{"id":25706,"date":"2026-06-22T18:17:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T00:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=25706"},"modified":"2026-06-22T18:17:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T00:17:57","slug":"tara-brach-choosing-to-love-in-perilous-times","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/tara-brach-choosing-to-love-in-perilous-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Tara Brach: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

Tara Brach:<\/b> The aspiration is to realize and trust and live from loving awareness\u2014to realize that’s what we are, to really trust that. That’s been there for many, many years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Welcome, friends. In this episode of <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>, my guest is Tara Brach\u2014a beloved meditation teacher, friend of Sounds True, and bestselling author of five books, including <\/span>Radical Acceptance<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Trusting the Gold<\/span><\/i>. Her newest work with Sounds True is an inner workbook called <\/span>The Courageous Heart: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times<\/span><\/i>. More than two million people tune in to Tara Brach’s podcast, which addresses the value of meditation in relieving emotional suffering and serving spiritual awakening and the transformation of society. She worked as a clinical psychologist for more than twenty years, and along with Jack Kornfield, Tara has created the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification program, training people to be mindfulness meditation teachers. Graduates are certified by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and you can learn more at soundstrue.com. And now, welcome, Tara.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Thanks, Tami. I’m really happy to be with you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Here we are. We’re talking about <\/span>The Courageous Heart<\/span><\/i>, your new inner workbook, Tara\u2014with the subtitle, <\/span>Choosing to Love in Perilous Times<\/span><\/i>. I think most of us wouldn’t use the word “perilous,” but we would use some other word to describe the times we’re in\u2014the polycrisis that we’re in, and the sense of accelerated change, and this question of what is going on now and how do I orient myself as a spiritual practitioner at this time? I’m wondering, right here at the beginning, how do you locate yourself in this time?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. Well, I’m really glad you’re starting right there, because I can feel the extremes of this time. And maybe just to say, in a very personal way, I can feel my nervous system and my heart very much impacted by both the speed of change, but even more the destructiveness of the energies playing out. I think of it like we’re in this spiraling vortex into a shadow\u2014a kind of collective regression where fear and aggression and violence are really present, and there’s such a harshness to it. This violence against our fellow beings. So I can feel in my own heart going into anger and blame and othering. And I can also sense underneath it a grieving and a caring.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the teachings I keep hearing in my mind is from Thich Nhat Hanh, who wrote: <\/span>“This, my dear, is the greatest challenge to being alive\u2014to witness injustice in the world, cruelty, violence, and not allow it to consume our light, our love, our capacity to respond.”<\/span><\/i> I think of that a lot\u2014that we all naturally have this reactivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also think about how\u2014and this is true in our individual lives and through history\u2014times of darkness call out a deepened and more engaged caring and a fresh intelligence. And I’m sensing this happening now, a kind of emergent movement that really embodies that. We can talk more about that. But the deal is that it needs nurturing. When you say, “How am I locating myself?”\u2014I’m really feeling that these times are calling for us to evolve our consciousness, to intentionally wake up our hearts in a way that widens the circles of belonging, sensing more and more that we’re part of the world, that we belong to the world and to each other.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I’m finding, when I teach more than ever before, so many people are directly impacted\u2014with very few degrees of separation\u2014by what’s unfolding, whether we’re talking about ICE and immigrants, or health insurance, or the continued atrocities in the Middle East. So when people share, when I’m teaching a webinar online, I’ll ask how many people are dealing with this or struggling with this. And there’s something so powerful about being in a collective where people sense they’re not alone in what they’re dealing with, and we talk about how they’re working with it. It creates a space that’s larger than that sense of an individual self in a very scary world.<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw this most powerfully recently when I attended\u2014and was part of\u2014a memorial service for Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones. I guided a virtual event that followed it. During the memorial, they spoke the names and told the stories, side by side. And it was so clear to me that their pain hadn’t hardened into hatred. Instead, it had become a source of courage. Their togetherness gave a felt sense of hope. And I could sense that the participants in these groups are, from that place of hopefulness, really engaged in action for justice and for peace, for a different future. So that’s all to say: we need to nurture our hearts, and we need collective spaces that nurture our hearts so we don’t lose the light.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I’m so glad you pointed out this\u2014you called it a “fresh intelligence” rising at this time. And you know, Tara, you have a gift at pointing out things that are sometimes on the periphery of my awareness at least, and by pointing them out, you make them more real and bring them right into the center.<\/span><\/p>\n

When you said that, I thought: yes, I see these little green shoots, but I don’t quite know how to name them. And you talked about nurturing this fresh intelligence\u2014in ourselves, in our world. I want to hear more about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yes. I think the intelligence really reflects an evolution in consciousness\u2014from feeling so separate to feeling more a part of the collective. That shift from “I” to “we” that we experience when we are real with each other, when we grieve together, when we act to serve together. It feels like this is a really crucial part of the spiritual path, because in the past\u2014especially for traditions like Buddhism when it got planted in the West\u2014it’s been very individual. There’s a certain intelligence in how to work with our inner life, but it didn’t so much teach us to sense the field that we are together, who we are together, which is what gives us the space, the clarity, and the unconditional caring that really lets us hold what’s going on and respond.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You mentioned the Thich Nhat Hanh quote about not letting our light go out in times of destruction and darkness. And I think some people\u2014some spiritual practitioners I know\u2014say the way they keep their light from going out is to withdraw: to stop watching the news, to stop staying quote-unquote engaged. And I know you’ve been teaching and talking a lot about engaging in societal transformation at this time as a form of spiritual activism. I wonder if you could speak directly to those people who say, “Look, I’ve got to pull out, I’ve got to pull away. This isn’t my time to be engaged because I need to protect myself.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Sure. Just to say, there are certain ways we do need to protect our energy. I feel like we need to be on news diets and be really, really careful about how much we’re on social media, and we need inner practices that settle our nervous system. So this is all part of it. But I think there’s a real misunderstanding about the spiritual path\u2014that it’s about an individual becoming free. I remember seeing in <\/span>Tricycle<\/span><\/i> this personals cartoon that said, “Tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself.” And at the very heart of the spiritual path is awakening compassion. And compassion isn’t just a feeling of tenderness. The compassion network in the brain is right next to the motor cortex\u2014it has to do with wanting to relieve suffering. You can’t separate the inner trainings from how we live day to day, from the kindness and caring we express.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I think that’s the misunderstanding. And “activism” can sound narrow\u2014like it only means politics or rallies or lobbying. The emphasis on the spiritual path\u2014this path of awakening beings\u2014is really that our actions in the world matter. We’re interdependent. How I communicate with you right now in some way impacts you, and how you listen and receive and ask impacts me. We’re in relationship with our world. We impact each other. The spiritual path has to do with the quality of heart we bring into action.<\/span><\/p>\n

I always think of that classic metaphor: we’re on this boat together that’s leaking, and we need to enlist all of us\u2014all species\u2014to bail, because those less fortunate are feeling the water first. And we need to bail for the sake of all of us. We belong together. So how can we serve all beings in a way that’s heartfelt?<\/span><\/p>\n

One of my models right now\u2014I think of Minneapolis a lot\u2014because one of the words that came out of the protests and actions there was “neighborliness.” And I really love that word. We carry a feeling of neighborliness toward all. I heard someone in that movement say, “I don’t love protests, but I love people.” That is the spirit of a spiritual path.<\/span><\/p>\n

And of course, as you brought up, many people use their spirituality to avoid engagement. One way that’s framed is: “I’m in this for freedom. There’s been suffering through all the ages, and my task is to uproot defilements in my own mind and hold the world with equanimity and compassion, but not reaction.” And then there’s this misunderstanding of what equanimity is\u2014it’s used to disengage and pull back, instead of showing up with care. Some people on a spiritual path say, “Everything happens for a reason. Just stay positive.” But again, it’s avoiding the reality of suffering. It’s a spiritual bypass. It’s very easy to use the path to pull away from suffering\u2014when pulling away actually just disconnects us from our heart, and from that fierce, fresh intelligence, and from really being fully alive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> What would you say to the person who says, “I feel emotionally overwhelmed”?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> I think that’s really important to bring up, because people either tend toward dissociating and not feeling touched by the world, or over-connecting\u2014having that kind of thin skin where they feel flooded by the world. So it feels important that we all find our ways of engaging and modulating how we take in what’s here, so that we can respond without being overwhelmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the person who says, “I get overwhelmed,” I’ll sometimes guide a practice from the Tibetan tradition called <\/span>tonglen<\/span><\/i>. It’s a way of taking in what’s painful, but then breathing it out so you sense that it’s being held by something larger. The key to not feeling overwhelmed is to feel that your heart can be a transformer of sorrows\u2014you can breathe in and be touched, but you can breathe out and let it be held by the heart of the world. It’s kind of like the ocean holding the waves. There’s something larger that’s holding it, and if we can remember that, we can let ourselves be touched and actually respond with care, but not be overwhelmed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Your new workbook, right at the beginning of <\/span>The Courageous Heart<\/span><\/i>, you write, “This is a workbook for bodhisattvas.” And you mentioned the word “bodhisattva” in terms of the call to be a spiritual activist at this time. Tell us more about what you mean by that. I think sometimes people think, “Well, that’s an archetype from a different time, or that’s something associated with great heroic figures like Gandhi.” And I’m over here being neighborly. Am I a bodhisattva?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Neighborly, to me, is one of the highest of arts. So yes. I think of the bodhisattva as the fullness of our evolutionary potential\u2014we’re all on this path of manifesting what’s innate but hasn’t been fully expressed: our awareness, our awake awareness, our caring, our creativity, our love. So the path is one of manifesting more and more. And it helps me to think that we all have these capacities, and sometimes conditioning suppresses them, and it’s not our fault. So when we’re not manifesting: forgive, forgive. And part of our evolution is to realize that we need to practice\u2014to train our hearts and minds in order to strengthen those capacities, to bring them from a state to a trait, to something more enduring.<\/span><\/p>\n

I often think of something the Dalai Lama said at one point: “I don’t know why people like me so much. It must be because I have some <\/span>bodhichitta<\/span><\/i>“\u2014that’s the awake, manifested heart. He said, “I can’t claim to always practice it.” And I figure: if the Dalai Lama doesn’t always fully manifest it, but he values it\u2014that’s a really good model. We can be bodhisattvas who sometimes get pulled around by our conditioning, but we can value caring, we can value being awake. And I think that really makes a difference. We don’t have to be like the grand figures through history. That phrase\u2014we don’t have to talk about enlightenment; we can talk about enlightened moments\u2014moments when our bodhichitta is fully manifesting. And it shows up in simple ways: the moment we pause when we’re triggered and choose to listen instead of lash out; the moment we’re with somebody who’s hurting and offer genuine attention, just stopping our life even though we’re busy; the moment we get an idea of something generous to do or say\u2014and then do it. And more broadly: when we see harm or injustice, we speak up. There are many, many ways we can live it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You mentioned there are these moments that come up and we can pause and make a different decision. And I’m curious what you think about this: sometimes I literally see inside myself a fork in the road. I think, “Okay, Tami, this is a fork-in-the-road moment.” It could be something really small\u2014even just, am I going to say this or not? And I think that’s also interesting when it comes to courageous love\u2014this whole notion of when and how we risk, and the choice points around that. I’m curious what you think about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. When we’re able to see the forks in the road, it means that there’s a bit more of that witness, that presence\u2014which itself gives us choice. If we can see what’s happening, there’s a little more sense of: oh, this’ll be helpful, this’ll be hurtful. I sense those moments also, especially when I’m a little bit slowed down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently I was part of an extended family group email, and one person was sending very triggering messages. My want was to respond personally, set him straight, let him know he was being insensitive. And there was that fork in the road. I realized that if I did that\u2014without taking the time to really talk\u2014it would create more distance. It would not reach him. So for me, at that fork in the road, choosing to love meant not sending an email setting him straight, but rather creating more space for a real conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Tara, <\/span>The Courageous Heart<\/span><\/i> workbook includes a great deal of training\u2014a whole lot of practices and exercises that someone can do. I mean, if I were to list them it would go on and on. It’s actually a full training that you’ve packed into this workbook. I’ll give people a little sense: there’s a self-inquiry practice, a letting-go-and-letting-be practice, we examine our self-beliefs, we practice RAIN\u2014a practice you’re well known for helping people work with difficult emotional experience\u2014we practice RAIN for self-forgiveness, for conflict, for releasing difficult emotions, and all kinds of things. And you begin with one practice that I thought was so powerful\u2014even if people don’t get beyond the first chapters of the book\u2014which is declaring our aspiration. And you say aspiration is the fuel for the bodhisattva journey. I want to hear more about that declaring of our aspiration and how it’s the fuel for the whole path.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. If you think of the path not as going somewhere but as being more fully in our awake heart, in presence, and living from that\u2014our aspiration is remembering that that’s what matters. That love matters. That truth matters. That presence matters. The Zen teaching is: the most important thing is remembering the most important thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think of a palliative caregiver who described working with thousands of people, with the greatest regret being not living true to their heart\u2014to what mattered most. And I think of it in a very day-to-day way. Most of us can relate: if we take a single day, we know love matters, we know presence matters, yet it’s so easy to get caught in a trance where we’re anxious and on our way somewhere else, or distracted, or losing ourselves in the wormholes of YouTube or TikTok or addictive behaviors.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think of one woman who was diagnosed with cancer and given one year to live. She had a one-year-old. And her mantra was: “There’s no time to rush.” She was in touch with her aspiration. So on the bodhisattva path, it’s actually a training to remember what matters. It’s a training because it’s so easy to forget.<\/span><\/p>\n

For me personally: the aspiration is to realize and trust and live from loving awareness\u2014to realize that’s what we are, to really trust that. That’s been there for many, many years. But what’s changed over time is that I’m more intentional about remembering it. And when I can remember it, I get more aligned.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I actually build it into my daily practice. I’ll meditate in the morning, and after I get somewhat quiet, I’ll say, “Okay\u2014what matters?” And in some way, there’s language for it\u2014it could be “embody love,” or “loving kindness,” or whatever arises. But then I’ll look into the day, sense who I’m going to be with and what I’m doing, and reflect on how I might live that. I’ll bring different people to mind\u2014first my close circles\u2014and I do a loving-kindness practice, and in particular one that very much helps me embody the sense of loving, so it’s not abstract.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Tell me what you do\u2014what you do with each person you bring to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. I’ll bring up\u2014say, my granddaughter. She’s the easiest. They both are, but I start with the older one. I’ll actually see her close up. I’ll feel my love for her. And then I will kiss her on the brow. I actually do the expression of a kiss\u2014I feel like I’m kissing her on the brow\u2014and then I feel like she’s doing the same to me, and I just dissolve into a field of who we are, loving together.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll start with some of the easier, close-in people, and then the ones that are a little harder, and then open it to those I’m going to be with. So you were in my meditation today, Tami, and it was very sweet. As soon as I saw you in my mind, I felt more openness, because I had already, in a very visceral way, felt our connection.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I sandwich the day\u2014I start with reflecting on aspiration and imagining through the day, and at the end I’ll look back and notice where I went into trance. But it’s not judgment\u2014it’s almost like information, helping me be more alert for the next round.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> When you say you look back and see where you went into quote-unquote “trance”\u2014what do you mean by that?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Where I got so caught up in what I need to do, what’s going to go wrong\u2014anything where I’m unnecessarily taken from a more open presence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Now I asked you about the loving-kindness practice because I think the way many people are exposed to loving-kindness is through repeating certain phrases for other people, and it can start to feel formulaic\u2014not filled with vitality. I wonder: what do you do so that the love feels genuine as it arises?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> I sense their goodness. I brought you to mind and I sensed your love for truth, your love for love, your aliveness\u2014how much I can feel your aspiration to really be real and embody. And I did do a kiss on the brow. I imagine that with you too. In fact, I’ve done it with strangers\u2014at retreats, seeing people, and just imagining it. There’s something about it that just works for me, so I just do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Now it’s interesting that you mention this notion of seeing goodness in people. I know this is a golden thread that weaves throughout your teaching. Tell me more about that\u2014and this practice, if you will, of seeing our own goodness and other people’s goodness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> This has been one of the most meaningful, healing, and freeing practices of my life. <\/span>Radical Acceptance<\/span><\/i> came out of trusting my own goodness\u2014learning to feel the pain of that and sensing, underneath my conditioning, whatever I saw as flawed, this deep tenderness, this caring, this awakeness, and paying attention to that, and then just wishing to live from that more. Very, very healing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And of course, the more I see the goodness in others, the more loving there is. So I teach it a lot. I remember, about fifteen years ago, giving a talk on it, and my mother was with me. She used to come to my class when she lived here. To give context: my mom was a graduate of Barnard, and her area was philosophy. She just took me on. She said, “Well, why is goodness more basic than badness?” And she talked about the invasion of Iraq, and cutting down the rainforests, and humans at war\u2014isn’t that basic badness just as much “there”? And so it was great. We tussled, and she loved to tussle.<\/span><\/p>\n

But her life very much brought out people’s goodness\u2014that was the main thing people talked about at her memorial service: that they liked who they were in her company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back to that: I basically can’t argue this cognitively. It’s experiential. And I shared this with her: when I am most resting in presence, when there’s most clarity and openness, a sensing of the sentience that is animating all of life\u2014it has a sacred quality. It’s a oneness. I’ve never spent time with someone when I couldn’t sense it. It gets covered over in ways that allow for unfathomable, hurtful, cruel behavior. But to know that\u2014and to look and see the goodness in others\u2014just calls it forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was talking with Father Gregory Boyle last year, who very much embodies the bodhisattva spirit. Many listeners are probably familiar with him as the author of <\/span>Tattoos on the Heart<\/span><\/i> and other books, and for his work with LA gangs\u2014he created Homeboy Industries, this amazing community of love and trust and healing and service, made up of young people with histories of great violence who would have been very hard to see goodness in if you’d met them earlier, when they were killing each other’s friends and family. So my inquiry to him was: what made this possible? And he said there were two unwavering principles in their community. The first was that everyone is unshakably good\u2014no exceptions. And the second was: we all belong to each other\u2014no exceptions. Then he went on to say, “Do I think all our vexing dilemmas would disappear if we embraced these two notions?” And he paused and said, “Yeah, I do.”<\/span><\/p>\n

So it’s easy to forget that there’s basic goodness, because there’s such strong conditioning in us to fixate on the flaws, on feeling separate.<\/span><\/p>\n

One more story\u2014one of my great inspirations on the path. This is John Lewis, lifelong civil rights leader and congressman. He was sharing a story about, I think it was 1961, being in a bus station in Rock Hill, South Carolina. He and a colleague were beaten with baseball bats by a group of white men. They didn’t press charges\u2014they just treated their wounds and continued their work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five decades later, one of those attackers\u2014his name was Elwin Wilson\u2014walked into Lewis’s Capitol Hill office with his son. He said, “I’m one of the men who beat you, and I want to atone. Will you forgive me?” Lewis tells the story: “I forgave him. We embraced\u2014his son and I. We wept, we talked.” But after he finishes telling the story, he says quietly, almost to himself: “People can change. People can change.” I’m sharing that because that understanding of our potential allowed him to maintain his engagement and his heart through all those decades of real cruelty and injustice and hatred.<\/span><\/p>\n

A beloved teacher once said: “Never give up on anybody.” For me, that’s one of the core practices on the bodhisattva path\u2014commit to seeing the sacredness and the goodness in others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You mentioned that when talking about basic goodness with your mom, you had to move from a cognitive space to a heart space. And as I was reading through\u2014not doing all of the exercises in <\/span>The Courageous Heart<\/span><\/i> workbook, but reading it in preparation for our conversation\u2014I got to one of the practices that moved from the head space to the heart space. And the moment I engaged with that, I thought: “Tami, this is what you need.” As long as you’re processing all this, you’re going, “La la la, this is interesting, this is important, blah blah”\u2014shredding this and that. And then you get to this movement into the heart space, and suddenly you’re right there in the center of your true aspiration.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I wonder if you can help people who are perhaps listening and have a pattern like mine\u2014to keep dissecting everything into bits. You’ve dealt with your mom, so you’ve got a lot of experience with this, Tara.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Well, the times we get most locked into the head space in ways that hurt us are usually when we’re feeling threatened. Those are the times when we feel divided from others. We lock into: he shouldn’t, she didn’t, they couldn’t\u2014the defense, the blame. And those are the times I find it most valuable to explore moving from head to heart space.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ll do a brief example as a guided practice. For anyone listening, you might take a moment right now to settle and feel your breath. You might even sense what wants to let go right now\u2014a way to soften or relax a little of the habitual tightness in the body. Breathing, relaxing, sensing yourself right here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then you might invite forward a difficult relationship or a situation where you get triggered\u2014irritated or judgmental, where there’s a sense of separation. You wouldn’t pick something traumatic\u2014just something where you notice some distance and you get caught up in judging, resentment, or blame. Notice it\u2014be the witness that notices. What arises in your mind? Maybe thoughts about what’s wrong with the other, or what needs to be different. The sense of “should” is usually a great flag that we’re caught in the head. Just notice how the thoughts and stories tend to reinforce separation\u2014no matter how right they seem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then gently shift from your head to your heart. It helps to bring a slight smile to the lips and allow that sense of a smile to spread through your heart as you feel the breath there. Invite the goodness and love in this world to bathe and fill and open your heart. Imagine and feel into the heart space as warm and tender and spacious, filled with light. And then bring the person into your heart space, and just notice what happens.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some might find that where thoughts create separation, in the heart there’s a different quality\u2014more of a felt sense of aliveness, of openness, co-mingling, communion. You’re resting in a more expanded field of being, more embodied, awake, tender. Just sense what unfolds for you in your own being when you experience this person\u2014not from your thoughts, but from your heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay. If your eyes are closed, open them, and here we are again together.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You mentioned, Tara, that as we touch into this tender space, we might find armoring. And I don’t think we can talk about something like the courageous heart without addressing that. I think a lot of people find not just tenderness inside, but a lot of pain\u2014physically felt, like, “I have every good reason to armor my heart because of X, Y, Z pain.” So talk to me about the training process of working with our own armoring.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Well, first of all, thank you for the question, because it’s not always so simple. There’s a reason we armor our heart: it’s fear. Our deepest longing is to feel connected and belonging, and our deepest fear is to feel rejected, humiliated, pushed away. So we armor because we’re protecting ourselves. And a huge part of the courage on the bodhisattva path is this willingness to feel the armoring and deepen our presence to it. I’ll often say to it: “What are you trying to do for me? You’re trying to protect me from being hurt.” And to be able to keep bringing attention to the fear that’s trying to protect\u2014that itself is a kind of life practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

And we can only do it at the pace we can do it. Some of us have been wounded more deeply through trauma and have to go really, really slowly, because there’s what’s called the window of tolerance\u2014how much we can be with the fear. But the intention is to meet that armoring and the felt sense of fear with as much care as we can. Like, ultimately, it’s to love the fear. But not right away\u2014initially it doesn’t feel that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason I teach RAIN so much is because it’s such a powerful sequence for being able to start to lean in to being with fear. RAIN starts with: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. We start by just naming\u2014”Oh, I feel the armoring. Recognize it. Okay: fear. Fear.” Then Allow means not fighting that it’s there, just saying, “Okay, this is here.” It’s like waves in the sea\u2014just saying “this belongs, it’s part of things” is really powerful, because if we don’t try to get rid of it or fix it or judge it, we can drop deeper. So the A is to allow it. The I is to Investigate\u2014to sense as well as we can where this lives in the body, to let ourselves feel it to the extent we can. And Nurture means holding whatever vulnerabilities are there with real kindness. It’s a whole training in how to\u2014I’m putting my hand on my heart right now\u2014how to really bring kindness to the fear. Because ultimately, we can love the fear, become the loving presence that’s holding the fear, and we’re no longer so identified with the wave of fear. And that is the radical shift in healing that actually frees us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You know, Sounds True works with a whole range of different spiritual teachers, and some of them, when they’re teaching about difficult emotional content, will say something like: “Look, you’re the sky. It’s bad weather. It’ll pass. Let’s move back to the sky.” I’m wondering what you think of that kind of perspective on difficult emotions\u2014if you’re like, “Yes, that makes sense,” or there’s something missing, because there’s not a deep enough time spent with quote-unquote “bad weather.” It’s like: I’ll just wait; it’ll pass.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. That’s a really important question, because there are a lot of ways that we’re conditioned to try not to feel. One of my key inquiries for myself is: what am I unwilling to feel right now? And there are many practices that are meant to transcend\u2014including sometimes using non-dual practices: “Well, what’s aware of the fear? You’re not the fear\u2014you’re what’s aware of it.” That’s very powerful and very helpful <\/span>if<\/span><\/i>\u2014and this is the if\u2014there’s already been a willingness to allow just what’s here to be here. But because we’re so habituated to get away from it, to avoid in any way, any of those moves to transcend actually disconnects us from our bodies and our hearts. So the emptiness or spaciousness we feel is actually quite dry\u2014it’s not rich with embodiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Tibetan tradition describes emotions as “the juice”\u2014they’re forms of life loving life, torqued by the perception of separation and wanting and fear, but they’re still life loving life. And I really resonate with that.<\/span><\/p>\n

They’re sometimes described as the animal-headed goddesses. If you think of Tibetan art\u2014at the entry to all the temples, there are these animal-headed goddesses\u2014they’re the life-loving-life energies that can also seem very demonic or threatening or jealous or aggressive. The teaching is: we don’t get to sacred space by bypassing them or transcending them. It’s by meeting these goddesses with presence and with heart that actually frees up their inherent aliveness. It infuses us with more presence and love by moving through them\u2014and that is the entry to sacred space. For me, in my experience, it’s more about transmuting through presence than any form of bypassing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I’m curious for you how that connects back to where we started our conversation\u2014the time we’re in, and the pain people feel, the sorrow, the grief, and what entering that releases.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Thank you. Because it feels, in these current times, crucial that we grieve. Grief is usually covered over by fear and by anger and by aggression. When it’s not processed, of course it becomes very destructive. So what we need is people who have the courage to feel what they’re feeling and find underneath those feelings what’s there\u2014which is usually grief.<\/span><\/p>\n

There’s a movie with this brilliant line: “Vengeance is a lazy form of grief.” And as long as we stay in those cycles of blaming others, anger, and aggression, we’re not getting to what’s underneath\u2014which is hugely tender\u2014because embedded in grief is love. Embedded in grief is a profound caring.<\/span><\/p>\n

I found for myself that if I’m going to engage in the world from an us-versus-them, divided, angry, righteous place, I’m planting seeds of more of the same. But if I can let my heart be broken\u2014feel the feelings, feel the anger, feel the fear, and go underneath it to the grief\u2014then when I act, I’m really coming from a place of care, from sensing belonging, and trying to further belonging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Now you mentioned that when people go into their heart, they’ll find different things. And for some of us who have had a lot of trauma, we have to take care and go at the speed that works for us. I would like to hear Tara Brach’s instructions for working with excruciating pain in the heart. I’m going in\u2014and that’s really what we’re talking about here, the courageous heart\u2014but let’s get right to it. What happens is, I feel this pain and I bounce off. I’m like, “Ouch.” It’s very physical, actually. And it’s like: “No way. Ten seconds, and I am out of here\u2014or I’m doing something productive. No.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> So the first step is to forgive and honor the “no.” Because if it feels like too much, it feels like too much\u2014and we need lots of breaks from trying to feel. And it may be that we can find more healing or nourishing ways of responding. For many people who are with excruciating pain, lying down outside on the earth, or leaning against a tree, or having the company of a pet, or learning different grounding processes that help us feel ourselves as part of the earth, feel more rooted\u2014these help. Trauma is about disconnection. That’s what it is: a feeling of utter, complete separateness that is anguish. And the healing for the pain of trauma is always some form of connection\u2014reconnecting with earth, reconnecting with another person, reconnecting with a sense of spirit, reconnecting with our own hearts. It’s always about reconnecting.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I work with people by asking the question: What helps? Even a tiny, tiny bit. And what I’ll find is that even when there’s huge pain, there’s a tendril of what helps\u2014connect, even when somebody feels really isolated. There’s something\u2014some beauty, or some person who has passed, or some spiritual figure, or some pet\u2014and I’ll build from there. I think we need to build from wherever we have some access to feeling connection. That’s called resourcing\u2014and just to build some sense of safety and nourishment is what then gives us the capacity to start widening the circles and feeling more at home in ourselves and in our world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Okay, Tara\u2014just two final questions about your new inner workbook, <\/span>The Courageous Heart: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times<\/span><\/i>. Sometimes people look at someone’s life that was really courageous, and I’ve heard people say that about my life\u2014and they often pick things that were not the courageous things I did. They think it was courageous. That wasn’t courageous. You want me to tell you what was really courageous? So I want to ask you: in your life, what has actually asked you to be really courageous? Truthfully.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. First of all, I’m with you that a lot of people don’t feel like they’re being courageous\u2014but courage has to do with some willingness to feel what we’re feeling and to act anyway when there’s something we care about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s a big one for me that, over the last decade, has been real. My teaching has kind of expanded and shifted in its emphasis\u2014as we’re talking here, and as the book reflects, this inseparability of inner practice and how we live in the world, what it means to really widen the circles of our care so we’re feeling truly a belonging with all beings. And our culture’s spiritual path is very individualistic, as I mentioned. Most people have come to it because they want help with their emotions, more self-compassion, more freedom. They’re not as drawn to what it means to live that out in widening circles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Compassion has asked me to have the courage to see clearly and name what I see in the collective\u2014because if you don’t name the particulars of suffering, we can’t respond. So I name them. I talk about the intense domains of suffering that are very charged and controversial: whether it’s people of color being violated and dehumanized, or immigrants being grabbed by ICE and deported, or\u2014as we speak\u2014Palestinians being killed, their homes and land taken. When whole populations are subjected to cruelty right here and now on this earth. This includes suffering around animals and factory farms. I just name what I can.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I often get pushback. “Stay in your lane.” Sometimes it’s anger. And I care about being trusted and being helpful, so it can land in me as a fear of falling short\u2014maybe if I had found better words, it would have landed differently. So my process, to be able to show up, is to say yes to what the experience is\u2014accepting that some people are not going to like what I say. They’ll be upset with me. They might pull away from engaging with me. To say yes to being imperfect in how I communicate. I have to say yes to reality and keep connecting with the sincerity of my deepest aspiration, which is to serve more loving in this world, to support a more loving world\u2014especially for the most vulnerable. And letting that guide me. I haven’t named that out loud in this way before, Tami. But that would be, for me, taking courage. Because it’s hard to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> The courage is risking public criticism, public misunderstanding, speaking out in ways that potentially alienate certain people\u2014and all of that takes a lot of courage, Tara. Just to say.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Yeah. Risking being rejected\u2014and daring anyway to speak what feels to be important.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Choosing to love in perilous times. Let’s conclude our conversation by circling back to that idea\u2014and that person who says, “I’m inspired by Tara’s courage, I’m inspired to be more engaged with the world, but the truth is I feel alone. I feel isolated. In my mind I’m connected to the collective, but I’m not really connected to that many people.” What do you have to say to that person, Tara\u2014the one who feels this sense of disconnection at this time?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Disconnection\u2014and often stress, and not knowing where to start. I did a webinar recently, and one woman\u2014very close to the trauma and suffering in Ukraine\u2014said, “I got in this habit where I would reach out and touch the world in these tiny ways: a text, a smile, a hug, an errand for someone who’s sick.” And she said, “Reaching out saved my life. I began trusting that the smallest things I did made a difference.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s a quote I love, from John Roedel: <\/span>“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.”<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

That feels like truth to me. When we reach out and engage, we start sensing a larger belonging\u2014and that is the healing of fear. Action absorbs anxiety. And our action, when we take it with others, deepens belonging and serves the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

So for people who are saying, “Well, what can I do?”\u2014first, I want to say: more and more people are saying, “I want to help.” There’s caring living through us, and there are so many different ways to love in action: whether it’s speaking out, or writing something, or talking to others and letting them know what you’re distressed about; showing up for collective events that are standing up for the vulnerable; voting; volunteering at voting sites; volunteering for organizations; donating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly it’s about refusing to look away, and sensing what’s yours to do. I’ll often ask: What breaks your heart right now? And then: What is love asking\u2014even something small and immediate? Just touching the world, as that woman from Ukraine did. It can be small, it can be local. It helps to join hands with others. And it’s a gift when we do\u2014when we engage in some way. It’s a gift to our own heart, and to the heart of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I am here with Tara Brach. She’s just released, with Sounds True, a new inner workbook\u2014a way to really direct your bodhisattva aspiration in your own unique way, fueling your journey. <\/span>The Courageous Heart Workbook: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times<\/span><\/i>. Tara, thank you so much for your courageous heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tara Brach:<\/b> Thank you, Tami. It’s really, really good to do this with you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Thanks, friends.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"class_list":["post-25706","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nTara Brach: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times | Sounds True<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tara Brach: Choosing to Love in Perilous Times | Sounds True\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tara Brach: The aspiration is to realize and trust and live from loving awareness\u2014to realize that’s what we are, to really trust that. That’s been there for many, many years. Tami Simon: Welcome, friends. 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