Dharma Seed - Tara Brach's Dharma Talks

Donate | Contact

Please support Dharma Seed with a 2024 year-end gift.

Your donations allow us to offer these teachings online to all.

In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg

The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings

Tara Brach's Dharma Talks

Tara Brach

Donate to Tara Brach

Tara Brach's Website

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.

The open space of compassion allows us to realize that our thoughts and emotions are not who we are; they are waves in our ocean. This gives us the freedom to live more wisely and love more fully.

For over thirty-five years, I've been exploring the awakening of awareness with yoga, meditation, a clinical psychology practice and relationships in spiritual community (sangha). Since the untying of emotional knots is an essential part of "waking up," it is natural for me to weave these elements into my Buddhist practice and teaching. With formal practice, and a genuine engagement in sangha, we can cultivate the qualities of heart and awareness that allow for deep emotional healing and spiritual freedom.

Buddhism guides us in slowing down, quieting and paying attention in an honest and caring way. Through our mindfulness and compassion practices, we establish a sense of intimacy and belonging to our life. We discover that there is no Buddha "out there." Rather, we realize that our true refuge is the wakefulness, openness and love of our own natural awareness.

‹‹ previous next ›› 1 2 3 4 ... 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 ... 134 135 136 137

2018-02-14 Meditation: Awareness is Our Home 21:29	Download Listen
This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-02-14 Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 51:48	Download Listen
Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-02-07 Meditation: Living Presence 20:58	Download Listen
This meditation guides us to awaken to our senses through scanning through the body and then listening to sounds. When distracted by thoughts we relax open again and again, learning to rest in the formless awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all passing experience.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-02-07 Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 54:07	Download Listen
Part 1: Lovingkindness – We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-31 Meditation: Beyond the Veil of Thinking 20:25	Download Listen
This meditation awakens us to the space and aliveness in these bodies, and to resting in wakeful openness. When we get lost in thought, we practice relaxing open, and exploring the gap between thoughts. By opening beyond the veil of thinking, we discover the Beingness that is home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-31 Part 3 of 3 – Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us 52:20	Download Listen
A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-24 Part 2 of 3 – Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us 48:52	Download Listen
A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-24 Meditation: Resting in Reality 23:00	Download Listen
This guided practice awakens attention to sensations, sounds, space and aliveness, and encourages a continued “relaxing open” from thoughts into the living stream of experience. We are learning to recognize and rest in the moment to moment flow, “being reality,” at home in what we are.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-17 Meditation: Receiving Life with an Open Awareness 20:44	Download Listen
We begin with listening and then bring a receptive attention to experience the life of the body. We then open the attention to the whole field of sensations and sound, and rest in the openness and presence that includes all the changing currents of experience.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

2018-01-17 Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 1 46:54	Download Listen
A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These two talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC : IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

‹‹ previous next ›› 1 2 3 4 ... 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 ... 134 135 136 137


	Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
	Dharma Seed is a 501(c)(3) Non-profit organization. email: contact@dharmaseed.org