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In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg


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Tara Brach's Dharma Talks
Tara Brach
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
2024-09-04 Meditation: Touching Peace 22:02
This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-28 Meditation: Awake, Relaxed and Open 26:26
This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. The training is a relaxing back, noticing the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness of the body. We call on the two wings of wakefulness and openness, noticing what’s happening moment-to-moment with a kind, allowing attention. We rest and relax back, discovering the presence that’s here – our senses awake… wide open awareness… awake, relaxed, and open.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-28 Trusting Your Basic Goodness: Part 2 58:29
This talk continues the exploration of what causes our distrust of ourselves, others and life, and the pathways to realizing and trusting who we are. We explore the steps of awakening from limiting beliefs, dissolving the resistance to direct embodied presence, and discovering the space and tenderness – the formless dimension – that is indivisible and whole. “How can we trust basic goodness, what lets us trust?” “…imagine how might your life change if you dedicated yourself to realizing and trusting this basic goodness sometimes called Buddha nature or loving presence that’s within.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-21 Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves 25:59
By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we begin to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever is going on.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-21 Basic Trust – Part 1 57:39
One of the expressions of an awakened heart-mind is a basic trust in reality. These talks explore the severed belonging that gives rise to mistrust, and two primary pathways to realizing and trusting the indivisible field of loving awareness that is our source (a favorite from the archives). “To love without holding back – to really sense with the wisdom, the reality, that it’s right here – to live from wholeness. We have this capacity.” “Who would you be if you trusted the basic goodness and beauty is living through you? How would your life be different if you trusted that spirit, love, awareness is what you are?”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-14 Meditation: Meeting Fear with a Healing Breath 22:58
This meditation guides us through a relaxing body scan and then explores how we can allow the breath to calm our body and bring peace to our heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-14 Desire and Addiction (Part 2): Voices of Longing Calling You Home 46:19
Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-07 Meditation: The Blessings of Yes 20:31
When our hearts open to the life that is here, just as it is, we discover vast loving presence. This meditation engages the smile as we scan through and awaken to our body and senses. Then we practice meeting the changing flow of life with a full allowing, wakeful and open awareness. We close with a verse from e.e. cummings. “What happens when the heart says “Yes” to this moment? And what happens when that “Yes” goes even deeper?”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-08-07 Desire and Addiction (Part 1): Voices of Longing Calling You Home 49:41
Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2024-07-31 Meditation: Living Presence – Awakening with a Smile (18:45 min) 19:03
This practice uses the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, include sound and relax back into the awareness that is the source of all experience. By letting life be just as it is, we become pure living presence – wakeful, open and tender.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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