a portion of our being with a kind of egoic story and feeling. And we're disconnected from our wholeness, so there's an unreal self or a kind of false self. That doesn't mean bad, just not the truth of who we are

and an unreal other. So the first step of waking up out of the trance of separation, beginning to sense that connection again, is simply recognizing, okay, it's going on now. There's a solidifying, a centralizing around self, there's an othering going on. In some way we recognize it.

And you can sense it here as you move through retreat. Whenever there's a kind of more charge going on of insecurity or fear, there can be a self-consciousness, maybe in the dining hall about eating too much food, and all of a sudden there's a self in here and unreal others that are looking and watching out there or when we're walking, comparing, and sensing how others are walking, they become unreal. Or in the interview groups, the meeting groups, as much as the circles can become really safe and beautiful,

we can enter into it with all of our habits of wanting approval and to look a certain way and everyone else's other. And of course, at home, if we look through our daily life, how many moments when we're engaged with someone else, is there an agenda? Or in some way, we're wanting them to perceive us a certain way, we want approval, or there's an agenda like we're afraid they're going to judge us and there's a defendedness.

Unreal other goes on a lot. There's a saying that the process of dying begins at birth, and it accelerates at dinner parties. So sometimes it's really subtle, unreal others, or it creeps up on us and we don't expect it. And a story to share, this is told by a Jesuit priest, his name's Gregory Boyle, and he works with gang members, Latino gang members, in the most violent part of L.A. and his book Tattoos on the Heart is one of the best books around. I really recommend it. So he describes being in his office. He's between morning mass and then he has to do a baptism and he's running seven minutes late. And right at that time, Carmen, a woman, walks into the room, she's a heroin addict, a gang member, and an occasional prostitute. And she's often seen

to finally storming down the street, usually shouting at someone. So she just walks in his office, sits down and jumps in, and here's what he writes. I need help. She launches in right away, brash and something of a no-shit sister. Oh, she says, I've been to like 50 rehabs. I'm known all over nationwide. She smiles. Her eyes wander around my office,

and she studies all the photographs hanging there. She multitasks, and her inspection of the place doesn't derail her stream of consciousness rambling. The family will arrive for baptism in five minutes. I went to Catholic school all my life. Fact, I graduated from high school even. Fact, right after graduation, is when I started to use heroin. Carmen enters some kind of trance at this point,

and her speech slows to deliberate and halting. And I have been trying to stop since the moment I began. Then I watch as Carmen tilts her head back until it meets the wall. She stares at the ceiling, and in an instant her eyes become these two ponds, water rising to meet their edges, swollen banks, spilling over. Then for the first time, really, she looks at me and straightens. I am a disgrace. Suddenly her shame meets mine, for when Carmen walked through the door, I had mistaken her for an interruption.

How often does that happen to us? that we're on our way somewhere in our mind or in our behaviors and other, unreal other, is an interruption. So on this bodhisattva path, on this waking up to who we are, we need to sense when the trance is there. It's as if we're going through this day

in a play that's starring Wa, and everyone else is a supporting cast the non-supporting cast. And, you know, and often, often they're not cooperating with us. And it's sustained by a narrative. As long as we've got our story going, it's going to keep telling us about who we are,

what we need, who's going to give it to us, who's going to get in the way. Do you know what I mean? It's like, that keeps the trance going. And when we're in it and engage with others, that capacity to see that bird got my wings is not there as long as we're in that narrative, as long as we're in that wanting, fearing you go except we really can't tune in.

Let's just pause here, take a brief reflection, as we've been doing in these talks. Scan in your life for someone who, somewhat regular part of your life who maybe brings up some insecurity, that maybe somebody that you want something from, maybe approval, or perhaps someone that you fear their judgment, could be somebody who irritates or doesn't do it the way you want them to. And when you have someone in mind, just bring yourself to a situation where you're engaged and some of those feelings are coming up. So sensing yourself in the engagement and sense first when you're wanting something, fearing something, reacting to something, what's the sense of your own self in those moments? You feel the contraction, can you feel the narrowing of you? Your world gets smaller. Notice from the more contracted self-sense how the other appears habitually for you.

Can you sense as kind of like watching a movie, just a more two-dimensional character? It's to get a little familiar with when we're in it, how much is left out of our reality. I might imagine that you're pausing with this person and with these reactions going on in you and take some moments to connect more with what's going on inside you. Just imagine you could connect in with your vulnerability or insecurity, our anxiety underneath annoyance or whatever it is. Just feeling your breath, being allowing of what's going on inside you, kind, interested, present.

And from being more connected with yourself, just look more carefully now at the other, sense how much more can you see? Can you see past the veil some, past the two, two-dimensional being to a bit more who's there. What might this person be dealing with? What insecurities, what worries, what hopes? Can you sense how this person wants to be happy, wants to feel love, wants to feel connection, like opening your eyes? So this is just the basic template of the shift in identity that's really the center of the bodhisatt path, that there is a shift from being centered or focused on the egoic self, on what I want,

what I need, to an inclusive field of belonging where we can hold with kindness the different waves going on inside us and also sense the realness of another. I was reminded last week of this quote by Einstein. It's read during one of our kind of a holiday go-round. A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical, delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires

and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. So what we're going to do is look at this optical delusion of consciousness and four particular patterns or ways it presents,

because this optical delusion of consciousness is what keeps us caught in something smaller than who we are. And the four we're going to look at are the limiting belief feelings we have about ourselves, the limiting belief feelings that we then have about others, the blinder of our group identity, and the habit of our group identity, of not seeing goodness. So the first optical delusion

is basically bad self, not okay self. Something's wrong with me. And as I mentioned, all of our sense of our self, it can only exist if we keep talking to

ourselves. If we keep the voice, if we're listening to the voices in our head, then it'll keep resurrecting this world of the who I am in a very very patterned repetitive way. It'll just keep coming. And you can sense how our judgments or comparing our worrying or we're and keeps the self alive. And you might even notice in retreat when you unhook and you've unhooked for a while how that self disappears for a while. There's just

the world playing itself. But it appears again as soon as we start thinking. Now, this isn't a diatribe against thinking because thinking is a natural part of what we are. It allows us to survive and thrive in many ways. It lets us take care of ourselves, which we need to do. One of my favorite thinking stories is about an elderly man who lived alone in New Jersey and he wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but his son, but it was difficult work. The grounds hard and he's you know, getting too old for this kind of thing, and his only son Vincent, who used to help him, is in prison. So the old man writes a letter to a son, describes his predicament.

Dear Vincent, I'm pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year, and it's given me so much pleasure. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here, my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love Papa. A few days, I'm just a few days. later he receives a letter from his son.

Dear Pop, don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried. La Vinny. 4 a.m. the next morning FBI agents, and local police arrive and dig up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologize the

old man and leave. Next day, he receives another letter from his son. Dear Pop, go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love Vinnie. So thinking serves. It serves in all sorts of survival ways. It serves in terms of medicine and comfort and communication and architecture in all sorts of ways. It's a great servant. It's a poor master. And here's the challenge. The more we're caught in insecurity and fear,

the more we get addicted to thinking it will get us out of trouble. So we get addicted to our thoughts. we believe our beliefs, and to open out of the egoic level of operation, we have to learn not to believe our beliefs. That's where that phrase I mentioned this morning, real but not true, we have to get the knack of saying, this is a belief. It's a thought. It's just a thought. It's real. But it's not truth. It's not reality. It's some representation in my mind. that might be useful or not, and if it's causing pain, it's not. It's not truth.

So we have to learn to bring presence to what's under the beliefs so we can begin to heal them. Story for you last Wednesday at class, a very, very bright young nine-year-old came up to me, and he said, you do a lot of public speaking. How do you do it? Is it scary? Is it hard? And so I said, I do a whole lot, and it started out scary and it's less scary.

But sometimes it's scary, but it's okay, because I've done it enough that I know it's okay. And we didn't have time to get into very much. I couldn't tell them some of the strategies I've heard over the years, you know, the one about a newbie giving a speech. And he says, I'm going to start by just taking a few moments to imagine. each one of you naked, you know, and then there's 10,000 other strategies. I have not done that one in giving a Dharma talk, I promise. It's interesting, though, we were, the teachers were just having a conversation about this a few days ago, how, you know, public speaking, as you know, it's, you know, more scary than dying, and for most people, and I know for myself, there are times when I'm

with an audience that's not a familiar audience that I think is going to be, my ego thinks it's going to be harder to win over to be in sort of a resonance with, and I'll build up some anxiety. But boy, the first few talks at retreats, you know, I'd spent years sitting, as you are listening, and the idea of sitting here terrifying, like really terrifying. And I remember my first one at IMS, the Insight Meditation Society, and I was on day four. You usually want to be earlier to get it over with. So I had to go through those days and try to show up as much as I could, but any time I had a chance to have my narrative go back to moi,

it was, you know, I was so tied up in knots. It was painful. And so as I started investigating, the belief was, I could fail. I mean, I could do a really bad job, and if I do, I'll lose everybody's respect. It'll be really, really embarrassing, and I'll lose love.

And that was the chain, you know. So I tried just, I had tried just bringing compassion to the fear. It didn't work, but that belief was still there, kept running, all the different ways I could mess up. So I, underneath that, I mean, I said to that belief,

okay, this is a belief. This is a belief. It's not necessarily truth. It's just a belief. And started exploring what was under it. And when I was really sitting in that belief, what was under it was that squeeze, that twisted feeling, that achy, pressing feeling called out-and-out fear. And I, it felt familiar like whenever I'm really afraid I'm going to in some way fall short, there's some version of it. So I started sensing how many moments in life there'd been at least some level of a background idea of around the corner I could fail. And you can think of this for yourself. How many moments do we have that sense of around the corner, something can go wrong?

You know, I could fail. So when I started sensing how many moments, there was some level of that, a lot of compassion came up and that's when I could really sit with kindness towards that whole complex of beliefs and feelings and then I could begin to ask myself, you know, who would I be this moment if I didn't believe that? If I didn't believe that failure, loss of respect, loss of love, you know, if I didn't believe in that chain. And there's some space. enough space so that I could then begin to sense, you know, everybody in that group, they're all like me, they're all just wanting to wake up and grow, and we're all friends. And I decided that would be my mantra, you know, we're friends.

And it was amazing that when I, they went from unreal others that just that two-dimensional, sitting out there just looking at me to the kind of dimensionality of we're friends. We're in this together. There was still fear, but enough space around it so that the Dharma, what really mattered, could flow some. And I've used that phrase, we're friends, a lot, to cut through unreal other. So I share this because, you know, the first optical delusion is something's wrong with me, which then, of course, creates unreal other, and we need to challenge that, real but not true.

feel what's under it with compassion and then sense from that little bit bigger space who's really here who's really here second optical delusion beliefs about other other is bad

and the flag of trance that's most useful for many of us is any moment you have a should like that person should be different should act different should be treating me better shouldn't be like that. It doesn't matter how right you feel like you are. Should means there's something you're not seeing.

When there's blame. There's some sense of inferior and superior in blame. Another story from my own life of should be different. When I was in college, the last couple of years, I got involved in community organizing, part of working with creating tenants unions. and doing rent control campaigns in Worcester, Massachusetts, where we confront slum landlords because they had a lot of power

and they could lead the kind of conditions in the housing were awful, and it was very hard to get them to change. So we'd build these unions, but then what would happen is that the landlord would go to the family that was most at the center of the union, most involved, and offer some perk. Maybe I'll lower their rent. you know, something that would get them so that they would cooperate with the landlord,

leave the union, and things would fall apart. They'd just do it again and again. So that was our frustration. And then that family would become our enemy. We would, everybody just really would, I can't believe they turned on us, that they let us down and so on. So that was the deal. Okay, so working on one campaign for months against one of the biggest landlords in Western

Massachusetts, teamed up with an amazingly charismatic woman and Donna. She and her family lived in a dilapidated apartment. Worcester's cold in the winter. The heating was really haphazard. So Donna and I, we bonded. She had like, she was bright. She had a huge heart, great humor. And, you know, we were an odd pair. She was this statue that's beautiful. African-American woman. I was kind of this hippie, white, kind of radical on the campus, and yet we chummed around, and, you know, it was a fun team. And I went to dinner at her house a number of times, got to know her kids, got to know also that her one son was in prison, got to know also she was dealing with uterine cancer, got to know also that her husband was in

debt, got to know a lot of things. So then it happened. went to a meeting, one of our organizing meetings, and she wasn't there, and went to another meeting a few days later, and word got out that she had been bought off. And I was really, really upset, and it was very personal because she hadn't let me know. It's like I kept thinking, I would have understood, you know, stuff happened. She didn't let me know. Then, you know, I heard others talk about Donna, and they'd seen her and they crossed to the other side of the street to avoid her. Then she started seeing people and crossing. You know, it was like it was really, and I really got that this woman who was proud was in deep, deep shame and hurt and rejection.

There's just no way I could turn her into an enemy. I knew too much. It was that bird got my wings, you know. Now, I want to say that if I hadn't known about her, I would have been one of the people too that crossed the street that made her the bad guy. I had done it before. So I'll just never forget when I went to her apartment and she didn't really want to let me in because she was so feeling, I could tell what she was feeling, but she had to. And when she looked at me, she just said, I had to do it, shook her head. And when we hugged, I'd just never forget. forget us crying together. Because it wasn't anybody's fault.

So I share this because when we are blaming someone, we're not seeing the whole picture. We're just not getting the whole picture. As Longfellow put it, that if we could see the secret suffering of our enemies, that would be enough to disarm all hostility. There's more.

There's always more. There's enough to bring up compassion if we really can look. But when we're hurt by somebody, we get small and we can't see. I often use that metaphor if you're out for a walk, and you see a little dog under a tree, and you go to pet it, and the dog lurches at you, and it's aggressive, and its fangs are bared, and you get really angry and upset at that,

but then you see that its leg is in a trap, and then you go from angry to, oh, you poor thing. Part of the Bodhisatt of a training is being able to see whether it's us that we're on, that we're at war with or someone else, how the leg is in a trap. We have to see just the way that that's seagull, the vulnerability, it could be stone, that there's some hurt there. Again, let's, I want to pause here and just invite you to check in and just explore this just a bit, just a taste. It's what you've been doing through the week with these compassion practices. Compassion arises when you see the truth behind the veils. Maybe there's someone in your life where you have a should,

a resentment that you've been carrying that creates separation. And I wouldn't choose to reflect on a person where there's trauma because you don't have time in this reflection. but just somewhat there's a kind of habitual should, irritation, resentment, annoyance. You should be different. You shouldn't be like that. And if there's agitation with it, you might first sense for yourself what's upsetting to you so you can just bring some care to, okay, something's difficult for you in this.

Always these circles of widening compassion, always check inwardly. If there's some vulnerability that you feel in you, underneath the judgment and blame, start there. Start with your own sense of vulnerability. And then widen. See if you can look at this being with eyes that can see past the veils, with eyes that can see how that person's in some way their lack is in a trap. In some way, there's an unmet need for feeling more at ease in the world, for feeling more loved or feeling better about him or herself or their self. But if there's a should, if that person is acting in a way that's harmful to themselves or

others, there's some suffering underneath. You include enough of what's real about this being so that your heart softens. This is the bodhisattva practice of Karuna, of looking to see the vulnerability as you see the vulnerability, you might just send some wish, some well-wishing, and then notice your own sense of your own being when your vision is widened, when you're seeing a bit more. Who are you when you can begin to see that vulnerability and respond to it? Do you feel more real, more at home?

Okay, so we've looked at two of two related optical delusions. where we're hooked on beliefs of something's wrong with me. The second, something's wrong with you. The third, which is just a widening, is the optical delusion that happens when the ego identity is really a group ego identity. And you might have felt some of that in the story I just shared about working in the Tenants' Rights group

that part of the blinders, We had these fervent tenants organizers that came from the tenants unions. A lot of them were drawn from the campuses, these bright-eyed idealistic. And then you had those that were actually living in these dilapidated homes that were not as well off. You had a different class, different race. And you had the privilege of those like me coming in to be helpers that were blubilant. blinded by that that didn't quite get, what is it really like for you? So the widening circles of compassion for the bodhisattva mean getting how our group identity can blind us

to what it's like for others that live in a different experience. And that optical delusion is the cause of a huge amount of oppression and suffering. You know, for the human race, we spent 10,000 times as long living in small bands as we do in our current societies, small bands where it was life or death to have other be bad, that the group, the in-group is better, and they had names for themselves that had to do with the real humans, and the out-groups, other bands, were less than. So that's deep in our wiring, right? And it's still alive today.

We still have this sense of, and it's not always in consciousness, but our group, the in-group, is better in some way. And we, especially the dominant group, superior, the less dominant group inferior, and it plays out most with race, religion, class. So to me, it's kind of an old. overlooked but critical domain in waking up the bodhisatt for heart to catch what's unseen about our group identity.

You know, it's such a deep, painful, embedded part of the landscape of our, the history in this country, this legacy of kidnapping and enslaving a race. How could it not be in our psyches now when I think about it? the destroying of the indigenous people that were on this land. All research shows that trauma is generational. It just does not go away because it's another generation. Faulkner puts it this way. He says, the past is not dead.

It is not even past. You know, I can say about myself that if you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said I am not racist. I am not classist. You know, I would have really said that. And most white people do not believe they're racist that I know, or most people at least that I knew a few years ago, people are catching on more because all the research shows it. The research shows that there is unseen bias. We just are not aware of it. And it's not the Ku Klux Klan kind of racism. It's much more subtle. There's just some subtle assumptions of capacities and tell.

intelligence, ways of thinking or being, awareness. It's like an unreal othering we're not aware we're doing. This is writer DeAngelo who says, the message is for the dominant whites. We are more valuable. Living in a white dominant context, we receive constant messages that were better and more important than people of color.

For example, our centrality in history textbooks, historical representations, our centrality in media and advertising, our teachers, role models, heroes, heroines, everyday discourse on good neighborhoods and schools, who's in them, popular TV shows circled around friendships that are all white, religious iconography that depicts God, Adam and Eve, and other key figures, is white. While one may explicitly reject the notion that one is inherently better than another, one cannot avoid internalizing the message of white superiority as it is ubiquitous in mainstream culture.

I like the way Tony Morrison put it. She said, in this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. Okay, so the Bodhi Sattva question, how am I creating separation? What am I not seeing? I have to say that for me, the statistics do jar me when I hear them,

that, you know, even though slavery is over and formal form the way the new versions of oppression are institutionalized with having three, you know, one out of three black men go to prison, over 50% of young black men unemployed. So widening the circles, what does it mean? How do we do it? From what I'm getting in my own life, it means that we have to intentionally find out about each other.

It's true in our personal life, and it's true in our group identity. It's like I had to get to know Donna, her realness. And in more recent years, I've had to get closer with friends that helped me shine a light on the unreal othering on a white identity. I've gotten closer to Ruth, who's been a great teacher to me. For four years, I was in a diversity sanga

and all the people in that group were teachers and other deepening friendships. A year, last year, a white, awake group that Hugh was also part of where we're just investigating, really looking. What am I not seeing? I remember about three years ago, one person who's become a very close friend came to my Wednesday night group, which is majority white. And she talked about, and we were, I was talking about encouraging our children to be all they can be, to really trust themselves and believe in themselves. and have that confidence.

And so here's what she asked. She said, as an African-American woman, I am afraid every time my son goes out that he won't come back, that he'll be shot by police or by other gangs. I want my son to be afraid because that fear might save his life. So, wow, you know.

For me and my white identity, my concerns with my teen, when Narayan was a teen, was a video game violence and that he and his friends were smoking too much pot. That was it, you know. You know, I'm really, I just finished about a week ago reading the same book

that Ruth described last night between the world and me. And the message to a son that's so powerful to me is that to be a person of color in this country is to live with the right to secure and govern one's own body. In other words, it's a constant physical threat. Racism is fundamentally a visceral experience. It's violence upon the body. Each time a police

officer engages us, death, injury, and maiming is possible. What's it like to be you? How to take away the veils of unreal other and say, what's it like to live with that optical, delusion, that the same winds carrying me or carrying you. I remember Ruth and I and a number of other teachers were out at a retreat center in the Southwest last year. And I remember on opening night looking out and seeing a group that was, I don't know, was it 60% people of color?

It was kind of like that. And crying. because I just thought to myself, this is the world I want to live in, where we're together, and crying because it's not usually like that. And crying because the urge, the bodhisatt for urge to widen the circles and know what's it like for you is not just to be like a good person. It's because we are incomplete. if our world is limited to certain people that seem like us.

We're missing out. The fourth optical delusion is not seeing goodness. And as we've talked about a lot, we have this negativity bias that's, you know, just evolution gives it to us. We're scanning to see what's wrong. We are designed to look for problems, so we don't see what's here. We don't see the goodness. It takes, again, intention. It requires being on purpose.

So one of the ways on purpose is, if we're around children, that helps. I thought I'd read you some of the wisdom of babes. These kids were asked questions about what they thought of love and marriage. So just to get a sense of removing the negativity bias and seeing what's possible. So here are some responses. One girl, age nine, asked about love. She goes, no one is sure why it happens, but I heard it has something to do with how you smell. That's why perfume and deodorant are so popular. Another one. Love is the most important, this is a boy. Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.

This is another about marriage. A man and a woman promised to go through sickness and illness, and diseases together. That was my favorite one. What a life commitment, you know. Dave Age 8 says, Love will find you even if you're trying to hide from it. I've been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me.

I'll just read a couple more. Why people in love hold hands. They're just practicing for when they might have to walk down the aisle someday and do the holy matrimony thing. And then one guy has created a love ballad. This is Eddie H. 6. I love hamburgers. I like you. That's his love ballad. And another says, this is Larry, age eight, says, he was asked to create one. He says, you are my darling, even though you also know my sister. I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or something. But the rest of it isn't supposed to be so painful. Love and kindness works. This is the other Bodhisatt, photography. training that is so central in this path. And it's simply pausing enough to look and see the goodness, like on purpose, looking to sense that the who that's looking out through these eyes is the same awareness, has the same longing to love, longing to love without holding back, longing to really

live from that loving as we do. Really getting that. It works. There's studies that show the effect of loving kindness on the brain. There's a study that shows how it works on that group identity level. Seven minutes of loving kindness is enough to reduce racial bias. Just bringing to mind a person of a group that is not your own, that you might have thought of as less than seven minutes of love and kindness. It opens our heart. And it opens our heart and it also serves others as well. The moment that we can mirror back goodness in that moment, we'd call it forth. One of the stories over the years that's most woke me up on this one is about a Catholic nun who's a teacher, and she was in a small Catholic school. So in those schools, you get to know the students

over the year. She actually taught kids when they're in third grade, and she ended up teaching that same class when they were in high school. And she described one day that class in the high school group was having a really difficult season, and their new math was hard, and they got really edgy and testy with each other. So she had them put aside their studies. And she had them write a list of everybody in the class, a small group, and think of the nicest things that they could say about that person, write them down. And she took all the lists home. And on Monday, she organized that she could give each student their list. And the students were kind of blown away. Like, she heard mutterings, like, I never knew that meant anything to anyone, or I never knew that they liked

me so much, things like that. The papers weren't mentioned again. Okay, so time goes forward a few years later, and her parents give her some really sad news that one of the kids in the class, Mark, who she had really been fond of, was killed in Vietnam, and she was asked to go to the funeral and be part of it, and she went there and all his classmates were there. At one point, Mark's father pulled her over to the side. We want to show you something, his father said, and he took a wallet out of his pocket. They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it. So opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had been taped and folded and refolded many times,

and she said she knew immediately. It was the paper that she had given Mark that day in that class. His mother said, thank you for doing that. As you can tell Mark, Mark treasured it. And at that moment, Mark's, the classmates were gathered around and they started all speaking up and one said, you know, I still have my lists in the top, draw of my desk at home. And then another said, oh, Chuck asked me to put this in our wedding album. It's in my diary, another said. Another just pulled it out right there from her pocket. And that was when, as nun described, that's when she could finally cry. She could finally cry and she felt the others with her, when they could sense the deep goodness in mark, in each of them,

and have it be felt right there in the field in those moments. Our goodness is what opens us. Seeing it in each other opens us. Letting others know opens them. It's a gift. One of the final pieces I'll say is that we often feel a right, rising wave of appreciation for others, but we less often express it. We have a kind of shyness or embarrassment or self-consciousness. And by expressing it, the love flowers. It flows over.

One writer described it this way. He says, go and love someone exactly as they are. Let them know. and then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered. Go and love someone exactly how they are, love who they are, and it'll pull it out of them. It draws it out of them. So we're exploring tonight really the Bodhisattva path. And it's an intentional path. There's an aspiration in it.

And the core longing or aspiration is really to awaken and be all that we really are, to realize and live from that loving awareness. And the expression that bird got my wing was so powerful to me because I really felt the sense of Jarvis as manifesting it in that moment. And just to share with you, he just recently put in a brief that's being held by the California Supreme Court and they're going to decide in less than two months whether or not to overturn the conviction. I thought I'd share with you something Pema Chodin wrote. She says, what I learn from him, Jarvis all the time, is what it really means to keep one's vows of not harming and of helping other people

in whatever ways one can. I always think if Jarvis can do it in these most important, challenging and difficult situations, I can do it too. It's a continual aspiration for my heart that Jarvis masters not be killed and that I have the pleasure of knowing him as a free man. A free man who I know will benefit all the people he encounters. So we close by sensing that we each to some degree know the prison of our own beliefs, how we keep ourselves in, We know the prison of judging others. We're tuning into the prison of getting narrowly identified.

We know the prison of not seeing the beauty and goodness, being kind of blinded. And our potential and what we can trust is that we have those wings to wake up. We have those wings, no matter how in prison we feel, to wake up and live from love. So I'd like to close with a very brief reflection. It's just a brief piece of seeing the goodness, bringing someone to mind who you care about, someone who's dear to you, and take some moments to really pause and sense

what it is that brings up the loving in you, what it is you see in that person. Maybe you can imagine them looking at you in the way they show their love. Or maybe it's their aliveness or humor, their tenderness. Just sense what it is that you appreciate. Imagine letting them know, letting them know the goodness and beauty that shines through them

and sensing their response and noticing what happens in your heart as you see the goodness and express it. Sense who you are when you're offering love, and you'll be sensing the bodhisattva as it's living through this particular heart and mind. These closing words are a poem by poet and dear Dharma friend Christy Sharshal. Namaste, my friend. I see the light inside you, no matter the joy or sorrow that is in your heart right now, Let us sit together in noble silence. Our conscious conversation, let us grow together with compassion and healing grace.

Let us wake up together, each as a mirror to the other, a reminder of the goodness, the truth of who we are. Namaste, my friend. I see the light inside you. Namaste, my friend. I see the light inside you. Namaste, my friends. I see the light inside you and blessings. I ask your forgiveness for giving one of the longest talks I've ever given.

I warned Jonathan, I didn't know quite how to make it shorter, so thank you for your presence, your patience, your attention. We hope you've enjoyed these teachings for more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule and special online offerings, please join my email list by visiting tarabrock.com.