Why Fighting the World With Hatred Is Making You Worse at Fighting the World | Tara Brach

Key Takeaway

When anxiety about the state of the world feels overwhelming, the antidote is simpler than you think: take action, however small. "Action absorbs anxiety," says meditation teacher Tara Brach, "and action with others deepens belonging and serves the world." You don't need grand gestures—text an encouraging message, help a neighbor, smile at a stranger. These tiny acts reconnect you to what you care about and pull you out of paralyzing fear. As one activist put it: "Whenever I feel helpless, I become a helper." Your hands stop shaking when you're washing the world's feet.

Episode Overview

Dan Harris interviews meditation teacher Tara Brach about cultivating what she calls a "courageous heart"—the willingness to feel difficult emotions and engage with suffering rather than turning away. They discuss spiritual audacity, love-based activism, and practical ways to stay connected and active during challenging times without succumbing to despair or hatred.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Why Fighting the World With Hatred Is Making You Worse at Fighting the World | Tara Brach from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello everybody. I'm Dan Harris. Welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. Uh, one of my little taglines is uh, the world is insane, but you don't have to be. I get it. Uh, it is tough out there and, uh, given all the chaos and and cruelty and uncertainty, it is natural to want to resort to despair or hostility or denial. But none of those things actually feel good. And more importantly, none of those things actually help the overall situation. So today, we're going to talk in great detail about how to feel better about everything that's happening in the world.

And more importantly, how to engage so that you can make things better, which by the way will make you feel better. Uh my guest today is the legendary meditation teacher Tara Brock. She has written such books as radical acceptance and radical compassion. and she's out now with something called the Courageous Heart Workbook. We're going to talk all about it, Tara Brock, after this quick break. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. If you haven't already checked out my newish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris, I would love for you to do so.

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betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. That's betterhp.com/happier. Darrock, welcome back to the show. It is wonderful to be with you, Dan. Let me start by being a little bit of a pain in the ass. Um, as you know, I'm a little bit uh pnikity about language. Uh, I have gotten a little bit less uptight about this type of thing in recent years. And yet, uh, I'm going to channel the old version of myself on behalf of the skeptics in the audience. Uh, when you use a term like courageous heart, what does that actually mean?

Because I can I I think the old version of me might be like that's a little twe. Well, I welcome your skeptical self. I kind of expect it, dear. Yeah. I would say the essence of a courageous heart is a heart that's willing to feel what's here. That simple. That's uh there's a a really beautiful inquiry uh that I use a lot on myself, which is what right now am I unwilling to feel? And if I ask that, my attention goes right to whatever I was unconsciously and habitually pulling away from.

So a courageous heart feels what's here to feel because if we're willing to do that, uh, we touch into vulnerability, we touch into tenderness, and we touch into caring and love. So I guess that would be, uh, the simplest way for me to put it. put it. put it. Yeah. So let me see if I can amplify it. So to me just terms like I I think terms like heart generally are are tricky just for me given my you know um um conditioning and I I will own just right from the jump that there's um uh subconscious sexism that that plays into that like words like heart are just hard for me to swallow sometimes.

But really what you're pointing at here is a baller move. A very very hard thing to do, which is that uh consciously or subconsciously there are a lot of things going on in our mind and in our world and in our relationships that we just don't want to deal with. And a courageous heart is willing to look squarely at this stuff. Yeah. It's both inner looking uh at what we don't want to feel inwardly and also not turning our gaze away from the parts of the world that are struggling and that can feel amazing deep deep pain in paying attention but willing to pay attention there too.

Well, that leads me because the natural question is like how do you do that? Um, and that kind of leads me to a term you're using a lot these days that I find compelling and I think I think might get us to, you know, h how we display the courage you're calling for. And that term is spiritual audacity. What does that mean? Okay, so the origin of that term, this is a Rabbi Abraham Hershel. He wrote in a he was writing a letter to John F.

Kennedy and he said, "This historical moment calls us to respond with moral grandeur and spiritual audacity." And he was talking about the horror, the ongoing horror of generations, centuries really, of uh slavery. I love this term. I'll just have to say that I really love it. It it's in times of spiking fear and violence like we have now, we need a kind of um daring and spiritual audacity includes that is that courage to feel what's inside and also to to sense what's really going on the horror the suffering outside and it's a daring that comes from this deep caring.

I mean Rabbi Hershel really cared. He was passionate. He said, "I pray with my feet." You know, which I think is great. So, so I love the term and I know when I try it on, when I say to myself, well, what would it mean to have more spiritual audacity? In some way, it means not to hold back love. It means to be willing to forgive. It means to confront the forces that oppress uh our love and our spirit. So I think it's a powerful term and it's useful what it comes from if we really want to look deeply is um a sense of presence and a sense of imagination.

It's really interesting the the idea I pray with my feet. Right. That's his way of expressing his spirituality. Yeah. In walking out there on the streets just to name that you know I'm I'm not somebody who explicitly prays. I don't believe in a a god to whom you can petition. But I'm totally this place is safe uh for people who do believe in that and also safe for people like me who don't. And I think we can all express our beliefs whether we describe that as prayer or not with our feet.

And it's a very compelling to question to ask yourself like what are you doing with your feet, with your body, with your time to move beyond bland exhortation into concrete action. And that is exactly the uh sentiment that if we care I mean compassion includes action and what if I look at these last few years. I was with you a couple of years ago and talking about this kind of thing about the bodhic sappa path and about caring and about action. And if I had to say what has shifted we have more extremes in our world than we did before.

I think many uh more than we imagined uh the accelerated unraveling right um the spiking fear and so on and and it and it can lead to um you know aggression, anger, hatred. It can also lead to normalizing the destructiveness and numbing. I can watch both of those. And so the challenge is um how do we respond? Titnatan had had this saying that just keeps going through my mind. He says this, my dear, is the greatest challenge to being alive. He says to witness injustice in the world, cruelty, suffering, and not allow it to consume our light, our love, our capacity to respond.

respond. respond. So, I feel like that that's the um danger of these times that we get kind of uh paralyzed that we can't respond. But the other side and I'm also seeing this Dan in a really big way and and you can see it through history in our own lives is it's suffering the suffering of the fear what's happening the um violence the division uh the cruelty it's waking people up and it's waking people up in a way that it's it's stirring you know outrage but under that a kind of uh grief and caring and [clears throat] [clears throat] [clears throat] acting from that you know praying with our feet, so to speak.

Okay, let me ask you a question. Uh, I'll preface this question by saying one of the great things about having retired uh from my long career as a news anchor is now I can actually say what I think. And I look at the world and there are a lot of things specifically with the Trump administration that I'm horrified by. The just incredible corruption, the tsunami of lying, the want and cruelty uh as expressed in many forms from um cutting foreign aid to uh internal immigration actions.

the undermining of the rule of law, which is perhaps the thing that concerns me the most. And then just overall in the country, just the the and this is global, the the extent to which our fractured media environment fueled by, I think, um bad incentives from social media algorithms uh drive people apart with ruthless efficiency. I could also talk about unnecessary wars um and uh on and on. There is a lot of [ __ ] to worry about. Um, and in the face of this um, uh, laundry list of things to worry about, do you, Tara, never feel like, you know what, I'm going to look away.

Like, just in the name of self-preservation, I can't deal with this. I've got my own life to attend to. I need to look away. I don't know if I say it to myself, I think I do look away. And um, and I don't think looking away is a problem unto itself. I think we all need ways of nourishing our hearts and psyches. And now I'm very self-conscious when I say the word heart. So I have Please don't be Please don't be. Um I think that you know for me I go out every day walking in the woods and I'm I'm not like thinking about uh ice or thinking about the Middle East.

I'm touching trees and you know playing with my dogs a lot. So I think we need to keep the balance. There's just all this beauty and preciousness to this world. And And And if we look away in a continuous way from the parts of our larger earth body and being that are in trouble. Um we are cutting out a part of ourselves. we are uh numbing or dimming a part of ourselves. It's part of our wholeness to feel our belonging to to it all to life and to respond.

I mean, I often think of it in the very used metaphor of we're on this boat and the boat's tilting and sinking and some people are experiencing it more intensely than others. I mean, those of us with more privilege were not as proximate to the violence and the boat's sinking and [clears throat] everybody else in the boat is part of us. And so, the trainings I most value are the ones that wake us up to the truth of that belonging and that everybody matters. Um, I often think of a conversation I had with Father Gregory Bole, who I know you know, you've had him on the show, um, who really embodies the spirit of spiritual audacity and sensing that we're all in it together.

And for those that aren't familiar, uh, he's the author of Tattoos on the Heart and many other things. He's he's known for his work with LA gangs, you know, creating Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries. Homeboy Industries. This amazing community of loving, trusting, healing beings made of these young people with history of huge violence. They were rivals killing each other's friends and family. So my inquiry to him, what made it possible? you know, how did the people on the boat all get together and together hold hands and start scooping out the water and helping each other?

So, he described this. He said, "There's two unwavering principles principles principles that guide our community." And he [clears throat] said, "One, everyone is unshakably good. unshakably good. unshakably good. No exceptions." And the other is we belong to each other. No exceptions. And then he said, "Now, do I think all our vexing and complex social dilemmas would disappear if we embrace these two notions?" notions?" notions?" Yeah, I do. I do. And you know, cuz it's true. If we really know we're belonging, if we sense that there's one spirit underlying, we're naturally going to respond for the greater good.

So you ask, "What? Do I ever turn away?" Absolutely. turn towards other parts of life and to keep remembering that those that I'm that are more vulnerable than I am are part of me and it makes a difference. You said a lot there, but there's one thing I'm just going to zero in on and I think you'll like how I say this. It's subtle, but if you're paying attention, armoring up, shutting down your heart, so to speak, doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. We can't truly be at home because we're living in uh I call it a trance.

It's a a sliver of reality. We're not occupying the wholeness of who we are. And the wholeness of who we are is means that we really get that we don't exist separately. No, it's an illusion. I mean, our well-being can't be separated from others. Like here we are right now, Dan. You and I are talking and our inner experience is entirely related to the energy and actions of the other. I mean, if you're anxious or irritated or over cynical or whatever or if you're warm-hearted and open, it affects me, you know?

And so, we truly get 10% happier happier happier if we do. It's because we're 10% more awake to the truth of our belonging. No exceptions. exceptions. exceptions. You know, we're 10% more caring because we know our belonging. By the way, I have to tell you that I plan to say that. that. that. Wanted to bring in that 10% then. You know, know, know, well, thank you for staying on brand. I appreciate that very much. Do what I can, Dan. Let's press on that for a second because this this is something that I struggled with for a long time.

Not now, I'm not speaking as somebody who was um stubbornly stubbornly stubbornly uh skeptical. I mean, just didn't understand understand understand the concept you were just pointing to right there, interconnection, like the idea that other people's lives, like I certainly was not a fan of injustice and I spent my journalistic career uh trying to expose and uproot it, but I I don't know that viscerally I really understood the whole idea that no one's free until everyone's free, that kind of thing. And so maybe you can articulate it in a way that is concrete.

Well, first maybe just to say from an evolutionary perspective that we our default and our huge huge patterning is to perceive oursel as separate and even if we have some conceptual understanding of interdependence interdependence interdependence um I can say for myself um I've had many many moments through meditation or through psychedelics or through nature of having the separateness fall away and really those deep aha And I know many people have had them that we're all part of each other and love is what it is. And And And daily daily, you know, there's a shrinking back into that trance of this bubble of self who's concerned with, you know, protecting and defending the self and furthering the self and succeeding and failing and so on.

So it's no surprise that interdependence is just conceptual. I mean we're in this super individualistic society and it impacts uh all domains of life including spiritual life. I mean, I remember I remember an issue of Tricycle where it had it had a cartoon with, you know, Buddhist personals and it said tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself. himself. himself. And you know, you could just see it all that it's Buddhism has been translated in an individualistic way and practitioners get drawn to practices or life hacks that bring our personal ease or well-being, sleep, inner freedom.

And uh but it reifies a self that's on a path looking for its own healing and freedom. freedom. freedom. And that is not a mistake. It's it's part of our evolutionary makeup that we have a primit primitive part of our nervous systems designed to perceive a separate self and do whatever we can to protect you know aggression towards others and to enhance when we feel deprived grasping. It's a part of us and more recently evolved brain actually allows us to see beyond that separation. We have the kind of a whole part of the brain dedicated to perceiving connections with each other.

So that as I tend to you, I can sense a bit of like how you might be feeling and sense what it's like to be you and feel compassion and I mean bottom line to begin to operate more from we than from I. But the challenge as we know is uh we get easily hijacked by the more primitive level of selfing you know focusing on self. So what it means and this is to what you asked it's conceptual interdependence. We as conceptual unless we intentionally we intentionally we intentionally practice in a way that helps us wake it up.

It's a capacity, but it needs attention because we so quickly get hijacked into fear and feeling separate. If we just practice mindfulness alone, we will get flashes of interdependence and connection, but they will get compartmentalized because of the power of an individualistic culture. So it takes intention to [clears throat] widen the circles to we. It takes intention ways to pay attention and there are bodhic sattra practices that really help us use our imagination to feel that sense of belonging with each other. each other. each other.

What are these practices you're recommending and how do they fit into the lives of people with one or two full-time jobs and kids and etc etc? First off, just to say to be compassionate and engaged doesn't mean we travel across the world or we do any grand gesture. grand gesture. grand gesture. Um, you know, I'm thinking there's a woman that I was talking to in a webinar just couple days ago, um, who's very close into a lot of the, uh, suffering in Ukraine and very overwhelmed.

and her um way of being a bodhic sappa. She says, "I am just doing tiny little things regularly, reaching out and it can be as small as texting somebody and saying an encouraging thing or smiling at someone or hugging them or an errand for a neighbor." So, I'm saying that because um I think it it just absolutely will stall us out and paralyze us if we have some grand idea of what love-based activism means. activism means. activism means. For me, um there's kind of the inner practices and the outer ways of expressing and we need both.

And imagination imagination imagination is central to it all. We need to have a capacity for imagination to be able to um really feel our sense of belonging. I often think of uh John Paul Letterak. One of his messages is that if we're going to bring any healing to the world, we have to be in relationship with those of difference or relationship with someone you bad other a relationship with the enemy. And what that means is that we extend where we can in life in vivo to find out who we really are together beyond the differences.

And we can also use our imagination. So I'll bring to mind someone one of those, you know, stronger man types that um it's easiest for me to feel aversion towards. And what I'll do is I'll imagine their pain, imagine their insecurity, imagine how, you know, if I was living with that face and sense the expression on their face, what would I be feeling? And it's not a happy feeling. You know, there is suffering. even if they don't know they're suffering. suffering. suffering. You know, I often give that that little metaphor of, you know, seeing the dog and going to pet it and then it lurches at you and you get angry at the dog, but then you see that the dog has its leg in a trap.

It's like, can we see how others have a leg in the trap? Can we be in relationship with them in a way that we start seeing that in sometimes through our imagination? our imagination? our imagination? And he also talks about imagine act you know doing things with them. Imagine what they long for. Imagine them with their children. Imagine what matters to them. Imagine trying to help some you teaming up to try to help in some way. Seeing something beautiful. So that's one piece just to name.

And the other way of using imagination is to really look to see people's goodness. No exception. You know that that we if we if right now their coverings and their anger and their destructiveness is overwhelming then to imagine them as a young child or imagine them on their deathbed or when they're very happy or peaceful. One student told me how his way of training himself to see goodness in New York City on the subway was he'd bring he'd focus on somebody who was on the subway who looked very different and who didn't feel like an easy person to feel belonging with and he'd reflect on the word thou, you know, which is Martin Bubber, you know, seeing kind of seeing that sacred space that we share and he'd just say thou over and over until something in him would um would just get tender.

Um I'll give another example for myself which is which is which is use and how we can use our imagination to feel that connection. Um and this is something I haven't shared very much which is every day now um after I do my regular meditation which is much more of a kind of open awareness open presence allowing what is to be here I'll start bringing people to mind I'll start with the close in easy people um but first I imagine you know kind of the field of loving presence and I imagine that I'm being blessed with a a kiss on the brow And then I'll take one person at a time and um I'll imagine looking them in the eye and kissing them on the brow and imagine them kissing me on the brow and just feeling the collapse of separate selfness and just the tender field.

So I'll do I'll work it with people that are easy and then I widen it until um it start it's now become really easy for me to bring people to mind where I might have judgment or feeling of defensiveness or whatever and kind of break through that with my imagination. imagination. imagination. Have you ever invested in something uh that seemed incredible at first but did not live up to the hype? That happened to be back in the 90s when I invested in the company that made the Palm Pilot.

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I was waiting. I was welcoming it. Please come forward. This is not going to be a skeptical line of inquiry. This is going to be me just just fullthroated giving fullthroated support to everything you just said. First, you know, on this on the imagination tip, I am a big believer in and practitioner of loving kindness meditation. For people who have never heard of it, it really is just um and you know this obviously Tara, but you you start by envisioning um one way to do it is to start by envisioning an easy person could be a pet or a kid.

Uh and you send phrases like maybe be happy, healthy, safe, live with ease. And then then you move to yourself, to a a mentor, to a neutral person, somebody you see frequently but tend to overlook. And then you get to a difficult person. And I'll put Trump in that category. And and when I do it, I you know, I have very specific language. I don't say may you be happy, meaning uh may you um uh enrich yourself infinitely at the cost of the taxpayers and national security.

May you succeed in all of your plans with which I disagree. I mean, may you be happy because happy people tend not to be [ __ ] And same with people who feel safe and same with healthy people and same with people who live with ease. They tend not to be aggressive and obnoxious and destructive. So that's just one thing to say. The second thing I wanted to say to to have your back on all of this is that this is not weakness. that um because there is there is and I I get it this this desire to push back on what you're calling love-based activism as weak.

Well, that that's not what's needed right now. This is what's gotten us in trouble in the first place is all too much nambby pami love stuff. But being motivated by hatred and aggression on the level of the brain makes you less effective. Love does not mean you're inviting your enemies over for dinner or giving them a free pass or you're being a doormat. It just means you are not miserable, which isn't helping anybody anyway. Okay. So, now I'm going to shut up and see if you agree with everything I just said there.

I totally do. I mean, the whole idea of choosing love is not just that it sounds nice. It's really our opening to a more evolved evolved evolved potential. And potential. And potential. And for me, one of the key pieces of that is again, Gregory Bole, um, is to be able to use our imagination to sense what's possible in others. I mean, I think as long as we can sense the possibility in others uh for goodness and the possibilities in our world, it doesn't mean that it's going to happen, but it means that we're part of whatever healing is possible.

And one of my heroes uh John Lewis is most of you know ci long long lived civil rights leader congressman African-American lived through decades of racial violence. So he told a story and this was it was about over 65 years ago. He was talking about how he and a colleague were beaten with baseball bats by a group of white men and they didn't fight back. They didn't press charges. They treated their wounds and continued their work, which is nonviolent resistance. resistance. resistance. Okay. So, about 15 years ago, one of those attackers, his name was Ilwin Wilson, he walked into Lewis's Capitol Hill office with his son, and he said, you know, I'm the man who beat you and I want to atone.

Will you forgive me? And so Lewis said, you know, I forgave him. We embraced, you know, he and his son and I. And we we all wept. And then we talked. Then as he's finishing telling the story and he says this quietly almost to himself, he says, "People can change." So I'm I'm sharing this because here he was he had the resilience and the courage through these decades and this is despite like real brutality, the cruelty, the hatred and racism, he maintained his imagination to see potential in humans.

Um, and I feel like that's our work is, you know, I quoted Tiknanha at the beginning to not let this consume our light. It's to keep having the spiritual audacity to choose love. And the place it's hardest I think this speaking personally is for me is when I'm caught in the bad othering. Um, you described one way is to bring people to mind and have a wish that actually makes a whole lot of sense for them. For me, there's there's a an initial step before I can even do that often when I'm bad othering is to first go inward and sense in myself myself myself um where it's coming from like do that uturn because usually it's coming even though it's taking shape as anger under anger there's something we care about and there's something that matters to us and it feels really crucial right now that we keep getting down to what we care about cuz that's what that's what'll give us hope, you know, that we can sense we care about people and other people do, other people are caring and that we're holding hands.

That caring is a cleaner burning fuel than hatred and aggression. And um that doesn't mean you can't take really firm action, but let it be motivated by caring about the people you you claim to protect and caring about yourself, caring about the world. Let that be what drives you rather than wanting to see, you know, death and destruction rain down upon your enemies. Yeah. Yeah. There's that that line from a movie, vengeance is a lazy form of grief. And so, you know, vengeance is it doesn't really help the world.

Um, if we get down to our grief, and I'm a believer in grieving. Um, I I often will ask that question to people like, "What's breaking your heart?" Because even the question when I ask myself, I realize there is a place in me where my heart's breaking. And I am so glad that that's there and that I can feel it because embedded in grief is caring. And when you say it's a cleaner burning fuel, oh my gosh. I mean, there's no transformation that's happened through history that was something we would applaud that came from vengeance, anger, hatred, you know, it comes from care and the the leaders that we most honor, you can feel that caring coming through.

Tarl, let's go back to something you were talking about earlier. I think you were talking about somebody who's who's very active on the Ukraine issue and and she's doing it in ways that are like small like small daily actions though. Last time you were on the show and I'll drop a link in the show notes because it was a great conversation and um in in many ways this conversation is building on it. um you used a phrase that I had never heard before and then I started saying it a lot and it kind of um uh got picked up in the in the culture um uh not just because of me but also because of you and others got picked up in the culture in the sort of depressing postTrump reelection days.

Uh and that that phrase is action absorbs anxiety. I had literally never heard it before I heard you say it and then I started saying it a bunch um giving you credit and now other people say it sometimes give me credit which I don't deserve um because I did not coin it and so so I just love you to say a little bit about how action is available to those of us who are perhaps overly overmployed and have a lot of child care responsibilities or whatever um and don't have time to like make signs and go marching.

what what was available to us. us. us. Yeah. Well, first of all, I didn't coin it um and I can't remember who did, but it's a great phrase and I would but what I add to it now um action absorbs anxiety and action with others deepens belonging and serves the world. Um that it really makes a difference to hold hands and act together. And so, but I think your question which is really good is what do you say to the person who is overwhelmed and busy or who feels just isolated or stressed or has no idea where to start?

And you know I I often will talk about just the small things of I mean I was so touched by this woman who that I mentioned who said that reaching out in those small ways she said it saved my life and that was very big you know that I started trusting that even these small things make a difference. difference. difference. So I think we that's part of the interdependence web that we're part of that if we care and just reach out in some small way. There's also a a quote that I'll share that has stuck with me a lot.

This is John Rodell who says, "Whenever I feel helpless in this overwhelming world, I become a helper. Oh my love, on the days when it feels like I have no power, I serve others. You see, whenever I wash the world's feet, my hands immediately stop shaking. Well, you can feel the truth of it that um we lose our selfness, our separateness in the moment that we're washing the world's feet in any way, in any way. Here I come with another of my glib profane little statements.

But uh the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. And that's what happens when you're helping other people. You're just less stuck in your stuff. And the helping doesn't even have to be related to the thing you're worried about. you know, if you're worried about Ukraine, texting a friend who's having a bad day will suffice in my view. Um, and that that and I'd be curious to see if you agree, but that that to me qualifies as action that absorbs anxiety.

absorbs anxiety. absorbs anxiety. Absolutely. I mean, I feel like anything we do out of caring is part of love-based activism. love-based activism. love-based activism. And I think that um it feels really important that we stretch some to widen the circles. And by that I mean let ourselves pay. We don't have to like take on every cause in the world. But there often we can live in this cocoon where we really those over on that continent having that happen feel very unreal. So, it's valuable to see what we can do to have others become more real to us.

And that means stretching a little to live into the the felt experience of what would that be like? You know, what would it be like if um you know, because of this climate emergency emergency emergency uh I had to leave my home and I didn't have the money for other homes and I wasn't able to get across a border to somewhere safer and you know what would that really be like? So I think it's important that we stretch in that way. And I say that and also want to say that it's easier to stretch.

It's easier to widen circles. It's easier to talk about forgiveness forgiveness forgiveness uh when we are have the privilege of not u being that proximate ourselves. And there are many people that are living much closer into violence and are much more overwhelmed. And the first step on a on a path of healing and freedom for the world is to if we're choosing to love, we have to choose to love what's going on inside us. And so I feel like the grounds of this path we're talking about, Dan, is really we're talking about having the spiritual audacity to choose to love because it's always dangerous because it takes us beyond oursel and that always feels dangerous on some level.

And the first starting place is to love our fear, to love our hurt, to love the parts of our own being that we have in some way pushed away. Because that if we're traumatized, we have to do that so that we're feeling more safe, more at home, so we can then even have the capacity to widen circles. So, so I have I feel like in my own teaching I have to be very careful not to talk too much about how we all need to forgive everybody, you know, because we can't if if we've been traumatized.

There's a natural development in that process and it starts with bringing a lot of love inward and having others help us have that feeling of more safety. Can you say a little bit about how practically we can learn to love our own fear, our own hatred, our own whatever is dogging us? Yeah. Well, maybe to just go back to that I said earlier to have first of all the understanding that if there's a part of ourselves that we're not opening to, it's there. and the feeling of not opening to it.

There's some it what it does is it locks us in some undercurrent of anxiety and tension and not being at home. So, um Carl Young always talked about that our suffering comes from the unseen unfelt parts of our psyche and it just feels true. So that's the first is just some some intuitive understanding that if I don't open to what's here um I'm going to be imprisoned in a certain way and I won't have full access to the joy and the love. the love. the love.

So once we're motivated, once we're motivated to have that and again it's spiritual audacity, that courage to choose to love, then the practicality is we and I often use rain for this because it's so useful is to recognize the way those parts are expressing themselves in the moment. It might be that we're constantly judging other people or blaming other people or we're constantly judging oursel or we're always postponing things or whatever shape it takes just to start where we are. That's the entry point. Wherever we are that there's some hint of suffering, we start there and name it in some way and let it be there.

I always um encourage people to use the message this belongs because just like a wave in the ocean, it it is here. It's reality. So reality belongs and any effort to push away or judge or not pay attention denies reality. We're at war with reality. So the first two steps are to name the suffering as it arises. Um and I use blame a lot as an example because so many of us are you know caught in anger and blame and then to say okay this this belongs and then to begin to really investigate and it's very somatic.

I mean the mistake most people get into is to do a kind of mental investigation of he said she said I shouldn't. I didn't feel it in our bodies. It helps to say, "Well, what am I believing when this is going on?" Just to get a little more sense of the limiting thought that's containing us. But go into our body and feel it. And here's a trick I use a lot because most of us are pretty dissociated from our bodies. And you know, there's that saying, our issues are in our tissues.

And we have to we have to feel what's here to be able to to really open. The big question is well how do I get into my body? And what I found helps is let's say under blame is a feeling of um personal failure, inadequacy or shame or not okayess to make the facial expression that you think approximates that and take the posture and play with this. This is psycho drama. It's expressive therapies but it works. It works. It's an outside in thing that works. works.

works. actually make the face and feel the feeling behind the face because the veagal nerve runs through the face. It gives a lot of information and then just have the intention to feel in the body what you're feeling to say yes to the most vulnerable place inside the body. So that's the the way of of getting in and feeling feelings and the healing comes when we sense what that place needs. It's often a place that has felt feels unloved or unworthy and what it needs is some flavor of care.

And we can kind of be in dialogue with the parts of ourselves and find out what's the flavor. And then I put my hand on my heart try to offer it. And if we can't offer it ourselves, don't be shy about invoking or imagining because this is imagination again that works. Any source that you wish you could get that affirmation from. Any source, imagine it. Like if it's the mother you didn't have, imagine that mother. You know, if it's formless light and love, imagine that. If it's your dog or if it's a tree, just bring it up and then sense what you needed coming through.

Because what I have found is when we can really say yes to the feelings and offer some care, some care, some care, there's a enlarging of being, we're occupying a larger sense of who we are and we're living from a larger truth that's like more true. this space of compassion and presence than any story that we were caught in. So, I hope that's helpful. I know it's a little abstract when I give it when I give the directions in that way, but I hope that gives a feeling for it.

No, it's great. Um, I'm going to say it back to you um to make sure I've got it and and of course by extension to make sure that the viewers and listeners have it. Is that is that cool with you? Please. Please. Please. You mentioned RAIN. That's an acronym. uh R A I N uh that um was first um uh articulated by a Dharma teacher named Michelle McDonald but but popularized by you over many many years and uh to great and very helpful effect um and so what you're saying if we're proceeding from the question of like how do we love the difficult or ugly parts of ourselves our hatred our shame um rain is a great and very practical method that you can use in formal meditation or just as you're moving through the world.

So R is to recognize, oh, this is what's happening right now. I'm yeah, I'm just in a spiral of self-loathing. I'm looking in the mirror and I don't like that guy. Uh, so just to recognize it is R. A is to allow it. We don't want to be at war with reality. This is what's happening right now. As you said, this belongs. I is to investigate it. And that doesn't as you say uh mean uh a cognitive intellectual investigation. What are the roots of this? Is this because of my uh you know my how my dad talked to me when I was a kid?

No, this is about investigating sematically how is this self-hatred or whatever we're dealing with showing up in the body. And if you have no toe hold in your bodily sensations because the world teaches us to dissociate, you can actually do a little bit of play acting of like making the facial expression that uh roughly approximates the thing you're trying to investigate and adopting the posture that that might you essentially doing an interpretive dance of the emotion and then allowing your mind and your mindfulness to see like how does this feel?

Is there a buzzing in my chest? Um, is there a heaviness in my head? Is this is there a um a feeling of an uh an anvil in my stomach? Um, so you're just checking it out. And by checking it out, it loses some of its solidity. You start to see that it's made up of a fluxing gumbo of um sensations. And then N is nurture. There are lots of ways to talk about N, but u nurture is one of the most common one ones. And what you were recommending is like to talk to that part of ourselves that is the difficult part that we're trying to work with.

And if we can't summon something con useful and constructive to say to that part, well, we can enlist help from somebody in our world. So maybe it's me imagining my cat Azie who loves me and jumps up on the bed and licks my face in the morning is saying, "Bro, that hat hateful part of you is actually just the organism trying to protect itself. Like it's not awesome and we're not trying to give permission to it, but we are trying to uh peacefully disarm it uh through seeing that it is trying to help you." How did I do as a rough summation there?

You did great. It really was great. And um what I I there's some things I particularly liked which is that the more you pay attention in this way, the less you're identified and that's just what happens. And the end of nurture, it's not so much of a cognitive message as an energetic warmth that we intend to let in. And I always talk about after the rain, just like after a real rain is when you see the flowering. After the rain, we can start to sense that larger not so identified presence that's more who we are.

And and the beauty of it, you know, learning to this is a way we're loving love is a form of attention. We're loving our fear. We're loving what's here. is that once we've done that and once we're resting in a larger space, it's much more uh natural for us to perceive ourselves as part of a larger world and to very caringly and creatively want to serve into that world. So it it does work to first start inwardly to love what's here and then find that we are in love with our world.

Yes. And then when you engage effectively and lovingly with the world, your inner weather gets even better and then your relationships get even better and then you get this is this is the upward spiral that is available to all of us if we want to go there. It is a virtuous uh a virtuous spiral. One of the illusions I do want to name because we're talking a lot about um feeling a larger belonging and serving into our world is that it's an illusion that we're a separate self trying to help.

And that's one that most of us are in. Um, and it's very free. The reason I so like teaming up with others is because it makes it so clear that I'm part of the stream of caring that and the stream of awakening. And one of the most uh one of my most ongoing reflections, ongoing reflections, ongoing reflections, I invite anybody to do this because I feel like it really helps especially when we're feeling like the world is really in trouble and feeling isolated. is I will bring to mind all of those beings that I know that really care and there's you know tons and tons all of you listening people I know who are helping are trying to do what they can I was with a group recently and so many people were talking about how they wanted a more loving world and they wanted to help they weren't sure what to do so just to bring everyone to mind uh those around the globe that are are caring about the most vulnerable and about our living earth.

And then I'll bring to mind beings from the past just a sense and this isn't necessarily famous people but just all those who care deeply and in small ways or large ways tried to help. And then I'll do those in the future, our descendants, you know, our great grandchildren, those who will be trying to serve the world. And then I kind of pull it all together as this big field of caring. Bodhicitta is the the word, you know, that that aspiration to help and sense that we're all a part of this and that gives a lot more uh resilience and freedom and courage and happiness then it's kind of like the exhaustion of thinking that I'm separate and trying to make a difference.

So I invite people to to reflect on all those who are caring. It really does help. I buy it completely and um you know one of the big themes of this conversation is the the meeting of inner and outer and in fact the illusion that there's a separation between inner and outer but but if we think of roughly um what you just described as an inner exercise of um using imagination and contemplative practice to to break down this barrier uh this illusion of separation that's that's a we can think of that as an inner move, but there's also there are also outer moves to hearken back to the question that the the people in the group you were speaking to asked like how do we get involved?

Um, and you know, I I don't think it's that complicated. like volunteering is there are plenty of organizations that would love to have your labor and um and volunteering is a great way to put yourself in contact with people who share your values and it doesn't have to be huge and all-consuming. My cousin Deb, for example, does this thing where on a Wednesday evening, once a month or once every other month, like people drop off the makings of sandwiches and then we all make the sandwiches together and we drop it off at a at a a shelter for the unhoused.

Um, and it's fun and the kids are involved and uh it doesn't cost a lot of money and it, you know, we're, you know, it's not changing the whole world, but it is making our little corner of the world better. And I think these two, you can call them like inner contemplative exercises and then outer concrete moves work beautifully together and and in in the end they serve to shave down this illusion of separation. That's beautifully said and they I don't think they can be separated because the more we wake up our heart, the more we naturally want to help and the more we help, the more we get tender and open.

Um, I also like what you're saying about local. There's something about local and with others that comes really naturally. It doesn't have to be some grand like one of my friends here speaks Spanish. So once a week for 3 hours she volunteers to help immigrants make sure they understand the documents that they're having to deal with. And another one of my friends is uh in a rural county and she serves on the election board um and you know has ended up having to you know really create relationships with people from the party that she's not part of and then all sorts of I mean the question I ask Dan often which I've mentioned is we can sense what really stirs you what breaks your heart and also what is love asking I mean I just feel like if we say what just love asking.

In some way, it moves us to we can donate, we can volunteer time, we can in some way reach out. Um, and whichever we do, if we do it with real care, it does make a difference. Another way to phrase that question, I mean, I'm totally fine with what is love asking, but another phrase that um our mutual friend Joseph Goldstein uses a lot and he got this phrase from Rahm Doss, the [clears throat] legendary and no longer uh with us sadly um uh meditation and spiritual teacher and author.

He wrote a book or he co-authored a book called How Can I Help? Um, and that's just not a bad uh phrase to keep in your mind as you move through the world. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful. Before I let you go, Tara, can you say a little bit about your new workbook? Uh, again, the courageous heart workbook. I mentioned earlier that um we can care a lot and yet it's very easy to get caught in that trance of busyiness, overwhelm. We can get numb.

We can get indifferent. We can get angry. The workbook is a set of trainings uh for bodhic sattvas meaning all of us who care to help us uh wake up and and serve from our most caring awake heart. It starts with very simple practices and how to arrive fully and get more embodied within ourselves. and that it includes a lot of the using our imagination kind of practices that I've mentioned and ultimately it's something we can it's a workbook that you can practice with others because there's relational exercises how to work in a rel how to deal with a relationship where there's distance where you've kind of closed your heart to somebody.

It's very practical and it's also has the vision of that we don't know what's going to happen to this world and we don't need to know. We don't need to be hopeful in the sense of having certain expectations. expectations. expectations. But if we keep open to what's possible to humans realizing and living more from their goodness um we can serve into that and that's all that matters is that today tomorrow we take those steps that can be helpful and see what happens. Well said. Is there anything you were hoping that we would get to that we have failed to get to?

No, this has felt actually really complete and I've loved the way you've grounded things and what you've added in. I actually took some notes. Well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. And thank you for making the time to do this. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you. Oh, I feel the same, Dan. Thank you. I want to thank everybody who works so hard to make this show. Uh 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one quick ask before I let you go. Uh, head on over, please, to danh harris.com to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Every Monday, I drop a little bit of goodness into your inbox. Mondays, especially Monday mornings, can be super stressful. So that is when I drop in one useful nugget that you can operationalize in your life immediately either from ancient wisdom like Buddhism or from modern science.

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