Tara Brach's most recent Dharma talks (Dharma Seed)

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Relating Wisely to our Inner Life: In this conversation, recorded for the acclaimed podcast, No Small Endeavor, award winning theologian, Lee C. Camp, interviews Tara about radically accepting and loving our being, just as we are. The conversation includes an unpacking of the RAIN meditation, and stories of navigating difficulty from Tara’s life. No...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) One translation of mindfulness, in Chinese, is “present heart.” In this guided meditation we begin by awakening through the body and the senses, and then open the attention to the changing flow of experience. The intention is to meet whatever arises with a wakeful and kind presence. It’s so helpful to say, “What’s happening inside me right now?” Then...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom – the awake space of Being that is beyond the confines of thoughts. “Relaxing back into the space between thoughts. Relaxing with what’s right here…” The poet Rumi writes,...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) An Invitation to Freedom: A conversation between Tara and Connirae Andreas: Connirae Andreas was one of the first trainers in neurolinguistic programming (NLP). She developed and wrote a book on the Core Transformation Process, and more recently, the Wholeness Process. Her new book, The Wholeness Work Essential Guide: Level I—Healing and Awakening is...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Stress and overwhelm are spiking around the globe. This talk explores how we can practice with the arising of stress in ways that calm our body and tap our capacity for full presence, wisdom and love.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart. “Resting in the awareness that includes this changing life, regarding the changing waves with care, moment-to-moment. The moments of waking up out of thought are actually profoundly transformational. If you notice thinking...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life. “Our freedom comes not from what is happening, but from how we are relating to it. See if you can relate with the spirit of ‘yes,’ allowing whatever arises to be...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness,...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation becomes truly freeing in the moments when there is no controlling whatsoever; when nothing is resisted or grasped after. This guided meditation begins with a simple body scan, relaxing and awakening to sensations in the body and then including the play of sound. We then let go of any doing, and simply notice and allow the changing flow of...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness,...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend great swaths of time in a trance that removes us from awareness of our body and senses. This meditation reconnects us by scanning through the body, including sounds and then resting in the field of awareness and aliveness. We practice relaxing and gently arriving again when thoughts carry us away; learning the pathway home to living presence...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Executive coach and author Stephen Josephs has worked with many top business leaders, guiding them in transcending the egoic conditioning that limit their impact on other people, and on societal change. In this conversation we look at what he’s learned about inner freedom and awakening from his own trauma, from 60 years of spiritual practice, from mo...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart. We close with a short verse from poet Dorothy Hunt – “Peace Is This Moment Without Judgment.”

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens our senses, then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now. “Listening to and feeling, the changing flow – right here, right in the center of now.”

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Assaf Katz is an activist and Buddhist teacher in Israel who opposes the Israeli governments’ devastating military action and long occupation in Palestine, and is dedicated to finding a path to peace. This conversation was part of an event for the Tovana mediation community in Israel. We talk about the inner process behind my circulation of a short p...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long, deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. Dr. Judson Brewer, scientist, professor and author of “The Hunger Habit” and many other groundbreaking books, is a thought leader in the field of habit change. He’s also a decades long practitioner of mindfulness, and a dear colleague and friend. In this conversation we explore how com...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations and sounds, and then offering that presence to the tenderness and vulnerability of our heart.

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serv...

(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our in...