“ALLOW LIFE to BE JUST AS IT IS” —Tara Brach
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“ALLOW LIFE TO BE JUST AS IT IS” —Tara Brach Clinical psychologist and mindfulness coach Tara Brach has known hardships: a mother who struggled with addiction, a miscarriage and a painful chronic illness. These difficulties, however, led her to find mindfulness, which has changed her life and helps her to help others. “My earliest memories of being clarity, “two carloads of when she was in Amsterdam She shares her insights in her book True Refuge. happy are playing in the ocean,” friends and family members and spoke with her about her writes clinical psychologist took off for the beach without early life, her influences and and internationally recognized me… I felt ripped apart by her hopes for the future. mindfulness teacher Tara grief and loneliness.” Tara Brach was born in New Brach at the beginning of True Brach writes that she had Jersey, the oldest in a family of Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in had to learn how to live her four children. Her father was a Your Own Awakened Heart. “When life again—and even to love her lawyer and her mother stayed our family began going to Cape life, “no matter what.” home with the kids. She was Cod in the summer, the low That was the moment that brought up as a Unitarian, a piney woods, high dunes and she began her search for a Christian theological move- wide sweep of white sand felt philosophy of living or, as she ment that is quite open-minded like a true home. We spent puts it, “for a place of peace, and accommodates a wide range hours at the beach, diving connectedness and inner of understandings of God. into the waves, bodysurfing, freedom, even in the face of “One of my first memories practicing somersaults under- life’s greatest challenges.” She was being with my family water. Summer after summer, calls that place “true refuge,” when I was about eight years our house filled with friends and she discovered that, old,” says Tara. “It was Easter, and family—and later, with through mindfulness practices and we were camping in the spouses and new children. It and meditation, she was able to Blue Ridge Mountains. My was a shared heaven.” find it. Now, she writes, even parents hid eggs outside and That heaven became tainted when she has encountered my two sisters and my brother for Brach later in her life, major loss—the death of her and I were hunting for them. when a chronic genetic illness father or the decline of other At one point, I walked off a seriously damaged her motor loved ones, for example—she little and I had a view of the skills so that she was no longer can find this true refuge within mountain. I remember it was able to walk on sand or swim her heart and mind. one of my first consciously in the ocean. One morning, Journalist Clementine van meditative moments. I was she recalls with heartbreaking Wijngaarden met with Tara thinking: ‘I love beauty.’ 52 _ Mindfulness _ 53 went to work for the National high and happy that I decided was in the community, too. But love me had turned on me Council of Alcoholism; it I wanted to make this a lifestyle she often felt that something with such rage.” became her life’s work. “For and see how far it could go.” wasn’t quite right for her about That was the turning point me, her alcoholism has been the lifestyle. “It wasn’t really a for Tara. “At that point, my very defining,” says Tara. LIFE ON THE ASHRAM balanced or integrated state,” eyes finally opened,” she says. “Some part of me felt the need After college, she joined an she says. “As soon as I was She and her husband left and to save my mother, and the fact ashram led by Yogi Bhajan— outside the ashram or in the moved to Washington D.C. that I wasn’t able to made me or Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, a company of strangers, I felt as There, she completed a doctor- feel guilty. So that was probably Pakistani spiritual leader and stressed and ill-at-ease as I had ate in psychology, taught yoga what led me toward becoming entrepreneur—which was part done before.” and established a clinical It was the first experience a psychologist. I was very tuned of the 3HO (Healthy, Happy, But she tried to continue to practice in psychology. where I felt there was some- in to people and their emotions. Holy Organization) Founda- find her way in the ashram, thing larger that I belonged Especially when a woman was in tion, with over 300 centers in hoping to spend her whole life FINDING BUDDHISM to.” trouble. At first I wanted to fix 35 countries. Tara joined the there. Then, she fell pregnant. That’s also when she started to Tara’s mother suffered from them. I had to outgrow that as community, first in Massa- “My husband and I decided to read a lot about Buddhism. “I depression, and though she a therapist.” chusetts and then in Virginia, go with our teacher to a month- went to a Buddhist retreat, and was a loving, respectful and When she left home to go to and remained there for ten long yoga gathering, which was on the second day I remember kind mother, as Tara college, Tara experienced her years, practicing Kundalini held in the desert,” she told thinking: ‘Wow, this can carry remembers, she drank a lot, own feelings of inadequacy; yoga and meditation, and Inquiring Mind magazine in 2003. me for the rest of my life,’” she perhaps to escape her emo- she didn’t feel she was a good observing the Sikh religion. “While I was there, I ended says. “These teachings are so tional troubles. “She wasn’t enough daughter or friend. She took a vow of celibacy and up having a miscarriage. I deep, this meditation practice the kind of alcoholic who got She struggled with her weight, entered into an arranged sent a message to my teacher is so powerful. What it did for drop-down drunk, but she and always had the lingering marriage, as was the required telling him what had hap- me: it shifted me from striving drank steadily and she was feeling “something is wrong practice. She wore all-white pened and wondering if the to accomplish something to cheerless and anxious, and she with me.” She went on self- garb and a turban. hot sun and exercise may have really resting in awareness struggled with her emotions,” improvement kicks, but they’d She threw herself completely contributed. I didn’t hear from that simply notices and holds recalls Tara. “My father didn’t only help for a little while and into the experience, waking up him until three days later when in great kindness the life of necessarily realize it, though then she’d fall back into her each morning at 3:30 a.m. to I went to the daily gathering— the moment.” he got irritated when she had old self-consciousness. pray and chant for hours. hundreds of us under a big This was the beginning of a second or third drink at “One day, I started to do “I had the idea that if I kept tent. He asked me to stand up her real education in Insight dinner. I was always aware of yoga,” she says. “Down the practicing yoga and meditation and then he angrily berated Meditation, another word for the tension that came up street, they taught a vigorous I’d be liberated in six years or me, telling me I had never mindfulness, which she started around her drinking. She was form of yoga, Kundalini. It so,” she says. “I would be totally wanted to be a mother, I was to explore more avidly. Then what they would call a ‘high- put me in touch with some- free. I was so driven to be a good too ambitious in my work as a her teaching took a whole new functioning alcoholic;’ people thing I was looking for. After yogi. But I was striving. I was therapist and that it was my direction. from the outside would have a short while I went to a big what they call a Type A yogi.” fault I had miscarried. It was “One night I told my yoga seen a pretty normal family.” yoga gathering out in Mexico There were moments of the most humiliating and group: ‘Instead of yoga, we’re When Tara was 17, her in the desert for ten days. I transcendence in this way of painful experience I’d ever going to do some Buddhist mother did a twelve-step was doing yoga every day and life, she says, and she developed had. Somebody that I really meditation; whoever wants program and after that she by the end I felt so good, so a therapeutic practice while she wanted to appreciate me and to stay can,’” she says. For more information about Tara’s mindfulness community, the 54 _ Mindfulness Insight Meditation Community of Washington, go to imcw.org _ 55 Excerpts from Tara Brach’s “True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart” RAIN: CULTIVATING MINDFULNESS R: Recognize what is happening IN DIFFICULT TIMES A: Allow life to be just as it is “Imagine that you just found out that your child I: Investigate inner experience with kindness “They all did, and this group was suspended from school.