true refuge by tara brach
DESCRIPTION
Beneath the turbulence of our thoughts and emotions exists a profound stillness, a silent awareness capable of limitless love. Tara Brach, bestselling author of Radical Acceptance, calls this awareness our true refuge, because it is available to everyone of us, at any moment. In this book, Brach offers a practical guide to finding our inner sanctuary of peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty.TRANSCRIPT
tRueReFuge
Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart
TA R A BR AC HAuthor of Radical Acceptance
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TRUE
REFUGE
RFinding Peace and Freedom
in Your Own Awakened Heart
RTara Brach, Ph.D.
b a n t a m b o o k s
n e w y o r k
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The names, identifying characteristics, and other details of the clients, students, and other
case studies presented in this book have been changed to protect the privacy and preserve the
confi dences of those individuals and their families.
Copyright © 2012 by Tara Brach
All rights reserved
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brach, Tara.
True refuge : fi nding peace and freedom in your own awakened heart / Tara Brach.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-553-80762-2
eBook ISBN 978-0-345-53862-8
1. Buddhism—Psychology. 2. Emotions—Religious aspects—Buddhism. I. Title.
BQ4570.P76B68 2012
294.3'444—dc23 2012016158
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
www .bantamdell .com
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
First Edition
Book design by Karin Batten
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To Jonathan, whose heart is a loving,
safe refuge, and good humor,
one of this life’s great delights.
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c o n t e n t s
R
Prologue: Loving Life No Matter What xv
Part I: Our Search for Refuge
one Winds of Homecoming 5
two Leaving Home: The Trance of Small Self 16
three Meditation: The Path to Presence 28
four Three Gateways to Refuge 45
Part II: The Gateway of Truth
fi ve RAIN: Cultivating Mindfulness in
Diffi cult Times 61
six Awakening to the Life of the Body 77
seven Possessed by the Mind: The Prison of
Compulsive Thinking 96
eight Investigating Core Beliefs 114
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x Con t en t s
Part III: The Gateway of Love
nine Heart Medicine for Traumatic Fear 137
ten Self-Compassion: Releasing the Second Arrow 162
eleven The Courage to Forgive 181
twelve Holding Hands: Living Compassion 202
thirteen Losing What We Love: The Pain of Separation 227
Part IV: The Gateway of Awareness
fourteen Refuge in Awareness 251
fi fteen A Heart That Is Ready for Anything 272
Acknowledgments 287
Permissions 289
Resources 291
About the Author 293
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g u i d e d r e f l e c t i o n s a n d m e d i t a t i o n s
R
one A Pause for Presence 15
two Lovingkindness: Being Kind to Yourself 26
three Coming Back 41
Being Here 43
four Remembering the Most Important Thing 56
fi ve Bringing RAIN to Diffi culty 74
A Light RAIN: Practicing on the Spot 76
six Bringing RAIN to Pain 93
The Buddha’s Smile 95
seven My Top-Ten Hits 110
Bringing RAIN to Obsession 112
eight Beliefs Inventory 132
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xii Guid e d Re f l e c t i o n s and Med i t a t i on s
Catching Beliefs on the Fly 133
nine Lovingkindness: Receiving Love 157
Tonglen: A Healing Presence with Fear 159
ten Self-Forgiveness Scan 178
Ending the War with Yourself 179
eleven A Forgiving Heart toward Others 200
twelve Tonglen: Awakening the Heart of Compassion 220
Lovingkindness: Seeing Past the Mask 223
thirteen Prayer in the Face of Diffi culty 245
fourteen Exploring Inner Space 266
Who Am I? 267
Taking the Backward Step 270
fi fteen Prayer of Aspiration 282
Finding True Refuge 283
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p ro l o g u e
RLoving Life
No Matter What
My earliest memories of being happy are of playing in the ocean. When
our family began going to Cape Cod in the summer, the low piney
woods, high dunes, and wide sweep of white sand felt like a true home.
We spent hours at the beach, diving into the waves, bodysurfi ng, practic-
ing somersaults underwater. Summer after summer, our house fi lled
with friends and family— and later, with spouses and new children. It
was a shared heaven. The smell of the air, the open sky, the ever- inviting
sea made room for everything in my life— including whatever diffi cul-
ties I was carrying in my heart.
Then came the morning not so long ago when two carloads of friends
and family members took off for the beach without me. From the girl
who had to be pulled from the water at suppertime, I’d become a woman
who was no longer able to walk on sand or swim in the ocean. After two
decades of mysteriously declining health, I’d fi nally gotten a diagnosis:
I had a genetic disease with no cure, and the primary treatment was
painkillers. As I sat on the deck of our summer house and watched the
cars pull out of the driveway, I felt ripped apart by grief and loneliness.
In the midst of my tears, I was aware of a single longing. “Please, please,
may I fi nd a way to peace, may I love life no matter what.”This book came out of my own search for a place of peace, connect-
edness, and inner freedom, even in the face of life’s greatest challenges. I
call this place “true refuge” because it does not depend on anything
outside ourselves— a certain situation, a person, a cure, even a particular
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xvi t r u e r e f u g e
mood or emotion. The yearning for such refuge is universal. It is what
lies beneath all our wants and fears. We long to know we can handle
what’s coming. We want to trust ourselves, to trust this life. We want to
live from the fullness of who we are.
My search for refuge led me deeper into the spiritual teachings and
Buddhist meditation practices that were so central to my life. I am a
clinical psychologist and had been teaching meditation for over thirty
years. I am also the founder and senior teacher at the Insight Meditation
Center in Washington, D.C. My inner work and work with others gave
rise to my fi rst book, Radical Acceptance, and I also started training psy-
chologists and laypeople on how to bring meditation into emotional
healing. At the time of my diagnosis, as the insecurity of this existence
shook my inner world, the teachings that had always guided me became
more embodied and alive.
In the Buddhist tradition in which I teach, the Pali word “dukkha”
is used to describe the emotional pain that runs through our lives. While
it is often translated as “suffering,” dukkha encompasses all our experi-
ences of stress, dissatisfaction, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, and basic un-
ease in living. The word “dukkha” originally referred to a cart with a
damaged wheel. When we are suffering, we are out of balance, jolting
uncomfortably along the road of our life. We feel broken or “off,” dis-
connected from a sense of belonging. Sometimes this shows up as mild
restlessness or discontent; at other times, as the acute pain of grief or
grip of fear. But if we listen deeply, we will detect beneath the surface of
all that troubles us an underlying sense that we are alone and unsafe,
that something is wrong with our life.
In Radical Acceptance, I wrote about the deep and pervasive suffering of
shame, the pain of believing that “something is wrong with me.” I am now
addressing dukkha in a broader sense. Since that book was published,
I’ve encountered major loss— the death of my father, the physical and
mental decline of dear ones, and the challenges of my own chronic ill-
ness. Many of my students have also had their lives overturned. Some
have been uprooted from their jobs; they worry about having enough to
live on, and are hungry for meaningful work. Others are estranged from
family and friends and long for connection. Many more are grappling
with aging, sickness, and the inevitability of death. For them, “some-
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L ov in g L i fe No Mat t e r What xvii
thing is wrong with me” has become entangled with the pain of strug-
gling against life itself.
The Buddha taught that this experience of insecurity, isolation, and
basic “wrongness” is unavoidable. We humans, he said, are conditioned
to feel separate and at odds with our changing and out- of- control life.
And from this core feeling unfolds the whole array of our disruptive
emotions— fear, anger, shame, grief, jealousy— all of our limiting sto-
ries, and the reactive behaviors that add to our pain.
But the Buddha also offered a radical promise, one that Buddhism
shares with many wisdom traditions: We can fi nd true refuge within
our own hearts and minds— right here, right now, in the midst of our
moment- to- moment lives. We fi nd true refuge whenever we recognize
the silent space of awareness behind all our busy doing and striving. We
fi nd refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. We fi nd
refuge whenever we connect with the innate clarity and intelligence of
our true nature.
In True Refuge, I use the word “presence” to try to capture the imme-
diacy and aliveness of this intrinsic awareness. Presence is hard to de-
scribe, because it’s an embodied experience, not a concept. For me, when
I sense the silent, inner wakefulness that is here, I come home to a sense
of wholeness. I’m at home in my body and heart, at home in the earth
and with all beings. Presence creates a boundless sanctuary where there’s
room for everything in my life— even the illness that keeps me from
surfi ng the waves.
This book is fi lled with stories of people discovering presence in the
midst of crisis and confusion. It also explores some of the greatest chal-
lenges I myself have faced over these past decades. I hope some of these
stories connect to the heart of your own situation. Through them, we’ll
explore the forces that draw us away from presence, and why we so often
pursue false refuges. I also suggest many different practices— some an-
cient, some new, some specifi cally supported by modern neuroscience—
that have reliably opened me and many others to presence. These include
one of the most practical, in- the- trenches mindfulness meditations I’ve
worked with in years. Called RAIN (an acronym for the four steps of
the process), it helps you address many diffi cult emotions on the spot
and can be personalized to almost any situation.
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True
refuge
R
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part i i
RThe Gateway
of Truth
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f i ve
RRAIN: Cultivating Mindfulness
in Difficult Times
Between the stimulus and the response there is a space and in that space lies our power and our freedom.
viktor e. frankl
The quickest way to be happy is to choose what you already have.
werner erhard
Imagine you just found out that your child was suspended from school.
Imagine your boss just told you to start over on a report you’d
worked on for a month.
Imagine you just realized you’d been on Facebook for three hours
and have fi nished off a pound of trail mix in the process.
Imagine your partner just confessed to an affair.
It’s hard to hang out with the truth of what we’re feeling. We may
sincerely intend to pause and be mindful whenever a crisis arises, or
whenever we feel stuck and confused, but our conditioning to react, es-
cape, or become possessed by emotion is very strong.
Yes, there are times when being present feels out of reach or too
much to bear. There are times when false refuges can relieve stress, give
us a breather, help lift our mood. But when we’re not connected to the
clarity and kindness of presence, we’re all too likely to fall into more
misunderstanding, more confl ict, and more distance from others and
our own heart.
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62 t r u e r e f u g e
About twelve years ago, a number of Buddhist teachers began to
share a new mindfulness tool that offers in- the- trenches support for
working with intense and diffi cult emotions. Called RAIN (an acronym
for the four steps of the process), it can be accessed in almost any place
or situation. It directs our attention in a clear, systematic way that cuts
through confusion and stress. The steps give us somewhere to turn in a
painful moment, and as we call on them more regularly, they strengthen
our capacity to come home to our deepest truth. Like the clear sky and
clean air after a cooling rain, this mindfulness practice brings a new
openness and calm to our daily lives.
I have now taught RAIN to thousands of students, clients, and men-
tal health professionals, adapting and expanding it into the version
you’ll fi nd in this chapter. I’ve also made it a core practice in my own life.
Here are the four steps of RAIN presented in the way I’ve found most
helpful:
R Recognize what is happening
A Allow life to be just as it is
I Investigate inner experience with kindness
N Non- identifi cation
RAIN directly deconditions the habitual ways in which you resist
your moment- to- moment experience. It doesn’t matter whether you re-
sist what is by lashing out in anger, by having a cigarette, or by getting
immersed in obsessive thinking. Your attempt to control the life within
and around you actually cuts you off from your own heart and from this
living world. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon
as we take the fi rst step.
RECOGNIZE WHAT IS HAPPENING
Recognition is seeing what is true in your inner life. It starts the minute
you focus your attention on whatever thoughts, emotions, feelings, or
sensations are arising right here and now. As your attention settles and
opens, you will discover that some parts of your experience are easier to
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T h e Gat eway o f Tru t h 63
connect with than others. For example, you might recognize anxiety
right away, but if you focus on your worried thoughts, you might not
notice the actual sensations of squeezing, pressure, or tightness arising
in the body. On the other hand, if your body is gripped by jittery ner-
vousness, you might not recognize that this physical response is being
triggered by your underlying belief that you are about to fail. You can
awaken recognition simply by asking yourself: “What is happening in-
side me right now?” Call on your natural curiosity as you focus inward.
Try to let go of any preconceived ideas and instead listen in a kind, re-
ceptive way to your body and heart.
ALLOW LIFE TO BE JUST AS IT IS
Allowing means “letting be” the thoughts, emotions, feelings, or sensa-
tions you discover. You may feel a natural sense of aversion, of wishing
that unpleasant feelings would go away, but as you become more will-
ing to be present with “what is,” a different quality of attention will
emerge. Allowing is intrinsic to healing, and realizing this can give rise
to a conscious intention to “let be.”
Many students I work with support their resolve to “let be” by men-
tally whispering an encouraging word or phrase. For instance, you might
feel the grip of fear and whisper “yes,” or experience the swelling of deep
grief and whisper “yes.” You might use the words “this too” or “I con-
sent.” At fi rst you might feel you’re just putting up with unpleasant emo-
tions or sensations. Or you might say yes to shame and hope that it will
magically disappear. In reality, we have to consent again and again. Yet
even the fi rst gesture of allowing, simply whispering a phrase like “yes”
or “I consent,” begins to soften the harsh edges of your pain. Your entire
being is not so rallied in resistance. Offer the phrase gently and pa-
tiently, and in time your defenses will relax, and you may feel a physical
sense of yielding or opening to waves of experience.
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a b o u t t h e au t h o r
RTara Brach, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, lecturer, and popu-
lar teacher of Buddhist mindfulness (vipassana) meditation.
She is the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation
Community of Washington, D.C., and teaches meditation at cen-
ters throughout the United States including Spirit Rock, Omega
Institute, Kripalu Center, and the Smithsonian Institute. Dr. Brach
has offered speeches and workshops for mental health practition-
ers at numerous professional conferences. These, along with more
than fi ve hundred audio talks and ninety videos, address the value
of meditation in relieving emotional suffering and serving spiri-
tual awakening. Dr. Brach is the author of Radical Acceptance: Em-bracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Bantam, 2003). She lives
in Great Falls, Virginia, with her husband, Jonathan, her mother,
Nancy, and their three dogs.
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