Tara Brach

We're all on this path of waking up or manifesting what's here and innate but hasn't been fully manifested, our awareness, our awake awareness, our caring, our creativity, our love.

So the bodhisattva 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 that part of our evolution is to realize that we need to

practice, to train our hearts and minds in order to strengthen those capacities, to bring them from a state to a trait and something more enduring.

I often think of the Dalai Lama had at one point said something like, I don't know why people like me so much.

He says, it must be because I have some bodhicitta, that's the awake manifested heart.

He said, I can't claim to always practice, but I value it.

And I figure, well, the Dalai Lama, he's not always manifesting, but he values it.

That's a really good model, that we can be bodhisattvas who sometimes get pulled around by our conditioning, but we can value carry, value being awake.

And I think that really makes a difference.

We don't have to be like the grand figures through history.

You know, that phrase that we don't have to talk about enlightenment anymore.

we can talk about in latent moments, moments of when our bodhisattva self is fully manifesting.

And it shows up in simple ways, you know,

It's the moments that we pause when we're triggered and choose to listen instead of lash out.

Or it's, you know, we're with somebody who's hurting and really offering genuine attention, just kind of stopping our life even though we're busy.

Or we get an idea of something generous to do or say, and then we do it.

And then, you know, more broadly, it's when we see harm or injustice, we speak up.

So there's many, many ways that we can live it.