Dear Friends,

Heartstream Sangha is happening today, August 2 (on very first Sunday of the month) 5:00–6:15 pm ET/ 2:00-3:15 PT. Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

A sit. A short reflection. A question or two. The joy of being together with you.

This evening, each of us will be sharing some reflections on the blessings and the stress of human life. Devin is traveling today, so it’s me, Tara, here just offering a few nuggets of what we might share.

To practice the dharma is to fill our hearts with blessings — to notice the blessings of life and permeate our lives with them, so that we can see, meet, and understand the dukkha. To practice the dharma is to practice lovingkindness, even as hatred and delusion run rampant through human hearts around us. To practice the dharma is to steep in the joy of renunciation, even as all the screens we see heavily market us on greed. To practice the dharma is to open our hearts more and more to the essential truths, the wisdom, that can deliver our hearts the deep happiness of freedom. And to practice the dharma is to share this all with the world as much as possible so that all beings can touch these joys.

With love,

Tara and Devin The Heartstream Sangha

taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Tara Mulay and Devin Berry are the co-founders of Heartstream Sangha. Monthly online gatherings — First Sundays, 5–6:15 pm ET — at heartstreamsangha.com.

Inclining the Mind Towards the Beautiful Factors, Devin Berry, Victoria Cary, Monica Magtoto (Movement). Sept. 14-19. Details and Registration.

Insight & Metta retreat with Tara Mulay, Devin Berry & Hakim Tafari (Qi Gong) Big Bear Retreat Center, CA. Sept 27th - Oct 1st. Details and Registration

Heartstream month residency: The Forest Refuge, July 2027 Details and Registration.

Subscribe now

Dear Friends,

Our summer teaching schedules have been so busy we haven’t had time to pull together a newsletter again this month. Heartstream Sangha is still happening though, today, July 5 (on very first Sunday of the month) 5:00–6:15 pm ET/ 2:00-3:15 PT. Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

We’ll be sharing some reflections from retreat to daily life on the Inner Strength of Patience.

A sit. A short reflection. A question or two. The joy of being together with you.

With love,

Tara and Devin The Heartstream Sangha

taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Tara Mulay and Devin Berry are the co-founders of Heartstream Sangha. Monthly online gatherings — First Sundays, 5–6:15 pm ET — at heartstreamsangha.com.

Inclining the Mind Towards the Beautiful Factors, Devin Berry, Victoria Cary, Monica Magtoto (Movement). Sept. 14-19. Details and Registration.

Insight & Metta retreat with Tara Mulay, Devin Berry & Hakim Tafari (Qi Gong) Big Bear Retreat Center, CA. Sept 27th - Oct 1st. Details and Registration

Heartstream month residency: The Forest Refuge, July 2027 Details and Registration.

Subscribe now

Dear Friends,

We are in the midst of teaching a two-week retreat, so we haven’t had time to pull together a newsletter this month. Heartstream Sangha is still happening though, today, June 7 (on very first Sunday of the month) 5:00–6:15 pm ET/ 2:00-3:15 PT. Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

We’ll be sharing some reflections from retreat to daily life on the Craving for Becoming and Letting Go.

A sit. A short reflection. A question or two. The joy of being together with you.

With love,

Tara and Devin The Heartstream Sangha

taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Tara Mulay and Devin Berry are the co-founders of Heartstream Sangha. Monthly online gatherings — First Sundays, 5–6:15 pm ET — at heartstreamsangha.com.

Inclining the Mind Towards the Beautiful Factors, Devin Berry, Victoria Cary, Monica Magtoto (Movement). Sept. 14-19. Details and Registration.

Insight & Metta retreat with Tara Mulay, Devin Berry & Hakim Tafari (Qi Gong) Big Bear Retreat Center, CA. Sept 27th - Oct 1st. Details and Registration

Heartstream month residency: The Forest Refuge, July 2027 Details and Registration.

Subscribe now

Dear Friends,

Reminding you of Heartstream Sangha this Sunday:

Sunday, May 3 - First Sundays online, every month, 5:00–6:15 pm ET/ 2:00-3:15 PT.

A sit. A short reflection. A question or two. Sometimes both of us, sometimes one of us, sometimes a guest teacher or a student voice we’re grateful to make room for. Humble beginnings, not a disclaimer. The whole idea.

We’d love to have you there. Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

A Heartstream Reflection on Dukkha and Freedom from Clinging

4:52 a.m. Eight minutes before the alarm.

A bird outside the window, oddly cheerful, considering. The kind of cheerful that, with eight hours of sleep behind you, you might call beautiful. With five, you call it something else.

The body had already made its first request. Not gently.

The phone was on the nightstand. Again.

It was supposed to be in the hallway. That had been the intention. But here it was. Face down in the dark, eight minutes ahead of schedule, the screen already beginning its slow bright insistence.

The body doesn’t wait for permission.

It wanted water. It wanted to empty itself. It wanted, in that particular wordless way it has, to return to the sleep that was just beginning to go somewhere. In three hours there would be a morning sit. Cushion, bell, the slow work of paying attention. But that was three hours away. Right now it was 4:52 a.m., a body in the dark, and Tuesday building itself whether anyone had agreed to it or not.

Of course there is a Pali word for the pressure of all these relentlessly changing conditions. The word is dukkha, which most often gets translated accurately, but not completely, as “suffering.” The reason it doesn’t quite translate is that “suffering” implies something has gone wrong. Dukkha means something closer to this: the inherent unsatisfactoriness of a life made entirely of a flow of conditions. The low-grade, sometimes high-grade, friction of being a creature that requires constant maintenance just to keep going.

Hunger is the worst disease, the Dhammapada says. Conditioned things the worst suffering.

War. Grief. Diagnosis. The phone call that changes everything. Nope.

Hunger. Because all is hunger.

The hunger never stops. You eat breakfast and the body files the same request by noon. You sleep eight hours and exhaustion comes back around by evening. You get the headache to leave and three days later it returns, slightly rearranged. The body is a fire that requires constant feeding. And the fire does not negotiate.

This same fire exists outwardly, in the world. Societal conflict and cruelty diminish only to rear their all-too-familiar heads again. A war ends here, but breaks out there. We care for each other, yet still we see that some will not get enough. It is imperative, and the only way to truly live, to try to ease suffering and bring joy. Yet we see that – beyond our control – time marches on, burning away the edges of the ease and joy. Relief will rise again, but we are in a cycle called samsara.

This is what the tradition means when it speaks of the dukkha of conditioned existence, more specifically saṃkhāra-dukkha in Pali, the suffering underneath the suffering. It lives closer to the surface than we think. Closer to the ordinary hum of a Wednesday. The unease that sits beneath contentment like a refrigerator you stopped hearing years ago but that has been running the entire time.

Some of us wake up into a world that has been practicing dukkha on our bodies long before we learned the Pali word for it. In this household, that sentence lands differently depending on which body is reading it.

The phone drops into the toilet. The screen cracks before 8 a.m. You get hangry, genuinely, unreasonably, low-blood-sugar angry at someone who doesn’t deserve it, and somewhere underneath the apology you already know you owe them, there is just this: I needed lunch. That’s it. That’s all this was.

The Buddha noticed this with the precision of a physician. His first noble truth was a diagnosis. He looked at the full scope of human experience: birth, aging, illness, death, the ache of a life that keeps not quite cooperating, and he named it. All of it. Without ever looking away.

And then he said something that tends to get lost in translation: not getting what is wanted is also dukkha. The ordinary kind. The wish that the body would cooperate. The wish that the mood would lift. The wish that the pleasant morning would stay pleasant instead of sliding, the way all mornings do, toward noon and its own demands.

In the Saṃyutta Nikāya the Buddha said something that stops most people cold the first time they hear it: whatever is felt is included in suffering. The hard things, yes. And the pleasant morning too. The good year. Even love.

Even love, from its very first moment, carries somewhere inside it the knowledge that this too will change. That is not a flaw in love. It is just what love is made of, the same conditions as everything else, moving the same direction.

The pleasant things don’t hold either. The good coffee goes cold. The satisfying conversation ends. Good news breaks through the noise, for a while. The body that felt rested at 7 a.m. is asking for something else by noon. We spend our lives finding new ones, new pleasures, new comforts, new arrangements, because the nature of pleasant things is to dissolve. We reach because reaching is what a conditioned mind does in a conditioned world.

In beings subject to aging, illness, death, the wish arises: may we not be subject to these things. But this is not to be achieved by wanting. This is the stress of not getting what is wanted.

— MN 141, Sāriputta

For some of us, that wish has been answered with silence. The dukkha of not getting what is wanted includes the dukkha of being told the wanting itself is illegitimate.

Sit with that for a moment.

The teaching holds all of it. It’s that life is conditioned. Every arrangement we make, every good habit, every loving relationship, every hard-won peace, is made of conditions. And conditions shift.

What the tradition offers is not escape from this. It is a different way of meeting it, closer in, less defended, without the ongoing argument about whether it should be happening at all.

The Buddha’s instructions for mindfulness in the Satipaṭthāna Sutta include eating, drinking, urinating, defecating, walking, standing, falling asleep, waking up, speaking, and remaining silent. The sacred field of awareness is embarrassingly ordinary. The path does not begin when we finally get our act together. It begins in the bathroom. At the kitchen counter. In the body making its demands at 4:52 a.m., eight minutes before anyone agreed to be awake.

Dukkha is the very ground of practice. The place where the teaching stops being information and becomes experience. Something we meet, again and again, in the body we didn’t choose, on the Tuesday that asked nothing of us except that we keep showing up inside it.

The moment we recognize this as dukkha rather than as some moral or personal failure, something shifts. The suffering doesn’t stop. But our relationship to it does.

We don’t practice to escape this life. We practice to stop arguing with it.

Stop fighting the fire. Feed it with awareness and love. Watch what happens when you meet the body’s demands, the hunger, the exhaustion, the stiffness, the phone on the nightstand… with the opposite of resistance. Intimacy, openness, awareness.

What you find there has a name. The teachings have been pointing at it for twenty-five centuries. Non-clinging. Freedom. Pure love.

When we connect with the heartstream, we can fall into the heartstream. And then we can fall away from the grip of resistance that holds us apart and down. Connection with unsatisfactoriness and suffering becomes the vehicle out and through to unshakeable happiness.

“The essence of the spiritual path lies only in the beauty of the ordinariness, in the mundane, and in the freedom from separation of the spiritual and the ordinary.”

— Dr. Thynn Thynn

With love,

Tara and Devin The Heartstream Sangha

taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Tara Mulay and Devin Berry are the co-founders of Heartstream Sangha. Monthly online gatherings — First Sundays, 5–6:15 pm ET — at heartstreamsangha.com.

Inclining the Mind Towards the Beautiful Factors, Devin Berry, Tara Mulay, Victoria Cary, Monica Magtoto (Movement). Sept. 14-19. Details and Registration.

Insight & Metta retreat with Tara Mulay, Devin Berry & Hakim Tafari (Qi Gong) Big Bear Retreat Center, CA. Sept 27th - Oct 1st. Details and Registration

Heartstream month residency: The Forest Refuge, July 2027 details in September

Other upcoming offerings from each of us: taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Subscribe now

Dear Friends,

We’re Beginning A Monthly Online Sangha.

We’ve been sitting with the question of how to gather. And we kept arriving at the same answer: simply. Begin.

First Sundays online, every month, 5:00–6:15 pm ET/ 2:00-3:15 PT. A sit. A short reflection. A question or two. Sometimes both of us, sometimes one of us, sometimes a guest teacher or a student voice we’re grateful to make room for. Humble beginnings, not a disclaimer. The whole idea.

Beginning again, April 5th. We’d love to have you there.Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

There’s a moment right before you press “join.”

The meeting is open. Your name is in the waiting room. You can still close the tab and nobody would know.

Most of us have been in that moment. Not just with Zoom. With practice itself. With returning to something we set down, a sitting routine, a relationship, a version of ourselves we’d given up on. The hand hovers. The cursor blinks. And then, sometimes, we click.

That click, that beginning again, is our whole dharma practice.

The Buddha left us a short teaching on this:“Appamado amatapadaṃ: Heedfulness is the path to the deathless.” The word he used in Pali, “appamada,” means literally “not losing the thread.” These are among the opening words of the Dhammapada, one of the oldest collections of the Buddha’s teachings, and they set the tone for everything that follows.

So every time we notice the thread has slipped from our hands, and we pick it up again, we are on the path to liberation. The act of beginning again is sacred and powerful. It is the practice in action, and every time we feel that sense of beginning again we can know we are not losing the thread..

When the mind wanders, and it will, it always does, we notice, and we return. No verdicts or score keeping. Just the noticing, and then the quiet turn back toward the breath, toward the body, toward what is actually here.

What takes most of us years to really believe is that wandering isn’t the problem. The mind moves toward pleasure, away from discomfort, into memory, into planning, into the story it’s been running since before you sat down. This is just the nature of a mind that gets called back to practice, that can enter into the sacred act of beginning again.

Before his own awakening, the Buddha sat with this same mind. The account of his practice is in the Dvedhavitakka Sutta. He noticed which thoughts led toward suffering and which led toward freedom, and patiently, again and again, turned back toward what was wholesome. He was not a being above the struggle. A being inside it, working with what he had, returning every time he drifted. Making the return itself the practice.

The world we live in often tells us a different story. It rewards the seemingly unbroken. It treats the need to begin again as evidence of weakness, the need to return as proof that you didn’t belong in the first place. Some of us know what it is to lose the thread and not have chosen to. The world called it falling behind. The Dharma has always said otherwise.

They begin. They make the effort.

This is the path.

Beginning again is not a clean slate. It’s the practice of refusing numbness, of not turning away from this moment, from each other, or from whatever this life is asking us to hold right now. That’s what we come together to do.

That’s what Heartstream is built for.

From Our Lives

Devin:

I think about the year I worked the floor at an aircraft assembly plant in Wichita Kansas. Long shifts, repetitive motion, the same procedures on the same aircraft day after day. There was a quality check built into the work…you’d complete a section, sign off, and start the next one clean. No carry-over. Whatever you’d botched in the last sequence didn’t follow you into the next. The work demanded that you put it down and begin again. Again and again and again.

Well into “the early years” there were long gaps in my practice. Seasons where I rarely sat or infrequently sat, lived more at the surface than the depth. And the returning was never dramatic. It was just, I sat down. The breath was there. I’d been gone, and the breath had been waiting, patient as anything, and when I came back it didn’t ask me where I’d been.

That’s what the practice is. Not the sitting. The coming back.

Tara:

Years before Heartstream, before retreats and teacher training and any of the formal containers I now help hold, I was just someone who wanted to practice with other people and didn’t quite know how to make that happen.

But I stepped into the unknown, first joining a local sangha, Mission Dharma, led by Howie Cohn. I started volunteering to be of service and to feel more connected to sangha. Joy, gratitude, and dharma friendship flowed from those decisions. That experience never left me. Years later, when I helped found SF BIPOC sitting group with my colleague Victoria Cary, I felt the same uncertainty at the beginning…Who would come? Would it hold? Were the conditions right yet?. They weren’t. They never quite are. But people came. And they kept coming. And what I learned, sitting in those circles, is that a group doesn’t begin when the conditions are perfect. It begins when someone decides the longing is larger than the fear.

That’s what we’re doing now. Again.

You don’t have to have it together to begin. That’s not the instruction.

The Dhamma, the Buddha left us is sandiṭṭhiko, akāliko, ehipassiko, his own description of the teaching, repeated throughout the early discourses: visible here and now, immediate, inviting one to come and see. Not requiring that we arrive perfectly prepared. Not asking that we have our act together before we approach. Just come. See.

Begin again.

With love,

Tara and Devin The Heartstream Sangha

taramulay.com | devinberry.org

The stream keeps moving.

First Sundays — online, every month, 5:00–6:15 pm ET. A sit. A short reflection. We’d love to have you there. Full details and registration at heartstreamsangha.com.

Cambridge Insight, July 12 - Heartstream Daylong, hybrid, with Tara & Javier Cruz. Details and Registration

Insight & Metta retreat with Tara Mulay, Devin Berry & Hakim Tafari (Qi Gong) Big Bear Retreat Center, CA. Sept 27th - Oct 1st. Details and Registration

Heartstream month residency: The Forest Refuge, July 2027 details in September

Other upcoming offerings from each of us: taramulay.com | devinberry.org

Subscribe now

Dear friends,

Sometimes the path calls us to a cushion.
And sometimes it calls us to a bedside.

This Heartstream is for those whose path is caring for a parent or loved one, for those navigating hospital corridors and insurance denials, Medicare forms and memory loss. For those whose practice right now is learning how to keep your heart open through the grocery lists, the blood pressure cuffs, the medication reminders, the deep breaths before walking back into the room.

The Dharma guides us through these seasons as through all others, perhaps even more vitally so.

When caregiving becomes our path, uncertainty, loss, and confusion can mark the way. We find ourselves at our emotional and physical edges. We ask: How can I practice Dharma through this? How can I find compassion, patience, balance in the midst of this tiredness and heartbreak?

The truth is, we’ve already stepped directly into Dharma practice. There is no hiding from dukkha in these times, only the opportunity to comprehend it more deeply. The Buddha said that developing an understanding of dukkha, the first Noble Truth, is the beginning of the path to freedom.

Through this understanding, we see that joy and contentment arise from being with that which we might have feared, rather than turning away. From coming close when times are hard for our loved ones, and opening our hearts to find ways to give ourselves what we need too.

Ultimately, we see that the suffering of our loved one, and that we experience in our own hearts, is not different from any other sentient being’s. All of us have bodies and minds that can deteriorate and create struggles for us in life. Being able to witness and to lend a loving hand provides us precious moments of inner growth, preparing us for our own passage through aging and dying.

Bowing to the Messengers

The Buddha named aging, illness, and death not as problems to solve, but as truths to bow to: heavenly messengers. In the Five Daily Recollections, he invites us to remember them not with fear, but with tenderness and clarity:

“I am of the nature to grow old... to become ill... to die. I cannot escape aging, illness, and death.” (AN 5.57)

Caregiving can feel like a deep and distant exile. But it is also a form of transmission: of love passed down and love returned, ancestor training. It is a confrontation with the Truth that, to our surprise, lightens our hearts. When we no longer turn away, we see that there is a doorway right in front of us, to a free and spacious heart.

The Dharma of Care

In the Kucchivikara-vatthu Sutta, the Buddha said:

“Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.” (Mahavagga 8.26)

When a sick monastic was left unattended, the Buddha himself cleaned their body, bathed their wounds, and called the community in. This was not extracurricular to the path, it was the path.

We live in a culture that avoids the aging body, rushes past the slow walker, and hides the cost of care. But the Dharma invites us to stay close to reality, not retreat from it.

What if your parent’s forgetfulness, or your loved one’s diagnosis, is not a distraction from the path, but a sacred invitation?

The Practice of Staying

Some days that invitation feels like heartbreak. Or burnout. Or resentment. Or guilt that we’re not doing enough. But this, too, is practice.

Caregiving stretches us beyond “being mindful” into being utterly human. Into staying when we want to run. Listening when we want to correct. Accepting when we want to fix.

It softens our illusion of control. It teaches mettā that’s not sweet or sentimental, but ferocious and lived-in.

And it often happens in invisibility—without applause, without clear roles, without much rest.

So if you are caring for someone right now: we see you. You are not alone.

From Our Lives

Tara:

About three years ago, a bout of pneumonia combined with flu triggered my father’s rapid physical and cognitive decline, and I had to take on his care at that time. Soon after, a Dharma friend candidly shared with me what he felt during his years of supporting his aging parents.

He said this: “You always feel like you don’t know what to do and that whatever you’re doing is not quite good enough.”

Although this sounds bleak, it has actually been a balm to me to remember what he said. Facing the truth of this caregiving conundrum helps me allow things to be unfixable—to allow the not-good-enough to be good enough. It also helps me to know that the periodic confusion in my heart about how to help my father is a part of this life journey, not a fault. It’s a sign of my engaged heart meeting the truth of dukkha.

When I noticed for the first time that my father didn’t remember whether seven siblings are alive or dead, I felt the sadness and allowed it in, so it didn’t overtake me. When he spit out his favorite food because his swallowing function started to malfunction, I felt the pain of it and it didn’t metastasize into blame. When I couldn’t figure out whether to sign the documents requesting hospice services, I allowed myself to feel my confusion and know, “this is how it is right now” and that it could not be any other way in this moment. I embrace these times as a sacred opportunity to see the dukkha of birth, life, and death.

I do feel the sadness and the loss. I do know that they are life flowing through.

I am grateful to my father for what he has given, for his courage in these times, and I am grateful to the Dharma because, for as long as I have been practicing it, there is no doubt it has prepared me to open to the truths I am now facing ever more clearly.

Devin:

I haven’t yet become a full-time caregiver, but I know it’s likely coming.

And I think of Evelyn.

She was eighty-five, with a long-term illness and a twinkle in her eye. A decade ago, I was a backup caregiver, mostly there to keep her company.

We watched baseball games, read books, sat in silence. When I’d walk in her room, she’d grin at me and say, “They’ve gone to the bullpen and brought out the closer.” I’d wind up like a pitcher, she’d laugh, and we’d begin.

I’d ask how she was. “This old body is unwell,” she’d say plainly. “Not dead, but definitely dying. The truth and nothing but the truth.”

Her honesty and wisdom fully embodied.

Of course, she dipped into despair now and again, I mean who wouldn’t? But Evelyn had trained herself to turn toward joy: the sunlight on the wall, the bell from the church down the street, the birdsong and bougainvillea outside her window.

One day I came back from retreat and she no longer knew my name. A few weeks later, she died.

And yet she had already begun the art of letting go.

In her quiet way, Evelyn showed me something I still carry:

That peace is not found in perfect health.

It’s found in embracing life, illness and all, with a kind of loving awareness that doesn’t flinch.

Sometimes the deepest Dharma isn’t what we teach.

It’s how we sit beside one another.

How we stay.

Voices from the Path

Maya Angelou once said:

“I came to love my mother not because she had changed, but because I had. In caring for her as she got older, I discovered I could simply sit with her. Not to fix, not to impress. Just to be. Love doesn’t always speak—it shows up. And presence, real presence, is its own kind of forgiveness.”

Hilda Richards, longtime practitioner and trailblazing African-American nurse, born 1936, shared:

“Following the Buddha’s teachings has helped me all my life. And now, of course, I have more time to meditate. I always sit in the morning, and I try to bring mindfulness to everything I do over the course of a day, from sitting and eating to moving around. You take an in-breath and an out-breath. And then one day, you release an out-breath and you don’t take another in-breath.”

—from “Breaking Ground and Finding Center”

Closing Reflection

Caregiving is where love meets vulnerability and where tenderness becomes a vow.
Not because it’s easy, because we come from people who stayed.
Who lifted when there was no lift left. Who tended to one another in hospital rooms, kitchens, and gravesides in India, in Mississippi, long before either of us called it practice.

You will lose everything. Your body. Your memory. Your beloveds.
This is not punishment. It is the path.

And still we are here now. You are here now. There is breath.
There is someone you can call. There is someone who needs your presence more than your perfection. And that someone might be you.

To care is to refuse to abandon the world. To sit beside suffering, and not turn your face. To become the field of another’s healing not by fixing, but by being the one who stays. Including for yourself.

Reflection & Practice for This Season

A Moment to Pause

What does compassion feel like in my body when I’m near someone who is struggling, ill, or aging?

What does equanimity feel like in my body at these times?

What support do I need as a caregiver or as someone preparing for this season of life?

Somatic Practices for This Season

1. The Pause at the Doorway
   Before entering the room: your parent’s, your child’s, the ICU…pause.
   Feel your feet. One breath in. One breath out.
   Let the body arrive before the helper does.
   
   

2. Hand on Heart, Hand on Belly
   Rest one hand on your chest, one on your abdomen.
   Breathe.
   You are allowed to feel this.
   You are allowed to not know what comes next.
   
   

The Path Is Still Here

This season of life can break us open.
It can deepen us, slow us down, humble our views, reminding us what love looks like when it’s not romantic or spiritual, but real and raw.

The Dharma is not only for the meditation hall.
It lives in the corridor outside the MRI machine.
In the pharmacy line. In your parent’s favorite soup you’ve now memorized how to make.

We bow to the messengers.
We stay with what hurts and stay with self care.

With care,
Tara and Devin
The Heartstream Sangha Team
Tara Mulay | Devin Berry

Upcoming Offerings

Dear Friends,

These days, it can often feel like we're living in an upside-down world. The very qualities we should value, empathy, civic care, and equity, are being denigrated. The very things we ought to celebrate, freedom of expression, integrity, and compassion, are being diminished.

At times like these, we know that having good friends truly matters. But in the Dharma, spiritual friendship isn't just a comfort; it's a direct support for liberation.

The Buddha identified kalyāṇa mittatā, admirable friendship, as not merely a helpful add-on, but the whole of the holy life. Not an accessory to the path, but the path itself.

It's in the presence of spiritual friends that we remember our intentions. They hold us steady when the world feels like too much. They remind us of our values, our strength, and our shared commitment to waking up—not just alone, but together.

Especially now, when excessive greed is normalized and casual cruelty is increasing, this kind of friendship isn't a luxury. It's a condition for liberation.

A Friend on the Path Is the Path

In the Upaddha Sutta (SN 45.2), Ānanda tells the Buddha:

"Sir, good friends, companions, and associates are half the spiritual life."

The Buddha responds:

"Not so, Ānanda! Not so, Ānanda! Good friends, companions, and associates are the whole of the spiritual life."

This wasn't a throwaway line; it was a radical truth.

Spiritual friendship isn't just about affection or common interests. It's about the kind of companionship that supports clear seeing, integrity, and non-clinging.

We are shaped by the company we keep. Our minds absorb what we're around: habits, views, moods, and language. And in the noisy, confusing terrain of lay life, our practice doesn't survive in a vacuum. It needs reinforcement.

A good friend encourages faith when it falters, reminds us of our capacity, and models what it looks like to return.

Sometimes it looks like a simple text: "Want to sit together tonight?" Sometimes it's a steady presence in a time of grief or chaos. Sometimes it's going to a peaceful action together, advocating for a cause rooted in compassion.

Tara recently spoke about how Buddhists in many countries have had to practice under incredibly difficult conditions. Sometimes practice looks helping each other through these times and resisting injustice together.

Listen to Tara’s Talk on Spiritual Friendship, offered at the end of a March 2025 Monthlong Retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

This is how the five spiritual faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom grow. Not just on the cushion, but in connection.

Two Kinds of Spiritual Friendship

The Buddha pointed to two kinds of kalyāṇa mittatā that are vital on the path. Both are precious. And sometimes, one friend embodies both.

One helps you remember where you're going. The other reminds you that you're not alone as you get there.

1. The Friend Who Walks Beside You

This is the friend who meets you right where you are. They offer honesty, companionship, and authenticity. They may not always have answers, but they help carry the questions. Their very way of being helps you remember your own highest intentions.

This is the friend you can text when the world feels like too much. Who says, "I don't have it all together either, but let's stay with this together." They make room for your grief, your joy, your mess, and keep practicing alongside you.

2. The Friend Who Leads You Forward

This may be a teacher, or a peer who inspires you. You feel you can turn to them for guidance and clarity. They've practiced longer and help point you in a dharmic direction, whether through a talk, a gesture, or their presence alone.

They may offer teachings or corrections at times. But more often, they simply live the path in a way that's contagious. Their steadiness helps you incline toward what's skillful.

Their life whispers to yours: "You, too, can open your heart. It's possible."

In times of political cruelty, climate grief, and spiritual fatigue, kalyāṇa mittatā is strategic, not sentimental. It helps the nervous system settle, so the mind can settle too. It reconnects us to dignity.

This is not separate from practice. It's what makes deep practice possible.

Refuge of Belonging

We speak often of the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. But Sangha is sometimes treated as optional, something we might turn to only when things fall apart.

But belonging isn't the reward for having it all together. It's the condition that allows us to heal and grow into our freedom.

Spiritual friendship is a form of belonging. It welcomes us not for being perfect, but for being present.

For many of us, affinity group spaces, formed around shared identity or lived experience, have become one of the most profound expressions of this kind of refuge.

In a culture that erases, isolates, or pathologizes difference, these spaces offer something rare:

• The chance to be unmasked.

• To speak without translating.

• To rest in the familiar without explanation.

Affinity groups help us remember. They metabolize grief, affirm values, and restore our capacity to be fully human and fully seen.

The Field of Collective Awakening

This path was never meant to be walked alone. The Dharma was spoken aloud. Practiced in community. Memorized in groups. Preserved by generations of care.

"As to external factors, I do not see any other factor that is so helpful for the arising of the seven factors of enlightenment as this: good friendship." — The Buddha, SN 46.50

We awaken not as individuals escaping the world, but as companions returning to it with steadiness and love. Spiritual friendship offers the kind of trust that allows wisdom to grow.

It is what keeps our hearts aligned with freedom when we're tempted to shut down.

This is how we stay free. Together.

Reflections and Invitations for Daily Life Practice

• Who, in your life, helps you come home to the heart? Are you giving enough space to these connections?

• Where do you feel called to give or receive inspiration?

• What's one small act of spiritual friendship you could offer today?

If this touched you, consider forwarding it to a friend or sharing it with your sangha. Spiritual friendship grows when it's shared.

Looking for ways to cultivate connection? Try reaching out to a Dhamma friend, attending a local gathering, or volunteering in a way that nourishes your values.

Closing Quotes to Carry

"Sometimes love means holding space. And sometimes it means saying, 'Come on. Let's go. You've got this.' A real friend knows when to do both." — Devin Berry

"[T]here are these two conditions for the arising of right view. Which two? The voice of another and appropriate attention." — The Buddha, AN 2.126

Until next time, keep choosing friendship over fear, remembering over reacting, connection over collapse.

With love and steadiness,

Tara & Devin

Heartstream Sangha

Upcoming Retreats & Gatherings

With Devin

With Tara

With Tara & Devin

Dear Friends,

There are moments, quiet ones, when we feel aligned. When we act without self-doubt. When our words, thoughts, and values move together like water over stone. These moments are often small: a truth spoken gently, a kindness offered anonymously, a silence kept when anger rose. In those moments, we remember who we are.

And then, we look around.

The world is full of contradictions. Leaders lie without consequence. Rights erode. Communities suffer. Harm is normalized, and conscience is called deficient. Empathy is seen as weakness. What does it mean to live with integrity in such a world?

In the Dhamma, sīla or ethical conduct is not a checklist. It’s a compass. It points us back to what matters. Not perfectionism, but alignment. Not righteousness, but care. Not self-blame, but self-respect.

The Buddha taught that the contentment of an ethical life is the foundation for concentration and insight. Without it, the mind cannot settle, and wisdom cannot take root. A remorse-free heart leads to a subtle, yet deep, happiness, which is the first step on the path towards unshakeable freedom.

The Buddha said that hiri (moral conscience) and ottappa (moral concern) are the “guardians of the world” (Aṅguttara Nikāya 2.9). These are not signs of weakness. They are signs of humanity that fuel fortitude, steadiness, and quiet joy.

Together, they form an inner ethical radar, not driven by fear of punishment, but by a natural attunement to the inner and outer suffering we may cause or prevent.

Living in a Time of Ethical Erosion

It’s tempting to numb out. To justify complicity. To shrink the field of concern. But the path of practice is not comfort…it is freedom. And freedom begins by choosing not to cause harm, even when the world says harm is normal.

This doesn’t mean self-righteousness. It doesn’t mean moral superiority. It means checking:

Am I aligned? Am I living from love or fear? Am I harming, ignoring, avoiding?

This isn’t about being tense. It’s about being real.

Let’s be clear: Sometimes what passes for stability is just fauxquanimity. A kind of self-protective numbness dressed up as calm. And when the world staggers, not from suffering alone, but from the refusal to see it, being “well-adjusted” might not be healthy. It might be complicity. Being ethical and non-harming, even when it’s hard or makes us stand out, will always be a true inner protection.

The Quiet Power of Conscience

Integrity isn’t loud. It doesn’t post itself online. It’s felt the moment we pause before gossiping or sending the snarky tweet or email. The moment we admit a mistake. The moment we choose generosity over convenience.

It’s choosing not to laugh at the cruel joke. It’s telling a colleague, “That didn’t feel right.” It’s deleting the post we wrote in anger.

Integrity is a way of belonging to our own hearts. A refusal to be split by shame or hardened by fear. A daily practice of returning.

We won’t always get it right. But we can always begin again.

True integrity is not about becoming a new person. it’s about not leaving yourself behind. Sīla is our refusal to participate in harm, even when it’s legal, profitable, or praised. It is how we train the heart to stay steady in love, not only for our own freedom, but because freedom unshared becomes another form of delusion.

The Buddha taught liberation through non-clinging. But clinging to injustice, to supremacy, to silence these are not merely personal knots. They are karmic entanglements, woven into the very systems we move through. Sīla means we learn to untangle both.

Simple Practices for Ethical Living

Pause Before Reacting: When emotions rise, ask: What would love do here? Or: Is this response rooted in clarity or reactivity?

Take the Five Precepts Every Day: Undertake the trainings to: (1) Abstain from harming living beings; (2) Abstain from taking that which is not freely offered; (3) Abstain from sexual conduct that harms yourself or others; (4) Abstain from false speech; (5) Abstain from using intoxicants that cloud the mind. This is a lifelong personal exploration of the contours of freeing our hearts from harm and experiencing the peace of integrity…not an exercise of adhering to any dogma.

Repair When Needed: Integrity includes the courage to make amends. Healthy remorse can guide us home.

Find Strength in Sangha: Let others remind you who you are. Ethics is not a solo act. It’s practiced in community.

Quotes:

"For a person free from remorse, there is no need for an act of will, 'May joy arise in me.' It is in the nature of things that joy arises in a person free from remorse.” — The Buddha, AN 11.2

“The only way to reduce ugliness in the world is to reduce it in yourself.” — Bayard Rustin

“The basic delusion is believing there is anything in this world to gain that is worth abandoning your integrity. When we truly realize it’s all ephemeral, the mind breaks free.” — Tara Mulay

“When the mind is honest with itself, it settles. When it’s not trying to be someone, it softens. In that quiet there’s no need to chase joy. Joy is what’s left when we stop clinging.” – Devin Berry

Reflections for the Day

When do I feel most aligned with my deepest integrity?

What’s one small place I can practice reducing harm—either to myself or others—today?

In a time of collapse, integrity is a form of resistance. A way of saying: I will not abandon the heart. I will not abandon this world.

Standing Together: Resources for Right Action

5calls.org

Choose Democracy

Music for the Heartstream

Shabazz Larkin is a meditation practitioner and multi-disciplinary artist. He was recently on a long retreat with us, bringing his whole heart to the path. His song “What I Want” is both a hymn and a mirror.

Shabazz wrote a list to figure out what he truly wanted.
The Buddha made lists too…each one a map home.
Let it land as an anthem of clarity, tenderness, and return.
It sounds like the Dharma remembered through breath and bone…
honest, healing, human.

With steadiness and love
Tara and Devin
The Heartstream Sangha Team

taramulay | devinberry

Dear Friends,

Before we begin, a bow to your practice.

To those just emerging from silence, welcome back. Your hearts are tender, your senses awake. To those who remained in the noise, bearing witness to the unraveling—thank you for staying close. In this moment, we meet at the edge together. Practice continues here, not away from the world but within it. What we take in now matters. And how we hold one another matters more.

Many of you are returning from retreat into a country on edge. Not just noisy—but trembling. Democracy is under strain. Lies are dressed as truth. There is a low drumbeat of danger, and many feel it. Fear, disorientation, a quiet grief. It is not just personal. It is systemic.

The Buddha lived in turbulent times too—times of war, collapse, and rapid change. His response was not avoidance, but clarity. He taught that what we consume through our senses shapes the mind. The term indriya-saṁvara, or sense restraint, speaks not of suppression, but of protection. Of honoring the heart by choosing wisely what we take in.

Now, more than ever, we must guard the gates of the heart.

This does not mean withdrawal or denial. It means discernment. It means refusing to let fear-based media, polarized opinions, or manipulative rhetoric colonize the mind. It means remembering that our minds and bodies were not built for a 24/7 cycle of outrage and collapse. It means finding the ground again.

In an Age of Manufactured Fear

We are living in a time of psychological warfare—an era of disinformation and distraction. Fear is not just an emotion; it’s a product, sold to us at scale.

But the Dhamma teaches: we are not helpless. We can choose to pause. We can slow down the scroll. We can notice what we believe—and why. We can let go of the illusion that staying constantly informed is the same as staying connected.

Mindfulness is not passive. It is resistance to the forces that thrive on our fragmentation.

Dhamma in Daily Life

Mindful consumption means protecting clarity. Honoring sensitivity. Refusing to become numb. It means taking in what helps us remain human in the face of dehumanization.

This is not a call to disengage. It’s a call to re-engage wisdom and care.

The Buddha never taught us to ignore the world’s suffering. But he also never asked us to carry it all at once, or all alone.

And we do this not to escape the world, but to engage it with clarity. Presence is not the end—it’s the beginning. We protect the heart so we can better vote, advocate, phone bank, write checks, support organizations and movement leaders, post bail and protest in the street—grounded, steady, and connected.

Simple Practices for Grounded Clarity

Set Boundaries with News → Give your mind spaciousness. Create designated times for updates—then pause and digest.

Return to the Body → Fear lives in the body. So does steadiness. Come back to breath, touchpoints, gravity.

Feed What Nourishes → Not all information is fuel. Choose sources that foster clarity, connection, and courage.

Practice the 3:1 Ratio → For every one dose of stressful input, balance it with three nourishing touchpoints—nature, poetry, presence. Let the heart feel balanced again.

Quotes & Teachings

“When there is sense restraint, one who has fulfilled sense restraint has fulfilled a vital condition for ethical conduct. When there is ethical conduct, one who has fulfilled ethical conduct has fulfilled a vital condition for right concentration. When there is right concentration, one who has fulfilled right concentration has fulfilled a vital condition for true knowledge and vision. ~ Anguttara Nikaya, The Book of Sixes

“As we deepen our understanding of conditionality, we become acutely aware of the reverberating impact of all sense contact and of our reactions. Guard the heart as an act of empowerment, as an investment in liberation.” ~ Tara Mulay

“When we protect our attention, we protect our future.”
~ Devin Berry

Reflections for the Day

• Is what I consume feeding clarity—or clouding it?

• What helps me stay informed and rooted?

• Where might I pause, rest, or say no—for the sake of my heart?
  
  

To protect the heart is not to abandon the world. It is to meet the world from steadiness, not reactivity. This is our offering. This is our path.

With care and courage,
Tara and Devin
The Heartstream Sangha Team

taramulay.com | devinberry.org| Devin's Substack

Retreat Invitations

Feeling called to deepen your practice in community?
Here are a few upcoming retreats offered with care, intention, and spaciousness.

Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Retreat
May 11–15, 2025 | Insight Meditation Society
With Tara Mulay, Vance Pryor, Melanie Cherng & Namu Kang
A space for those of Asian and Pacific Islander descent to settle, reconnect, and practice together.
Learn more and register

BIPOC Community Retreat
August 27–31, 2025 | Big Bear Retreat Center
With JoAnna Hardy, Devin Berry, Alli Simon & Hakim Tafari
Held in noble silence, grounded in love and liberation. Scholarships available.
Details + registration

Fear is not just an emotion. It’s a strategy—one used by systems of power to keep us small. It does not arise alone. It arrives entangled with aversion, self-judgment, and the quiet whisper that something must be wrong with us. I shouldn’t feel this. I should be stronger. Yet fear, like all things, is impermanent—arising and passing, not personal, not fixed. The suffering of fear is not just in fear itself, but in our resistance to it.

This resistance is not limited to the meditation cushion. We live in a time where fear is manufactured, exploited, weaponized. Institutions crumble, rights erode, authoritarianism rises—uncertainty presses in. We crave something steady, but practice teaches us: the antidote to fear is not control. It is presence.

Fear first registers in the body—a tightening in the chest, a clenching of the jaw, a racing of the heart. The mind follows, spiraling into vulnerability, powerlessness, and a sense of separation. Entire systems depend on keeping us afraid. But we are not powerless. We can meet fear differently. Not by suppressing it, but by making space for it. By softening our reaction, grounding in the body, and turning toward it with curiosity rather than avoidance.

Fear, Delusion, and the Pull of Fanaticism

Fear unsettles the mind, but delusion cements it in place. The two are intertwined—fear makes us desperate for certainty, and delusion offers it, even when it is built on falsehood. Instead of turning toward wisdom, the mind tightens its grip on the nearest, most comforting certainty.

In the Buddhist teachings, fanaticism is not born of strength, but of fragility. The mind, unable to abide uncertainty, hardens around a view. It stops inquiring. It stops listening. It stops seeing. This is why authoritarianism and white supremacy thrive in fear—they promise certainty in a time of collapse, identity in a time of dissolution, an enemy in a time of complexity. And so, history repeats: those gripped by fear and delusion trade their own freedom for the illusion of control.

The Dhamma offers a different way. Instead of grasping at certainty, it calls us to bear witness to uncertainty itself. To meet fear without rushing to fortify an identity. To replace delusion with investigation. This is not passivity—it is the deepest kind of strength. The kind that refuses to be manipulated by fear. The kind that sees the world as it is and chooses wisdom over reaction.

Practices for Meeting Fear

• Recognizing Fear’s Social Dimensions → Notice how fear is reinforced through media, political narratives, and systems of oppression. Ask: Is this fear truly mine, or has it been placed upon me?

• Softening the Reaction → When fear arises, pause. Breathe. Name it: Fear is here. Instead of suppressing it, make space.

• Grounding with Touchpoints → Bring attention to a neutral sensation—feet on the floor, hands touching, breath moving. Fear pulls us away from the body; touchpoints return us.

• Investigate with Curiosity → Ask: What if I allow fear to be here without trying to fix it? Observe its natural movement.

Quotes

“Fear narrows the path, but presence widens the way.” ~ Devin Berry

“When we realize uncertainty is our only true ground, fear transforms into courage as the heart unbinds itself.” ~ Tara Mulay

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” ~John Lewis

Reflections for the Day:

• What narratives or certainties do I cling to when I feel afraid?

• How can I meet uncertainty with curiosity instead of fear?

When we meet fear with wisdom, we do not do it alone. Our courage is strengthened in Sangha, in the knowing that we stand together, refusing to be ruled by fear. This is the power of collective awakening.

With steadiness and courage,
Tara and Devin

The Heartstream Sangha Team Links

Tara Mulay

Devin’s Refuge & Belonging Substack

Devin Berry

Dear Friends,

We live in a world that tells us we are what we accumulate. More is better. Faster is necessary. But the Dhamma offers a different truth: the less we grasp, the freer we become.

Tomorrow, many across the country will take part in an economic blackout—a pause in spending, a refusal to fuel the machinery of consumption. We invite our sangha to join, as a celebration of renunciation (nekkhamma in Pali) and resistance—an opportunity to step outside the cycle of wanting and into the spaciousness of enough.

The Buddha spoke of renunciation not as loss, but as profound liberation. To renounce is to reclaim the mind from its endless seeking. It is the quiet joy of less, the relief of no longer being pulled in every direction. It is the peace of knowing that contentment is not somewhere else—it is here, waiting beneath the noise.

We can practice this in simple ways. A day of mindful presence: walking slowly, eating simply, listening deeply. A day of noticing how often we reach for something—and pausing instead. Witnessing the feeling of wanting, then watching it pass.

Renunciation is not about having less for the sake of less. It is about creating space for what truly matters. When we let go, we do not end up with nothing. We end up with clarity, with ease, with the ability to meet life fully. And when we do this together, we remember: we are not powerless in the face of forces that do not serve us. We can choose another way.

Heartstream Dharma

“Even the most pleasant sense contact cannot last. They are constantly disappearing, so that we have to find new ones. Our economy runs on that principle. We can’t sell people anything that doesn’t provide pleasant feelings, so everything is geared toward that single purpose. Since pleasure has a very short life span, we spend time, energy, thought, and attention on its recurrence. But fulfillment cannot come that way. It is all just momentary pleasure, and whether we admit that or not, we know it as an underlying truth. Often that becomes the reason for wanting to try meditation. Yet we need a fair bit of determination and absolute steadiness in the practice.”

~Ayya Khema

“Attachment is a cause of ownership. Ownership is a cause of stinginess. Stinginess is a cause of safeguarding. Owing to safeguarding, many bad, unskillful things come to be: taking up the rod and the sword, quarrels, arguments, and disputes, accusations, divisive speech, and lies….

Suppose there were totally and utterly no safeguarding for anyone anywhere. When there’s no safeguarding at all, with the cessation of safeguarding, would those many bad, unskillful things still come to be?”

“[Bhikkhu:] No, sir.”

~ The Buddha, Digha Nikaya 15

Reflections for the Day:

What is one thing you can release today, even for a moment?

What is the difference between needing and wanting?

Where does true contentment live?

Standing Together: Resources for Right Action

See Chop Wood Carry Water

Music for the Heartstream

Nell: Spotify, YouTube, by Sangha Member Ian Six (aka Glenn Kye)

Spend Nothing. Live Simply. Stand together.

In practice and solidarity,

Tara and Devin

The Heartstream Sangha Team

taramulay.com

devinberry.org

Dear Friends,

We trust in the power of love and goodness, and so we are creating Heartstream Sangha, beginning with this newsletter. Heartstream Sangha is a new space for dharma teachings—both online and in person. This newsletter is our way of sharing practice, inspiration, and resilience with you.

May the dharma hold you and carry you through.

Heartstream Dharma:

“When you stop chasing what you think you need, the grip loosens. When the grip loosens, the struggle stops. Without the struggle, the cycle breaks: no more running in circles. And with that, the whole mess—the worry, the heartache, the fear of what’s next—finally fades. What’s left is a deep steady peace that’s been hiding in plain sight all along.” ~ Devin Berry

“Fly the flag of lovingkindness. Sing the anthem of compassion. Head to the border with 10,000 other friendly hearts full of dharma joy. Stand firmly on the ground of equanimity with your compatriots.” ~ Tara Mulay

Interconnection Reflections:

• Timony Snyder’s book On Tyranny reminds us that resilience begins with clarity and courage. Small daily choices, like choosing not to obey in advance, made by many people over time have an impact.

• The Buddha taught that every choice, every intention, matters. The steps of the Noble Eightfold Path — wise intention (samma sankappa) and wise action (samma kammanta) — guide us in every moment. In the face of harm, a wise response stems from seeing things as they are and responding with integrity.

• The compass on our path is a wise understanding that, because we exist in a vast web of interconnection, our actions have much more far-reaching consequences than we can envision and that, over time and space, we can impact immeasurable numbers of beings.

  (See Anguttara Nikaya 8.39)

We feel that, collectively, if we put these teachings into practice, we can resist subjection now.

Your reflections:

• Can you take in the reality that even “small” choices matter?

• What inspires resilience in you? What helps you stay open rather than shut down?

Music for the Heartstream:

We love Beverly Glenn-Copeland - The Ones Ahead - Live From Lakewind Sound Studios

You can find our dharma events at:

• Tara

• Devin

• Devin’s Substack

In love and solidarity, Tara and Devin, The Heartstream Sangha Team