The Four Remembrances

When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices – Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness – that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.

Transcript

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Namaste and welcome.

When I was in college many,

Many,

Many,

Many decades ago I read the series of books that were written by Carlos Castañeda about the shaman Don Juan – and I know many of you are familiar with them – and had many takeaways but perhaps the most memorable was built into this little quote right here.

The shaman Don Juan is teaching,

How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us?

The thing to do when you are impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death.

An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you or if you catch a glimpse of it or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.

An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you.

So this notion of death as an advisor is one that really actually goes through many,

Many spiritual traditions.

It is the wisdom of impermanence.

And when we open to remembering the truth that this life is a flash,

It is coming and going,

Our perspective shifts in a very dramatic and usually very,

Very wholesome way.

All pettiness falls away.

And I was reminded of this recently.

Jonathan and I were having dinner with a couple and one of them,

A man said that he asks himself most days,

How would today be different if I asked advice from my death?

What would I remember?

What would be important today?

And he just uses that as one of his daily practices.

And I think it is a really powerful one if we say,

Well,

How would the rest of this day be if we really were paying attention to the reality that this life is coming and going and we don't know when?

So typically we don't remember to tap into that wisdom.

We get into what I often call that daily trance where our concerns are way,

Way narrow and way small.

Some years ago I saw this cartoon and it has got a graveyard and the bubble that you are reading is coming up from under the ground.

And it says,

Hey,

I think I finally decided what to do with my life.

This is the caption,

Ed pushes the late bloomer envelope to exciting new levels.

Remembering what matters.

So it is in all wisdom traditions but I know that since college – and it is deepened for me growing up – that the more that I am intimately or radically sensing,

Okay,

This body-mind is here now and is going,

Really the more I open to love.

There is a direct correlation to remembering death and opening to love.

And it came clear in a certain way when I was at a meditation retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh and I went with a very dear friend and we had both been quite busy in our lives and we were thrilled that we were going to be able to take off a weekend and go to this retreat that was only a few hours away in Virginia.

And it was a lovely retreat and at the end of it Thich Nhat Hanh had everybody get into pairs so I buddied up with my friend Louisa who happens to be a teacher in our community here.

And he said,

Okay,

Now the first thing to do is to bow and say Namaste.

Namaste means I see the divine or the light or the sacred in you.

So we did that.

And then he said,

Hug each other.

So we were hugging each other and he said,

Now on the first breath as you are breathing reflect I am going to die.

I am going to die.

And then the second breath,

You are going to die.

You are going to die.

And then on the third and we have just these precious moments together.

So we did that.

And we looked at each other and there was a level of presence and intimacy and love that was so fresh.

It was so fresh.

It was not an idea about loving.

There were no barriers there.

It was just in the face of,

Hey,

We have got these moments.

The loving that was always there just manifested in its full flesh.

So love and presence and death.

And I don't think of it at all as grim.

I mean to the slightest or at all as,

You know,

Morose.

It is really… The whole spiritual path is one of remembering and forgetting.

You have probably noticed that we get inspired,

We get in touch with something,

We quiet down,

We sense some wonder or some beauty or some tenderness,

Oh yeah,

This is why I do this stuff.

And then we get small-minded and we get grim and we get petty and all that stuff and there is forgetting.

And one of the great tricks is to learn not to blame yourself for forgetting because it just happens,

It happens to all of us.

So what I would like to reflect on together in this class are what are four very archetypal and beautiful pathways to remembering given the tendency to go into trance.

These are ways to really let death be an advisor and to really wake up to our life.

And I thought what I do is begin with Rumi because Rumi sets this up quite well,

Okay.

So in one of his poems Rumi describes three fish in a lake.

And what he is describing is how they respond when a fisherman comes to the lake with a net and they want dinner.

And so what they do is the intelligent fish right away says,

I know my true home and immediately resolves I am going to the ocean,

I am not staying here.

It's like why stay in a little lake when you know you belong in an ocean and you are going to die.

So the other two,

Rather than following him,

Unwisely choose to stay in the lake,

You know,

Stay comfortable,

Stay where we are,

Stay in our familiar patterns.

So now I am going to read Rumi who says it a lot more eloquently than me.

What can I do to save myself from these men and their nets?

As the second described as half-intelligent.

Perhaps if I pretend to be already dead.

He bobbed up and down helpless within arm's reach of the fisherman.

Look at this.

The best and biggest fish is dead.

One of the men lifted him by the tail,

Spat on him and threw him on the ground.

He rolled over and over and slid secretly near the water and then back in.

Meanwhile the third fish,

The dumb one,

Was agitatedly jumping around trying to escape with his agility and cleverness.

The net of course finally closed around him.

And as he lay in the terrible frying pan bed he thought,

If I get out of this I will never live again in the limits of a lake.

Next time the ocean.

I will make the infinite my home.

I will make the infinite my home.

So this is our situation as with these fish.

Our mortal forms will die and if we don't find true refuge,

If we don't recognize some sense of something formless,

Something larger,

Deeper,

More filled with awareness and love than our day-to-day mind-state,

We will suffer through it.

That's staying in the lake.

We are staying in our small-mindedness.

And we do it in different ways.

We can see ourselves playing out as the fish did.

Sometimes we are like the dumbest fish that is trying to escape with agility and cleverness to outwit death and we do it in all sorts of ways and endlessly trying to manage our life and worry and arrange things and proof our self and get approval and that all reinforces the prison of the small mortal self.

Or else we do it like the other fish that kind of plays dead.

We leave ourselves.

We don't live true to ourselves and we try to meet other people's expectations.

We dumb ourselves down by numbing ourselves out in some ways.

In other words,

We play dead to our true nature.

So the freedom that is modeled by the first fish is the freedom of remembering who we are,

Of really not stopping short of sensing the mystery that is really living through us.

And that is when we call… when we talk about true refuge,

That is true refuge.

So if we are suffering in daily life,

We are playing out the two other fish and often the first part of waking up is just seeing our trance patterns and seeing how we do it.

And the big sign is that we feel separate.

And the other sign is we don't feel at home with ourselves when we are living in a smaller,

Small-minded place.

We are typically not at home in our bodies.

We are just not awake and inhabiting and at home in these life-forms.

And we are not at home in our hearts.

We are not connected with our hearts.

And we are typically at odds with others.

And in the deepest way we don't like ourselves.

Those are the signs of living in the lake or we are kind of at odds.

Often we can be in conflict in a number of places and think others are wrong but we start catching that the common denominator is moi,

You know,

In some way.

A little story of a man driving home from work.

It had been a tough day and his wife calls him on his cell phone.

She is just struck.

She heard on the radio that someone is driving the wrong way on the Capitol Beltway.

Heck,

Emma,

He replies,

There is hundreds of them doing that.

So this is a sign of trance.

We are not at home.

We are at odds.

So we are going to explore the four remembrances.

Whatever our version,

Whichever way we are playing out the fish that are kind of hanging out in the lake,

We are going to talk about four remembrances that can wake us up,

That can remind us of our true refuge.

And I will name them just to start right off what they are.

And the first refuge,

The first way that we remember is to pause.

And it really can become a practice where you are in the midst of stuff and you go,

Oh,

Yes,

That is right,

Pause.

I call this the sacred art of pausing.

The second one,

Saying yes to what is here.

And those of you listening live just did some practice with that in our meditation tonight,

Saying yes to what is here.

The third is turn towards love.

And the fourth is rest in awareness.

We are going to do them one by one.

The first pause directly deconditions a fundamental piece of the trance which is I am on my way somewhere.

When we are in our daily trance we are kind of tumbling forward towards something.

It is rare there is a sense of,

Oh,

Here,

Just these moments.

We usually have in our mind a map of time and there is like a vector and back there is where we were and we are on our way.

Does this make sense,

This trance of time and on our way?

So part of what keeps moving us is that we are reacting to things,

We are trying to get away from what is unpleasant and we are trying to move towards what is more pleasant.

And so there is a kind of unwillingness to simply be right in the moment.

We feel like we need to be on our way somewhere else.

In this little cartoon here there are two bears talking and they have got strung up in a tree,

This guy that looks pretty pathetic,

And here is what they are saying to each other.

His name is Brad Shaw.

He says he understands I came from a single parent den with inadequate role models.

He senses that my dysfunctional behavior is shame-based and Coda Benany urges me to let my inner cub heal.

I say we eat him.

So when we are reactive and when we are on our way we are not in a place in that kind of pause where we can actually listen to what is going on.

We can't take in information really in a deep way.

It is very much part of our cyber brain now that we are so busy skimming the surface on our way to the next piece of information that we don't absorb deeply.

There has been more and more research on how deeply we take in things.

We don't have as much capacity to pay attention.

Pausing doesn't come easily.

And yet think of the word understanding.

You have to stand under.

You have to be here for life.

Pausing is really the gateway to being intimate with anything that is going on.

And as I am speaking you might scan today.

And I wonder as you scan if you just think of today was there any conscious pausing?

One great composer said when he was told he was a genius said in terms of the music he wrote he said,

It is not the music or the notes.

It is the pauses between.

That is where the magic is.

Everything we cherish we have to arrive here for.

And yet we are usually on our way.

In this story from Tattoos on the Heart this is a beautiful book by Gregory Boyle.

And in one story he tells he describes doing mass at probation camps on Saturday mornings.

And all of his stories are about working with gangs in Los Angeles.

And he did a beautiful job creating businesses for those in the gangs and so on.

And he has a deep relationship with those in the hood.

And he tells a story about one morning he has got a real line up where he is doing a mass in the morning and then he has got an afternoon of baptisms and weddings and so on.

And he just has a few moments where he is going into his office to get his mail and so on.

He is not there for fifteen minutes when this woman in her thirties walks in the door and he checks his clock he realizes he has got very little time before the baptism and he is lamenting that he is not going to get to all his mail.

He says her name is Carmen.

She is a recognizable figure on 1st Street.

This is her first visit though to this place where he has his businesses called Homeboy.

So she is a heroin addict,

A gang member,

A street person,

An occasional prostitute and she is often defiantly storming down the street usually shouting at someone.

So he says he has got seven minutes until the baptism and she walks in and she says,

I need help.

She launches right in brash and somewhat of a no-shit sister.

Oh,

She says,

I have been to like fifty rehabs.

I am 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 be arriving for the baptism now in five minutes.

I went to Catholic school all my life.

In fact,

I graduated from high school even.

In 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.

Whenever I share that,

That story really goes deep into me because I can think of all the times in my life when with somebody and on some level I am trying to get on to the next thing and the sadness at not really showing up,

This habit of being on our way and relegating people into this pigeonhole of,

Oh,

You know,

You are before this and after that,

That kind of feeling.

It is sad and yet it is one of the universal ways that we are in our contemporary society in a trance.

And I very often I share about the study,

I think one of the most brilliant studies done in social science is the Good Samaritan study which I know many of you know but just to bring it into the atmosphere the set-up was this that the seminarians at Princeton were given a practice sermon and half were assigned the story of the Good Samaritan and half were assigned a random Bible story and the seminarians were then supposed to go to another building,

Give the sermon and then be evaluated on it,

Okay?

So they have these stories,

They are supposed to go to another building and do that but on their way between the buildings there is a person who has been actually placed there in a doorway who is moaning in distress.

So the question for the study is will the seminarians stop to help?

And you know,

Does it make a difference if some of them are about to give the Good Samaritan sermon?

Okay?

And what actually happened was it was determined by how much time they thought they had before they had to give their sermon.

If they believed they would be late they didn't stop to help and it didn't matter which sermon they were giving.

Now that's… Think about that.

Here you are,

Seminary and training for the seminary and about to give a sermon on the Good Samaritan and you don't stop to help somebody because you are going to be late in giving your sermon.

And yet this is the way we are designed in our trance mind is this is my… you know,

The self-importance that Carlos Castañeda talks about,

I am important,

I am on my way somewhere,

Check,

Check,

Check off the list and everything else becomes a background.

As one person said,

I think it was John Lennon,

Life is what is happening while you are on your way somewhere else.

So our first practice together is just to take a moment to explore pausing.

And I invite you to close your eyes.

And you might bring to mind a situation that comes up very regularly that you know you rush through.

It might be something that comes up with yourself or with others.

Where you know you are speeding around.

Maybe with children,

Partner at work,

Some place where you might want to experiment pausing and pausing can be for five seconds.

A pause is simply a way to reconnect with yourself and your life.

So choosing a situation where you think you would benefit from pausing.

And allow yourself to imagine it,

Bring it close in visually so you see where you are,

The setting,

The room you are in,

Who else might be there.

And just set your intention,

Sense that your intention is to pause even if it is short.

Choosing a way to come back home again,

To begin to reconnect with the real dimensions of who we are beyond living in that trance of being in that lake frantically or cleverly trying to get by,

Reconnecting with our real being.

Choosing a situation,

Imagine yourself pausing,

Arriving,

Breathing,

Remembering your intention,

Remembering what matters and then going on to the next thing,

A little more present,

With more heart,

More awareness.

Taking a few full breaths.

That's remembrance pathway number one,

Pausing.

That one is saying yes.

You might remember the story of the wise sage and people would bring their great troubles and they travel long distance to see him and he would first make them sit and meditate and then he would say,

I have one question for you.

And that question is,

What are you unwilling to feel?

Most of us when we are stressed get very,

Very busy pushing away the vulnerability that is inside us.

We are bicycling away from the present moment and from the discomfort.

And the more stressed we are typically the more we are saying no to the moment and in some form of reactivity.

And the way we resist the moment,

Well,

We judge others,

We judge ourselves,

We obsess,

We worry,

We numb ourselves.

These are ways we say no.

So a very basic part of coming back home again is sometimes described as developing equanimity or this window of tolerance where we actually tolerate the uncomfortableness of presence,

The feeling of vulnerability or quakiness or unsettledness or in-betweenness,

Where we not just pause but we actually say yes to the life that is right here.

Our motivation is that until we learn to contact the life of the moment we can't actually feel fully alive.

We are always somewhere leaning forward,

We are not balanced,

We are not open,

We can't feel a real sense of loving.

We don't have access to all of our being.

So for me I started meditating when I was in college.

And I remember one of the places that I was most aware of where I was saying no was that I would be doing work in the evening and it was near to impossible for me to be writing papers or doing work and not also eating.

And I just find myself… It was like I would swear the next morning when I would wake up I wasn't going to do it again because I would feel wretched but every night I would start working and I would go and I would get whatever it was I was into eating at that point.

It was more on the sweet side.

You know,

It was the sweet that would spike me because I was feeling dull but then I would really crash.

It was bad,

You know.

So meditation was starting to teach… Meditation teaches us to enlarge our window of tolerance.

Meditation basically says come back and be with what's here.

So I was getting used to saying yes to what was here.

And I started… That's what I targeted was could I sit there and really want to not feel what I was feeling and in some ways say yes,

In some ways say,

Okay,

These feelings belong here,

They are part of… They are waves in my ocean,

They are going to come and go and it's okay.

And at first it would be like I could extend for maybe five minutes and then I would go to a refrigerator and I wouldn't even know I was going to a refrigerator until I was already back with a big bowl of something.

But gradually it enlarged so I could wait longer and the urge would come and it would go.

And so some days I just didn't get anything and that started increasing until I started feeling a lot more like my evenings were creative and healthy.

And then I started extending it to other things in my life.

But that was a really,

Really big one because food was an issue through college for me and that was the place I was most addicted.

We do it though in all sorts of domains that we are not aware of where something uncomfortable in us has us leave.

We do it in relationships.

When we are uncomfortable with other people we over-talk.

Where else when we are uncomfortable we freeze up or we might present just the self we think is going to get the approval we want.

In other words,

How we are with each other is the way we think we need to be to have them feel a certain thing towards us.

That's because we are just uncomfortable just being who we are.

Most of us have fears that the who I am is not good enough to be loved.

So that vulnerability makes it hard to just be natural.

We put on something.

Does this make sense what I am saying right now?

Okay.

So it's an amazing training to begin to say,

Okay,

Rather than say no and do those exit strategies I am going to just go ahead and feel uncomfortable.

And yet when we do and we learn to stay we start finding a presence that's there that's actually quite creative and alive.

An example I am remembering as I was writing this talk that I thought I would share was of a man and his father.

His father got older.

They always had different political views but it became really,

Really distant.

And his father was far more conservative than he was.

And there was a lot of conflict and tension in the relationship because in a way his father would goad him with outrageous things and he knew he was being a little outrageous but this guy could not resist.

He just went for the bait every time.

So it got more and more entrenched.

So this man decided he was going to explore what it was like to have his father make statements that he thought were really out there and actually indicated misinformation and harm and so on.

But he was going to let his father… because it didn't help to argue.

That wasn't certainly… he wasn't like waking his father up to new truths.

It was just an argument.

So he decided to practice saying yes to his discomfort.

So his father would do something and somewhere in him he would go,

Okay,

This feels really yucky,

You know,

Horrible,

And yes,

Just let it be here,

Be here.

And it was a bit of a game so he actually started doing it in a very concerted way.

It threw his father off balance because,

You know,

He had nobody to push against.

And eventually his father seemed to get bored with goading him because he just didn't really react back.

But what he was finding in that presence was that he started to see in his father a few different things.

He would see that his father's insecurity,

That as he got older he got more rigid because he was anxious about his aging and his relevance and he just got tighter.

But he also was just in that space that he arrived in.

He also helped… it helped him remember what he admired about his father who had always been utterly dedicated to his family and he was a very smart business guy and he was a fabulous photographer and so on.

So he was able to… rather than talking about politics he could in a way respond to his father in areas that made his father feel better about himself.

I share this story because when we start saying yes to what's in the moment we start accessing a whole lot more choices in creativity,

Gives us a lot more freedom.

And when it comes to the really big,

Deep,

Challenging situations where death is an advisor,

Wanting to say yes to the moment gives us our life in the moment.

And here I'll share a friend in our… in this community here – and this probably was about fifteen years ago – found out she had cancer that had metastasized and she didn't have very long to live and she and I were very close.

And she was telling me – and we would meet and talk every week in those last few months – how her relationship with her body and mind was changing.

And she said,

Most of my old ways of trying to make myself feel better and thoughts about a better future are useless.

And so… and in fact any thought about the future just calls up fear or grief.

And of course memories are squandering what little time I have left.

Those were all her old ways of saying no to reality.

Think about the future,

Go into memory.

So she said,

This here right now is all that matters.

Letting this be all that it is,

When I do that I get to fully be here.

And I remember the day she said that because she said,

This is all I've got.

This.

And she looked at me and smiled and it was like she transported me into this timeless place of love.

In the moment of saying yes we become like that fish that said,

The infinite is my home.

No keeps us organized around a small self.

Yes opens us to the formless.

It opens us to presence and to the formless.

So let's practice a little with yes right now,

Okay?

As you let yourself arrive right here you might bring to mind some situation going on in your life where you know you get reactive and not something that's traumatic but something where you get annoyed,

Anxious.

And when you have it in mind imagine that you could go right to the part of that situation where you get triggered and freeze the frame and sense what's the worst part of it,

Like what's really triggering you,

What you're afraid of,

What you're not liking.

Just sense you could make that you-turn and just bring your attention within yourself and that you can choose to pause and say yes to what's going on inside you,

Just whatever the feelings are,

Just letting them be there.

It's like you're saying,

Okay,

This is the reality of what is coming up in me right now.

I don't have to react.

I can just be with this.

So you're saying yes and breathing with whatever is going on in your belly or your throat or your chest.

Bring some kindness to the yes.

And it's like these are waves in your ocean and you can let them be here.

It's okay.

And you might sense how just by saying yes and letting what's here be here you can sense that situation and perhaps there are some choices on how else you might respond that might better serve you and others.

Saying yes is the beginning of deepening presence and reconnecting with more of our intelligence and our heart.

So thus far we've explored remembering by pausing,

Remembering by saying yes.

The third remembrance is turn towards love.

When we're stressed,

When we're in a trance,

When we're living in the lake,

We are in what's often a negativity bias where we're fixated on what's wrong and we're forgetting the presence of love,

We're forgetting love.

So one of the key remembrances is there is a way to feel connection in this life and we can start to find it at any moment.

I love this cartoon where you have two women having tea together or coffee and one of them has a child who is on a stepladder with goggles and a blowtorch and he is blowtorching into the wall the words,

I need love.

And one mother saying to the other,

He is just doing that to get attention.

So we know from attachment psychology that this is the whole evolution of the human psyche that what a newborn or infant most needs is good attachment.

We know that,

That that's what allows the neurons to make all their connections and healthy development and good relationships with others.

And we're on a spectrum of how well we were met by our parents.

But it makes all the difference.

One story describes in the first week of life the set of twins who were each in their incubators,

They were born prematurely and one wasn't expected to live.

And the hospital nurse went against the hospital rules and placed the babies in one incubator.

And when they were placed together the healthier of the two threw an arm over her sister in an endearing embrace.

And whatever we make of this the smaller baby's heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal.

There are countless stories,

I have many,

Many stories,

Of infants and how nurturing is what made it possible for them to live.

It's essential.

So there are many ways that when we explore turning towards love there are many,

Many ways.

And each one of us needs to experiment.

What is the easiest or quickest or most nourishing way for you to remember love?

Sometimes we can offer love inward.

Sometimes we can call on and imagine ourselves being loved by others.

Sometimes we extend love.

Somebody sent me this card.

It's got a chicken saying,

Get well soon.

And if you open it up… If I can open it up.

Let's see.

Okay,

Get well soon.

And then the chicken is saying,

And no matter what,

Don't let anyone tell you soup will help.

I like to get my little vegan things in here and there.

I know for myself even just remembering to myself,

Oh please,

Can I be kind?

You know,

Just be a little kinder.

Just even the words,

Even when I am not feeling kind towards myself,

Just the idea of kindness,

Something softens.

So just to get a taste,

Again I invite you to close your eyes.

And what we have been doing is I have been inviting you to scan and bring up situations where you know you are in trance when you are either rushing or you are triggered.

And again just to invite you to bring to mind a difficult situation where you are having a hard time right now,

Something in your life where you feel like you are having a hard time.

And when you bring it to mind just notice how you have been relating.

Have you been on… has it been the mentality of trying to solve the problem and try to fix things?

Have you been hard on yourself or hard on somebody else?

And in these moments just in a simple way sense the place in you that is having a hard time,

The part of you that is either overwhelmed or afraid or hurt,

Confused,

Whatever it is,

And just in these moments have the intention towards kindness.

You might as we often do put your hand on your heart.

And just sense that you are sending care,

Some well-wishing,

May I be happy,

May I be free from fear,

May I touch peace,

May I feel okay.

And let your sincerity really be communicated.

And if it helps just to imagine kindness coming from someone you trust,

Letting that move through your hand to your heart.

And notice how even just a few moments of intending towards kindness can shift the quality of presence that is here.

This again is coming home more to the truth of who you are,

Leaving the lake and inhabiting the ocean of your being,

That formless,

Tender presence.

So as we have done thus far,

We have explored the three of the remembrances – pausing,

Saying yes to what is here and turning towards love – the last of the remembrances is to rest in awareness,

Sense your beingness.

In most moments,

Like the two struggling fish,

We are not resting in our being,

We are the problem-solver,

We are the one who is trying to get things done,

That is navigating difficulty.

And if you look at your life,

A lot of moments we are trying to figure something out,

We are approaching life like there is really trouble that needs to be dealt with.

And what is interesting – and here is where the seduction is – there is a lot of levels we can control things and they are the levels that are rather small where we can decide what we want to wear,

We can decide maybe what we are going to do this piece of work versus that piece of work and,

You know,

We can in some ways decide what we are going to say to people and so on.

But the big thing like aging,

Like sickness,

Like death,

Like everybody else's behavior,

Like the weather,

Like our own emotional weather,

We can't control.

And so when we begin to wake up to that,

Again,

This is again the wisdom of impermanence,

The wisdom of the fact that we can't control this,

There is a sense of that identity of the doer begins to calm down and there is a little more capacity to rest in being.

You might ask yourself right in this moment,

If there is no problem to solve,

Then what is here?

You might close your eyes and ask yourself that.

If there is no problem to solve right now,

Truly no problem to solve,

Then what is here?

When we let death be an advisor we can sense there is really nothing ahead that we have to solve.

And it doesn't have to be just the big deaths.

We can be just sensing these moments are flowing by,

We can rest some of this flow.

We will continue for a moment just exploring this,

Resting in awareness.

You might sense what is around you,

The sounds,

The sensations,

The movement of the breath.

And just sensing in the background this alert inner stillness that is always here.

Relaxing back.

The habit is to reconfigure and get busy and think we are on our way somewhere.

But when we start noticing that more and more we can ask ourselves,

We can inquire,

Well,

If there is no problem to solve,

What is here?

When death makes the slightest gesture all pettiness falls away.

The heart-mind opens,

The ocean is my home.

And keep your eyes closed and just sense into this.

In this fleeting life if we value being… Remember life is what is happening when we are on our way somewhere else thinking about something else.

But if we want to dedicate ourselves to remembering even this moment you can pause again.

You can say yes to what is right here.

You can turn towards love.

And then you can just rest in the love and the awareness that is your true home.

We close with a shared prayer.

May death be an advisor.

May the wisdom of impermanence help us remember to live this moment,

This day,

From loving presence.

May we all awaken these hearts and minds.

May all beings everywhere be free.

Namaste and thank you for your attention.

For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list please visit tarabrak.

Com.

Reviews

This talk was quite an emotional journey, lots of wise stories and thoughts. Very grateful to Tara for sharing this resource free 🙏

Another brilliant, helpful talk! I’m looking forward to practicing this. 🙏✨

Wonderful message to be intentional and not in a hurry.

Tara a mere thank you seems to pale to the enormity of this gift from you I have just experienced. I will come back often to be filled and to remember. Much love to you. Namaste 🩷🌸🌺

I come back to Tara all the time. She’s a guiding light in turbulent times.

An unexpected gift.
Delightful
Inviting and inspiring
Thank you
Am already thinking of friends I want to share this recording with
🙏

Thank you for sharing this Tara🙏 It was enlightening and real. I also loved the humorous additions as well. Namaste 💚🪷

Look forward to hearing this again. Much to take away. ❤️

Superbly thought-provoking, humorous, wise, humble and relevant, as always. Thank you 🙏

Tara's perspective and delivery of practices made so accessible by her own experience is ever consistent, flawless and so from the heart. Thank you. 🙏

Exceptional talk and content that wakes us up to how we are living. Worth listening to and revisiting!

I love Tara Brach talks on YouTube. Nice to listen on here. Such practical wisdom teaching and self compassion. Plus opportunities for contemplative meditation.

An amazing talk and meditation. I listened three times and meditated on my third time during most of it. What a teacher amd speaker Tara Brach is?!

An important talk for life and how to live. Thank you for your wisdom 🙏

Ultimately calming, grounding. Tara has a unique way of getting to the heart of what really matters in our every day life. Beautiful thank you 🙏❤️

I always love Tara Brach

Wonderful. I love the stories you tell and how you tell them. Thank
you Tara 😀

Simply amazing and reviving- literally!! Thank you!!!!!

Really great, insightful and a little humor injected into it too. Thank you!

Excellent. Love the examples and imagery she uses in this talk. Thank you Tara. 🙏🌹