Tara Brach

So there's a certain intelligence on 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 and the clarity and the unconditional caring that really lets us hold what's going on and respond.

Sure.

And 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 to do inner practices that calm our nervous system and so on.

So this is all part of it.

But I think there's a real misunderstanding about the spiritual path, which is that it's about an individual becoming free.

It's like, I remember in Tricycle, there was this Personals cartoon that said, tall, dark, handsome Buddhist looking for himself.

There is a, you know, at the very heart of the spiritual path,

is awakening compassion.

And that means compassion is not just a feeling of tenderness.

It actually, you know, it's like the part compassion in the brain is the location of the network, relational network, is right next to the motor cortex.

It has to do with wanting to relieve suffering.

And that you can't separate the inner trainings from how we live.

day to day from the kindness and the caring we express.

So I think that's the misunderstanding.

And activism can sound narrow, like it means only, you know, politics or rallies or lobbying.

But the emphasis, and we can talk more about the bodhisattva path, but on the spiritual path, this is path of awakening beings, is really that our actions in the world, we're interdependent.

how I right now communicate with you in some way impacts you, how you listen, receive, and ask of me.

It's like we're in relationship with our world.

We impact each other.