Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom I, with Tara Brach

Namaste Welcome Friends one of my favorite all-time stories about the Dalai Lama was when he was interviewed by Network news after publishing his book on happiness and the question they gave him was what was the happiest moment of your life and he had that mischievous look before responding and then he said I think now you know we have all these misguided Notions of what's going to bring us happiness what's going to make us happy what will stop us from being happy and then we have habits ways of paying attention that kind of lock us into a certain range of moods true happiness is a natural expression of our being when we're open and present and far from being a self-centered emotion when we're happiest we're actually free from our self-narrative so friends this has all been on my mind the nature of Happiness the pathways to happiness and I've selected from the archives two talks that I really like for this week and next that really explore how we cultivate our capacity for happiness it's an inquiry into happiness that I think is powerful and beautiful and potentially life-changing so my prayers that this serves you on your path Namaste and welcome so I welcome those that are right here at River Road in Bethesda it's as I mentioned earlier it's great to be back and I also want to welcome those that are joining us for live streaming uh our our friends all over the place uh it's just a pleasure to be with you all I've been away for oh gosh like five weeks and I'll share a little bit about that but I thought I'd start with a A profound teaching story this setup is Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson and they're on a camping trip and so they set up their tent and they fall asleep and some hours later uh home you know Sherlock wakes up his faithful friend he says Watson look up in the sky and tell me what you see so Watson replies I see millions of stars Sherlock Holmes what does that tell you so Watson's pondering he says astronomically speaking it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets time wise it appears to be approximately quarter past three theologically it's evident that the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant meteorologically it seems we'll have a clear beautiful day tomorrow what does it tell you homes are silent for a moment then he speaks Watson you idiot someone stolen our tent okay so here's why it's profound okay ready we all have distinctive patterns of paying attention where our attention goes things we're looking for things we're scanning for some of us are paying attention and it's based on what we're wanting can I get more of this will this satisfy me and others it's what we're afraid of is that we're seeing around the corner for Watson you know it was in some ways wanting information or maybe approval for homes he's got this mistrust of humans and he's looking for what goes wrong our habit of how we pay attention totally shapes our moods your habits of how you're thinking what you're thinking about every day and they're very repetitive it said that we have 86 000 thoughts today and we had the same yesterday you know we we just keep repeating we just uh it the Buddha put it best he said whatever we think about regularly that becomes the habit of our mind so how do we pay attention and if we look at ourselves we can ask am I primarily paying attention to what is around the corner that's going to go wrong am I primarily planning and worrying is it what's it what's in it for me or how people are going to be appreciating me is it self-blame a brief reflection that I really love you close your eyes for a moment and mentally conjure up the word trouble and just say it to yourself hear your voice saying trouble and you might add a little charge to it trouble say it a few times hear your inner voice saying it strongly just notice what it's like to be saying trouble and what happens in your body your heart your mind okay put that on mute turn that off erase the Blackboard whatever works for you and now the word kindness just mentally repeat the word kindness a number of times and just notice yeah and again wonder about what's the kind of thoughts the ways you're paying attention through the day if you'd like you can open your eyes there's a lot that's been written about set points for our moods that with happiness with anxiety that there's a set point and what we know is that some of it's put in place genetically and some of it is generated by early life experiences and a whole lot is either sustained or Changed by your habit of paying attention okay so the saying is whatever we practice grows stronger if you're practicing a lot of meta that's going to change your set point the love and kindness practice kindness will change your biology if you practice worry thoughts that'll sustain a set point of a lot of anxiety talk to one woman who's in her 50s recently she was saying she said to me is It Sane to even think it's possible I can change I've been like this since you did depressed and insecure all my life it's my habit so she's the one that if she was looking at the sky she'd be scanning for evidence if something's wrong she would come up with something like I'm so self-involved I can't even feel awe looking at the nice guy it would reflect back on her that's the habit of paying attention so I run into this a lot that many have perhaps one of the deepest layers of fears I can't really change the way I want to change you know I can never really feel close to others I can never really feel a sense of at peace or at home with myself I can't really like myself um so the reason I wanting to talk about what we're talking about tonight which is really what I'm calling rewiring for True well-being well-being I like that word you know really well-being is because we all have the potential for it and one of the most classic teachings of the Buddha was I would not be teaching this if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible it's possible so we're going to talk about rewiring you know what's the rewiring that actually shifts our habits of paying attention so that we can cultivate that inner freedom of of well-being and we're going to look at really you know it's really cultivating mindful awareness the ways we do it we'll look at how the patterns get deeply grooved and just a name that this is really something that takes patients dedication and practice because it really is a rewiring of patterning that's it's an apt kind of metaphor part of what motivated me I mentioned I was away for a while I I was on a one-month writing Retreat and it really was a retreat I was mostly offline there were a few things I had to tend to and so things slowed down as they do at Retreats and I got to meditate more and kind of meditate and walk and write and um so I got to watch my mind more and I want to watch the ups and downs of my moods and I got to see much more clearly as I was witnessing that when writing was flowing and the weather was good and I was we were I was able to swim you know when when there was news of the world that was encouraging that was a very tiny Splinter but um my mood would go up you know and then I also noticed how ah when I was having writer's block or I was my energy was low or Jonathan felt sick for a while or News of the World um you know I would watch it go down and one of the realizations that I had that I keep having over and over and over again is that when I was really feeling a true sense of well-being it had nothing to do with my mood being upper my mood being down you know there was one morning and we were watching the seals and the waves and I was just feeling ecstatic another day that I was you know listening and taking in more about uh you know just feeling the agitation around Christine blasney Ford's testimony and just the agitation of it and then underneath that the sorrow of the currents and this society that are so strong uh the abusive currents and the sorrow is there but when I was feeling real real well-being it was just how present was I with either one person put it beautifully The Joy isn't getting real not in whether good things are happening or bad things are happening so you might wonder well why when so much is going on in this world are we talking about let's getting feeling happier but what I've seen over and over again and I I read a really beautiful article one person was describing that what we most need in this world is the resilience the inner Refuge of presence of inner well-being that can allow us to respond in an intelligent compassionate way to what's going on when aggression is met with reactivity and more judgment it just perpetuates so there needs to be this inner capacity to find balance in the midst so we talk about rewiring for well-being and the Buddha described this capacity whether it's up or down to find that sense of well-being um as really the deepest happiness in the world and it sometimes described happy for no reason which I love so there's two kinds of Happiness we're going to explore and this is in Buddhist psychology and they're both really important and they and one of them has a shadow side the first kind of happiness is called worldly happiness the word in the Asian script is pamoja and worldly happiness is like when I was seeing those seals and feeling that sense of wonder you know our worldly Happiness is when you're feeling really connected with somebody and just that feeling that just that sense of wow there's a really good good deep trust that's here our worldly Happiness is when you're seeing Beauty and feeling awe and it can be when you have a really good meal or a great massage so it's the pleasantness of life being linked to certain conditions and if there's not grasping it can be really useful it's called Happiness with cause because it cultivates a gladness in the mind a lightness that makes us actually more available to the second kind of Happiness which is called sukkah which is happy for no reason it's the happiness and this is really the place of freedom that is not really dependent on any cause we're going to look for the rest of this class at pamoja at happiness with cause first and the reason is this that because of our negativity bias because we tend to be looking if there's uh you're we're told to look at the sky we're worried about who stole the tent because our habit is to think something's wrong and that there's a problem to balance it out to access the more full truth we need to get more in the habit of savoring and seeing the beauty and opening to goodness so that kind of happiness is something many of us miss out on and that we need and just to note that purposefully gladdening the mind as we're going to be exploring in this class doesn't mean that if there's a difficult emotion like let's say we're feeling anger at what's going on in our world that we say oh I want to get rid of that anger how can I feel grateful for things it's it's not that we're not trying to cover over the negative if something's difficult we bring mindfulness and compassion to it this is a both end learn to be with the difficult but also learn to cultivate the capacity for joy okay for most of us it really is a practice because of the Habit patterns of um you know what I often think of as this kind of grimness of getting through the day and one of my favorite expressions of it is in a poem that the poet have face wrote and it's called chess game and in this poem there's a chess game going on with God in other words this is reality and he writes this what is the difference between your experience of existence and that of a saint the saint knows that the spiritual path is a Sublime chess game with God and that the Beloved has made just such a fantastic move that the saint is now continually tripping over joy and bursting out in laughter and saying I Surrender whereas my dear I'm afraid you still think you have a thousand serious moves how many can relate to moving through the day grimly a thousand serious moves you don't have to even raise your hand on that one okay so let's do a little bit of a reflection together okay if you will just to close your eyes and this is a reflection on your own level of well-being do you experience well-being often scanning the last few days today right this moment when you're feeling well-being if you can sense now or recently feeling it what gives rise to it how do you sense the causes for your well-being is it sense pleasure when things are feeling good your body's feeling good just got that exercise in or the pleasure of beauty touch is it when you're involved in an activity you're meaningfully engaged is that when you're feeling well-being accomplishment close to another person do you feel that you sometimes experience well-being spontaneously without cause happy for no reason consider today what ways of paying attention might have blocked happiness or well-being were you preoccupied or were you trying to check things off the to-do list and there was no space in between were you judging yourself for falling short in some way or judging someone else where attention goes energy flows as you're witnessing right now and asking these questions just add in a little dosage of kindness let this be an interesting kind inquiry noticing the patterning as you feel ready please open your eyes okay so what we practice grows stronger and every one of us has habits and some of us have good habits but we all also have habits that keep us smaller than who we are they keep us in stories of what's wrong or what's missing so let's look now on how do we brighten and glad in the mind on purpose and the beginning of it is and there's research on this that people that are happy that really experience well-being also have an intention to be happy that there's some intention or wish in their heart may I be happy may I feel well-being you know that I share often this one story that struck me so much of this is a woman in our community who's a cancer survivor and she was having a conversation with another woman in her survivors group and her friend asked her well what would it feel like for you to think that something good rather than something not so good or bad was going to happen today something good is going to happen today and my friend responded totally weird and uncomfortable and her friend said good now try it now this is rewiring the Mind rather than thinking something bad's gonna happen just that openness something good something good is going to happen because good things always happen we just don't notice them so a deep app it is to anticipate trouble and not even to assume that well-being is possible often we don't wish for happiness we don't eat we just rule it out so next reflection close your eyes again if you will notice what happens when you say this I want to open to my potential for well-being please may I be happy may I experience well-being today in this season of My Life and feel free to change the words and say it again a few times please may I be happy please may I feel well-being and then with interest again and kindness just notice what happens does it bring up doubt that it's possible does it bring up a question about whether or not you deserve it do you feel a little tinge of excitement oh this is possible wow I could actually cultivate this capacity to enjoy more this is the first step this conscious intention to uncover our natural capacity for happiness what happens when you try on this intention the Catholic Mystic Andre nuan here's what he says he says joy does not simply happen to us we have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day so the understanding is and you can open your eyes if you'd like the given our habit given our conditioning to rewire begins with this intention too open to what our capacity is May I feel well-being okay so favorite story and if you've been with me for a while you'll remember this this is uh Marty Seligman who's the father of positive psychology tells this one he talks about being out weeding in his garden and his daughter Nikki who had turned five 11 months earlier is there and he says he's a very serious Gardener you know and that afternoon he was focused on what he's doing which is weeding and Nikki's having fun on the other hand she's weeds are flying up in the air and dirt spraying everywhere so he pauses Seligman says now I should mention here that despite all my work on optimism I've always been somewhat of a nimbus cloud around my house so he he names that and he goes uh so he says really I'm not that good with kids and he kneels down that afternoon's Garden he's yells at Nikki so she this is her response little girl's response she got and this is how he describes it she got a stern look on her face and she walked right over to me Daddy she said I want to talk with you and this is what she said from the time I was three until I was five I whined a lot but I decided the day I turned five to stop whining and I haven't whined one since the day I turned five then she looked him in the eye and she said Daddy if I could stop whining you can stop being such a grouch so positive psychology actually expl this is a really lovely overlap with Buddhist psychology and positive psychology which is recognizing that if we want to undo the negativity bias the survival brain of ours that's out looking for an attack in the jungle every moment we need to intentionally glad in the mind we have to be on purpose so there are three there are many ways to go out in the mine but I'm going to go over three of them and ask you if you will to practice these three because they'll only take you a few minutes every day okay and the trick with practicing the trick with rewiring and this is a bit of what um Neuroscience has discovered in the not distant past is that if you want stall a new habit if you want to have a trait become a state become a trait to install it you have to invoke a positive experience and then sustain it in Awareness from 15 to 30 seconds what usually happens we look up at the at the sky or the full moon we go wow that's really cool and we get this kind of like you know feeling like we're part of the universe for a moment and then our mind flicks onto what we need to get done next and we put on you know look on our iPhone and that's it and what Neuroscience statistics have found is that when a negative experience happens it immediately goes down into our implicit memory and takes root and it gets recalled over and over again and so that one really impacts us like if you got you know six compliments and one piece of negative feedback you know what your mind's gonna like latch on to right you know that's the way our brains work well if you want a positive experience to take root and start informing your life you have to on purpose sustain your attention and actually the in an embodied way feel the pleasantness of it and then it goes into the implicit memory and it's available for recall this really is a very uh very explicit training of the Mind so the first area that we can begin to Glad in the mine and install that that positive state is gratitude is on purpose gratitude now I don't know about you but I have an inner complainer and it it's there a lot you know and it just it just grumbles through the day you know just like makes things it just kind of like mumbles and grumbles about stuff and now it's more entertaining because I really you know I just notice it and I talk back to it and so on but I have that and I think that a lot of us do that there's just kind of an ordinary place in us and when we left our own devices we get into it and of course there's one wonderful story of a woman who enters the monastery and your the rules in that particular Monastery is you only have one meeting every five years with the head abbess and uh and you can only say a couple of words so you know first five years go by and she says bed hard and the Abba says well you work on it you know learn to be with everything five years later food bad the average says yeah well you know you want to not have your happiness hitched to food or whatever go work on it five years later she says I'm leaving and the app I said I can see why you've done nothing but complain since you've been here so we have this part of us that far from being grateful is the Habit is to to complain Seligman did some very interesting research on gratitude he worked with some severely depressed people and he said for 15 days each day just write down three things you're grateful for and 92 percent had an increase in happiness from just that that's small one of his other things in his training she said that was very effective pick someone you feel grateful toward write a one-page letter read it to that person and listen attentively to their response now that one takes more effort but it's very powerful I had someone do it to me and just being involved in the process I'll never forget it so um for many of us the best way to practice gratitude is to have a gratitude partner and that I've done also and with a gratitude partner you can at the end make an agreement that at the end of the day you're just going to send an email with three things you're grateful for you don't have to say anything else no conversation nothing but you're accountable very very beautiful practice so even when life is more difficult you know if you think about people you know that are grateful you can sense the inner freedom and you know for yourself I mean when I am really feeling appreciation I I feel a sense of Purity like I'm very there's a level of Innocence that comes out where I'm kind of I have resolved back into my you know kind of a very sincere innocent pure beingness one of the teaching stories I love on gratitude is about a a man called Kabir who's a Shoemaker not the famous poet and whenever could be your work you would just repeat the Mantra which is his way of saying God sacred Divine you know it's just a feeling of uh gratitude appreciation for the divine so he did this day in day out for 20 years and one day Rahm appeared and Kabir said well who are you and Ron said well I'm wrong and Kabir said well why are you here and Robin said why am I here you've been calling me for years and years and years and now I've come what do you want and kavir said I don't want anything and ROM said what you've been repeating my name and he said well I just love repeating your name so for years to come wherever Kabir would go he'd be followed by ROM and the sound Kabir Kabir again the Mystic Henry Henry new one says the choice for gratitude rarely comes without some real effort but each time I make it the next choice is a little easier a little Freer a little self less self-conscious okay so this is practice number one in gladdening the mind let's reflect a little okay let's try it out for these next few moments what I'd like to invite you to do is to whisper the words I am grateful to or else I'm grateful for and fill in the blank and then just keep repeating it saying whatever else comes to mind so it might be if I'm doing it right this moment I'm grateful to be here with my extended Community my friends I'm grateful to feel healthy and alive I'm grateful to have practices that can bring me back to my heart so we're going to continue together we're going to all just be whispering don't be self-conscious but just begin to whisper I'm grateful for or I'm grateful to until I ring the bell I'm grateful too I'm grateful for having me to become great it could be the people in your life experiences you have whatever you love what are you grateful for you Whispering it a little louder now okay to be teaching and doing what I love okay I'm grateful tonight and now just pick one thing that you might have named or haven't yet named it feels very resonant that you're grateful for repeat it be a person something you love and let yourself fill with the gratitudes you feel in your body your heart feel how much this matters to you feel your the innocence and purity of your gratitude and from that depth of feeling you might just say the words thank you let it fill you notice what does it feel like to really be grateful in your body and your heart what do you most notice what's the sense of who you are when you're really filled with gratitude notice the quality of beingness that's here when you're grateful so one beautiful Pathway to gladdening the mind is to be grateful on purpose and install it feel it let it fill you second is servant it's act of kindness in some way being of benefit to others and those I know who are most depressed feel entirely locked into self-centeredness and in the moment when there's some giving some sense of helping another it lifts a bit it doesn't mean it doesn't recollect it takes a lot depression is I don't want to make light of it like you know just say you're grateful every day and everything changes a lot can change when we do over time these practices but giving to others is a way that wakes us up out of that habit of focusing on what's wrong or missing here I know I was thinking as I was putting this together of one young man I know who was in Haiti uh you know when there was just so much natural disaster and so much suffering and he was accompanying an old man with a broken hip to the emergency room spent many hours with this man who was in a lot of pain but wasn't getting attention and this this young man was feeling his helplessness and how hard it was to not be able to help then he describes at one point the old man had was given a piece of bread and he broke his role in two and he handed half of it to this young man and the Young Guy's embarrassed and says oh no you eat it you're the one that's not well and you're the one that needs it and the old man insisted he would not let Phil say no so he eventually took it and aided and when he did he the the old man just looked so pleased to have shared his meal with this with this person and Phil realized in those moments that he was still kind of helping from uh I am you know I'm in a remove more privileged place and I'm helping poor you and it was in those moments that he sensed a deeper level of what helping means which is We're In It Together keeping company and the deliciousness of that there's a radical Freedom that comes when we sense our mutual belonging that we're in it together and then when we reach out to each other it's not oh I've got a lot of stuff to offer and you can take it it's it's because we're in the dance together it's um it frees us from that self-centeredness and that pain there's a lot of correlations in the body and the moments that were that we wake up that that sense of compassion of that shared resonance that you know we're both we're both touching into the suffering that far from causing more pain it actually brings up oxytocin and it lights up the part of the brain that feels good it feels good to help when we're coming from that awake place so again let's reflect just brief little reflections and in this one bring somebody to mind if you will that in some ways having a hard time and just imagine something that you could do some way you could be helpful including a secret act of kindness and imagine the person in some way relieved or uplifted because of it so take your time and sense where this might be relevant somebody in your circle who's having a hard time and something that you could do from your heart because you're in it together you feel that that vulnerability and just care they're part of your heart some act of kindness it could be just a few affirming words it could be something you give that you hadn't thought of they might like just something kind and imagine them receiving it in some way of being helped being uplifted and as you imagine them being uplifted sense how it feels in you what does it feel like to bring relief ease upliftment to another feel it in your body your heart and just notice the sense of your own being when you have in some way extended yourself who are you then again from Andre Newen every time I take a step in the direction of generosity I know that I am moving from Fear To Life this is the second way we glad in the mind the third way I'd like to mention is the last is savoring as EG white writes I wake up each morning Torn Between the desire to serve and to savor it makes it very hard to plan the day you know I remember a friend of mine just describing a couple she she knows well and loved to travel and live fully you know they really they really quite a very active Dynamic couple he got a diagnosis of Parkinson's and you know the front friends was talking about how they continued to be very much Lively in a real capacity for joy and their attitude was this and they talked about it with their friends they just made a conscious effort to make each day be as good as it could be it was that simple and they knew about savoring because savoring doesn't have to be something glamorous gorgeous exciting you know like wildly interesting it's the Small Things We savor and when that's our habit life becomes really sweet every one of us has access to the small things whether it's just taking pleasure in someone's laughter I was talking to a old friend a couple days ago and she has this kind of Aurora's Billy laugh and it's just like I just started realizing wow I'm enjoying listening to her laugh you know it's just really felt good savoring there's two ways to live your life Einstein writes one as as though nothing is a miracle the other is as though everything is a miracle so there's uh one of the trainings is that when something is really lovely to you in some way just pause and breathe with it five breaths of taking in the good Saint Teresa I would like just to read you a little bit of what she writes on savoring she says just these two words he spoke changed my life enjoy me what a burden I thought I was to carry a crucifixes did he after a night of prairie changed my life when he sang enjoy me how did those priests ever get so serious and preach all that Gloom I don't think God tickled them yet beloved hurry she's good so gratitude serving and savoring those are the three that I wanted to speak to and if you want to have a very simple way of practicing for these next couple of weeks I would recommend each day you commit to this okay you pull out your pen and paper right now pause once just once to savor something okay and by the way it'd be great to have a buddy if you can find a buddy to kind of do your rewiring for well-being work with ones to savor something and by the way again it's 15 to 30 seconds of appreciating for each of these okay one act of kindness a day one savoring one act of kindness and then at the end of the day three things you're grateful for we'll have this in Facebook if you forget but um that would be the um training guidelines and remember for each it's 15 to 30 seconds and just to know that you know this is circling back to Sherlock Holmes in the tent that it's really about how you pay attention and if you're watching your habits not to miss the millions of stars in the sky not to miss it and then if someone steals your tent you'll know how to deal with it from a pretty good place okay so let's close together let's take a few moments to come into quietness notice where you are right now what's it like inside just without any judgment noticing the mood your body feels your heart exploring sensing that intention towards well-being may I relax may I touch peace may I touch true well-being feel that wish for your own life you might bring somebody to mind and the person that's dear to you just as I want to touch that peace and well-being may you touch that peace and well-being you just feel how your heart space is including that person too and then another person may you too feel well-being they touch the natural Joy of feeling alive just sensing and imagining if widening Circles of beings touch that innate sense of happiness peace and well-being that we'd create the world we believe in we'd live in a world that truly had a reverence for life that we'd live out of that loving close with a brief reading from the poet Dana Folds do not let the day slip through your fingers but live it fully now this breath this moment catapulting you into full awareness time is precious minutes disappearing like water into sand unless you choose to pay attention since you do not know the number of your days treat each as if it is your last be that compassionate with yourself that open and loving to others that determined to give what is yours to give and to let in the energy and wonder of this world experience everything writing relating eating doing all the little necessary tasks of life as if for the first time pushing nothing aside is unimportant you have received these same reminders many times before this time take them into your soul for if you choose to live this way you will be rich beyond measure grateful beyond words and the day of your death will arrive with no regrets Namaste and blessings thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Tara Brach

Views: 36,445

Keywords: Tara Brach, dharmarain108108108, dharma, meditation, mindfulness, radical compassion, compassion, dharmarain108108108108, happiness, freedom, awakening

Id: RIn99WBKis4

Length: 54min 9sec (3249 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023