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Dharma Talks
2015-02-12 Retreat: Fear and Non-fear - Day 1 49:16
Mark Nunberg
Common Ground Meditation Center Retreat: Fear and Non Fear

2015-01-21 Listening to the Calling of Our Hearts 1:21:46
Tara Brach
In any moment, our intention - what we are energetically wanting - shapes our life experience. While our deepest intention may be to realize and live from loving awareness, we are often driven by egoic fear and grasping. This talk explores how mindfulness can recognize our prevailing intention, and by staying present, kind and accepting, we can reconnect with the deeper longings that carry us to awakening and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2015-01-15 Anything Can Happen At Any Time 52:53
James Baraz
The one thing that is certain in life is its unpredictability. Having an awareness that inner and outer circumstances could change in a moment can inform our lives in a profound way. Rather than living with vigilance and fear an on-going understanding of the fragility in life can lead us to more wakefulness, appreciation and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2014-12-31 The Bodhisattva Path: "If you knew me, and truly knew yourself, you would not have killed me." 60:42
Hugh Byrne
The bodhisattva path involves a training of our hearts to abandon unskillful states and cultivate qualities of love, compassion, and forgiveness--and envision actions to transform the suffering of others and the world. In the Rwandan genocide and the triumph of freedom and democracy in South Africa we see the suffering that comes from cultivating fear and hatred, and the potential for freedom and peace that results from cultivating forgiveness, compassion, and love. These recent events remind us how much our actions matter, and invite us to become bodhisattvas, committed to the awakening and freedom of all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC 2014 IMCW New Year Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion

2014-12-24 Embodying Loving Presence (retreat talk) 68:24
Tara Brach
This talk looks at the evolutionary fear-patterning that creates separation in our relationships, and at the practices that open us to giving and receiving love. (NOTE: talk given at the IMCW summer residential retreat on 2014-08-02)
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-12-15 Some points to notice about the Mind 57:29
Ajahn Sucitto
Review thoroughly how your mind works; the world is created by the mind in this very body; seeing uncertainty; using the body to receive and allow the citta to calm; see how the citta sits on its worry and flies on its desire and is carried along by its fear; the citta sankhara never stops creating reasons why it has to keep going just a little bit further; watch how craving paints the world with beautiful but very thin paint. You can do it, you can see it. Pause, check, be aware.
Young Buddhists Association of Thailand :  Ajahn Sucitto YBAT Silent Retreat

2014-12-06 Fearless Kindness 48:35
Christina Feldman
Gaia House Boundless Friendliness

2014-11-12 The Sacred Art of Listening 1:14:40
Tara Brach
Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-11-05 Radical Self-Honesty: The Joy of Getting Real 1:12:55
Tara Brach
Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love.  Quote from Elizabeth Lesser: "My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears."  
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-10-26 The Portal of Fear (Retreat Talk) 64:08
Tara Brach
Bringing presence to the contraction of fear is a universal part of spiritual awakening. This talk explores two interrelated pathways of opening to and transforming fear.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC 2014 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life

2014-10-12 Transforming Fear Into Freedom 61:44
Bhante Buddharakkhita
Through mindfulness and wisdom (understanding) we can transform fear into freedom.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Three Month - Part 1

2014-09-18 The Contagion of Goodness 51:02
James Baraz
Just like anger and fear are contagious so is goodness. In fact, that is our true nature and there's a place in us that longs to come home to it. We just have to tune into all the goodness around us to remember.
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2014-08-20 Bringing Awareness to Doing 1:19:07
Tara Brach
One of the core domains of egoic trance is addictive doing - chronic activity driven by fear and wanting that keeps us from realizing a wholeness of Being. This talk looks at how addictive doing keeps us in the map of time, identified as a separate self, always on our way somewhere else. We then explore ways we undo this conditioning by pausing and opening to the liberating dimension of Being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-08-13 The Dhamma of Snow 26:04
Ayya Medhanandi
In the grip of painful feelings such as fear, anger, grief, or despair, we are in danger of allowing these to subdue the mind. Discernment and clear awareness help us to see through our pain to the ending of pain – not only for ourselves, but for all beings. We ascend the highest Everest of the spiritual realm. That might seem impossible from where we sit now. But if we trust this process, just like the sudden vanishing of winter snow, we realize a transcendent interior melting of all sorrow.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT) :  2014 Chapin Mill Retreat

2014-08-11 I Give You My Bread 24:26
Ayya Medhanandi
There is no final cure for the body, but the mind can be freed. No matter how much craving, anger, sorrow, fear or obsessive negative thoughts keep storming the mind, don’t let discouragement become another hindrance. Every new moment is a chance to see these hindrances for what they are with pure awareness itself. Patient, courageous and wise, we are ready to receive the gift of ‘bread’ and to win back the boundaries of our hearts.
Satipanna Insight Meditation (SIMT)

2014-07-23 Practicing with Challenges 3 - Practicing with Difficult Thoughts and Emotions 2 62:01
Donald Rothberg
We review the basic approach of cultivating responsiveness and working with reactivity, looking more at (1) ways of coming back to balance, (2) cultivating mindfulness, and (3) developing other skillful means with challenging thoughts and emotions. Then we explore in more depth how to practice with fear and anxiety.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Monday and Wednesday Talks

2014-07-19 Speaking of Violence 36:47
Ayya Medhanandi
If we can deal with the craziness of the mind, we can help to decrease the craziness and violence of the world. But we have to be so patient and keep faith with the process of of cleaning up our own violence. Even when the mind is hot, there will be some good will that we can touch - if we lean towards that which is kind and gentle - harmless - this can lead us towards fearlessness and acceptance.
Ottawa Buddhist Society

2014-07-09 Nourishing a Liberating Intention 1:17:26
Tara Brach
The Buddha taught that this entire world arises out of the tip of intention. Intentions can arise from an egoic wants and fears, and they can arise from the wisdom of our heart that is calling us home. This talk explores the qualities that signify a liberating intention and how, by bringing presence to our current intention, we uncover the purity and power of our hearts true aspiration.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-06-22 Meeting Anger and Hatred 48:06
Martin Aylward
Martin explores different personality styles of resistance and rejection, the ways anger functions and the importance of letting ourselves feel negative emotions as a way of freeing them up and letting go of our personal hard luck story. He also explores the way practice can transform anger into fearlessness as an important force against injustice, oppression and inequality.
Gaia House Intimacy and Infinity

2014-06-03 Silent Thunder 18:05
Ayya Medhanandi
The Dhamma is deep, subtle yet powerful enough to teach us how to stop, how to listen, how to see the truth of things. For what we thought we knew, we may have not really understood. So how can we transcend our social, cultural, psychological, and environmental conditioning? By uprooting greed, ill-will, and ignorance, the mind sees the truth of impermanence, suffering and emptiness. Like silent thunder, it grows pure, fearless, awake, and free.
Canmore Theravada Buddhist Community

2014-05-12 The Undisturbed 63:13
Kittisaro
Being well in the midst if change. The practice that offers freedom from fear and oppression. Leaving the ox cart behind.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center An Integrated Awakening: Insight Meditation Retreat

2014-05-03 Challenging the Energies: Our Organism Loving Itself 61:12
Pat Coffey
Survival warrants the arising of certain energies. They are not our enemies. If we treat them as such we are continuing the internal warfare and struggle. By seeing energies like lust, fear, hatred, worry, sleepiness and doubt as our organism loving itself we elicit self compassion and understanding....the perfect healing energies and perspective to then move forward into greater ease and connection with all life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC 2014 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life

2014-04-25 Ayya Santussika on Fear 28:15
Ayya Santussika
Shakti Vihara

2014-04-25 Ayya Santussika on Fear - Q&A 21:04
Ayya Santussika
Shakti Vihara

2014-04-21 Dana: The Actions of a Caring Heart 52:50
Tempel Smith
As we free our hearts from contraction, fear, anger and selfishness, we receive the world with a tender heart. This tender heart cares for others and from this, generous actions flow.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Awakening in Service & Action: A Study Retreat on Socially Engaged Buddhism

2014-04-18 Purifying the Mind with Metta 51:49
Tempel Smith
As we turn deeply into practice we can let go and move through old habits of anger, fear, and insecurity into our original purity of kindness and clarity.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Loving Awareness: Metta & Qigong Retreat

2014-03-15 Happiness of Simplicity and Renunciation 18:06
Shaila Catherine
An uncluttered mind and heart brings great joy! Contentment is a state of serene ease, free from the fear of loss. Letting go and renunciation are taught as joyful practices, not penance. The Buddha taught his disciples to "abandon what is not yours, this will lead to your welfare and happiness for a long time". So we ask, what is "not ours"? And by implication, what is really mine? Joyful renunciation enables meditators to investigate the delusion of possessiveness until the mind if freed of all clinging to the impermanent experiences that really cannot be grasped anyway.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center

2014-02-05 Part 1: Universal Faces of Love 1:24:25
Tara Brach
Lovingkindness, or metta, is the first of the four divine abodes in buddhist teachings. This talk explores the habitual patterns of fears and wants that obscure this innate quality of heart and key ways that we awaken ourselves to its luminous presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2014-01-31 Through the Looking Glass – The Reality of Not-Self 63:03
Marcia Rose
It's a heavy load to carry our 'self' around…the myriad permutations of our thoughts (all the hopes and fears), the feelings, opinions, perceptions and beliefs…believing that they are 'mine, 'me, 'myself. When we begin to taste the truth of 'not-self' , often there is a feeling of great relief. Therein lies the potential for peace of mind. This Dhamma talk includes two short guided meditations.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge January 2014 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2013-12-18 Part 2: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love 1:18:50
Tara Brach
This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence - in relating inwardly and in communicating with others - that awakens and frees our hearts. At end of talk - La Sarmiento shares "Holiday Dharma" as part of Solstice celebration.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-12-11 Part 1: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love 1:27:04
Tara Brach
This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence—in relating inwardly and in communicating with others—that awakens and frees our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-11-26 Dependent Origination: Death 56:14
Rodney Smith
Birth and aging inevitably lead to dying and death. The Buddha suggests this pattern can be broken by waking up to the sequencing of Dependent Origination. We cannot prevent the body from dying but we can opt out from the paradigm in which "I" die along with it. When we live encased within the idea of "me," with the "me" as real as the physical form we embody, then as the body ages we will fear our death. Interestingly enough, by eliminating everything that lives within the cycle of birth and death, we find our way out of death. Investigating what remains after death or what cannot be born or age can begin to move us away from dependency on form. We cannot rest our answer on the visible world because all we see will be taken away. If _what_ we see dies, perhaps the invisible _seeing_ itself holds the deathless. What is it that sees out of our eyes? Again, not what we see, but the seeing or awareness itself. Awareness gives us the capacity to see, but awareness cannot be seen. Though awareness cannot be seen, it can be intimated through a felt-sense of the body.
Seattle Insight Meditation Society
In collection: Dependent Origination

2013-11-13 Part 2: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening 1:22:24
Tara Brach
We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-11-06 Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening 1:29:13
Tara Brach
We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-10-31 The Payoff From Fear 44:15
James Baraz
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2013-09-18 Spiritual Urgency – Samvega 58:53
Marcia Rose
What brings us to spiritual practice? What has moved, inspired and urged you to find a clear and wholesome ‘other way’ than feeling overrun with old reactive habit patterns of sadness, fear, attachment, anger, and confusion.? Samvega is the movement of the heart/an inner response towards an urgency to practice and an urgency to awaken.
Cambridge Insight Meditation Center

2013-09-14 Transcending Five Fears 1:35:19
Ayya Santussika
at Little Bangkok Sangha
Karuna Buddhist Vihara

2013-09-13 Transformation and Relinquishment of Afflictive Emotions 1:10:18
Marcia Rose
Exploring a few of the difficult or afflictive states of mind that arise in our human experience...fear, anger, unwholesome desire and attachment; also exploring some of the ways the Buddha encourages us to work with them in our practice, in the light of purification and the liberation of the mind and heart.
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge September 2013 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2013-09-06 Samvega - Spiritual Urgency 58:44
Marcia Rose
What brings us to spiritual practice? What has moved, inspired and urged you to find a clear and wholesome "other way" than feeling overrun with old reactive habit patterns of sadness, fear, attachment, anger and confusion? Samvega is the movement of the heart - an inner response towards an urgency to practice and an urgency to awaken!
Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge September 2013 at IMS - Forest Refuge

2013-09-04 From Egoic to Unconditioned Loving 1:25:33
Tara Brach
When we are caught in the sense of separation and unmet needs, our love is marbled with fear and attachment. This talk describes the chain of conditioning that perpetuates the constrictions of egoic love and explores several courageous activities--sharing our vulnerability, expressing love, extending and receiving love-- that awaken us to the vastness and freedom of pure loving awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-09-01 Transforming Fear into Love 61:03
James Baraz
Practice is an alchemical process that turns dukkha into sukkha. If we have the courage to face our demons and learn to open to our blessings, we radiate love and wisdom that not only transforms ourselves but the world as well.
Spirit Rock Meditation Center Labor Day Retreat

2013-08-28 Part 2: Relating to the Fearsome Deities 1:28:33
Tara Brach
Whenever Mara--the shadow side--appeared during the Buddha's life, his response was simple and liberating: "I see you Mara," and,"Please, come…let's have tea." In that spirit, this talk explores three approaches to relating to fear with a mindful and compassionate presence. The flute meditation at the end of the talk is given by Akal Dev. Please support this podcast by donating at dharmaseed.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-08-21 Part 1: Relating to the Fearsome Deities 1:25:01
Tara Brach
Our relationship to fear shapes our life experience. If we are unconscious, and reflexively try to manage fear, our identity takes the shape of the body of fear. If instead we learn to attend and befriend fear, we discover the freedom of our awakened heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-08-21 On Fear 54:19
Michael Grady
Shinning the light of awareness on the energy of fear.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center Your Life Is Your Practice: Insight Meditation Retreat

2013-07-25 Practicing With Fear 59:04
Donald Rothberg
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2013-07-24 Three Gestures of Love 1:22:25
Tara Brach
If we inquire "what is between me and presence" we usually find we've been caught inside a limiting story of self, contracted by wants and fears. This talk explores a simple yet powerful way of arousing loving presence and dissolving the narrow identification that keeps us from inhabiting our awakened heartmind.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-06-27 Fear and Stress in Life 40:56
Ajahn Sumedho
28 of 43 from Luang Por Sumedho - CD: Talks from Thailand (2008-2014)

2013-06-26 Part 1: Hope and the Spiritual Path 1:23:19
Tara Brach
This talk looks at the difference between egoic hopes and fears, and the quality of hopefulness ("holy hope") that is an essential dimension in spiritual experience. We reflect on the three components of hope that serve awakening: Aspiration, Trust and Dedication of energy.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2013-06-06 We Are What We Think, With Our Thoughts We Make the World 52:56
James Baraz
The stories we hold about ourselves or others will determine our actions, through fear or inspire us to act with courage and commitment. This talk includes Andrew Harvey's brilliant reading and thoughts on Rumi's poem "Passion"
Insight Meditation Community of Berkeley IMCB Regular Talks

2013-06-02 That Which Supports the Truth In Us 28:51
Ayya Medhanandi
There is a fearlessness that we can know, where greed and anger are vanquished. It is a state of equanimity with whatever comes which no one else can pollute, disturb or destroy. There is nothing more difficult - or more noble - for a human being to realize than this indestructible peace of heart. So why would we want to dedicate ourselves to anything less than that? May we realize this precious truth for ourselves and preserve it for the benefit of all beings.
Canmore Theravada Buddhist Community

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