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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.
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2023-09-13 Saying Yes: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Jane Hirshfield (Part 1) 40:38
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In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Here’s a link to Jane’s most recent book: The Asking: New and Selected Poems. The interview includes readings from this beautiful collection.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-09-06 Meditation: At Home in the Moment 19:29
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This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying “Yes” to the life that is here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-09-06 Path of Sacred Relatedness – Undoing the Blocks to Loving Presence 52:37
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We long for soul friends, and yet often engage with each other in reactive ways – caught inside the experience of a wanting, guarded, fearful self. This talk explores practices that release identification with these scales that confine us, so we can remember the sacredness living through ourselves and all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-30 Meditation: Vipassana – The Practice of Seeing Clearly 18:08
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Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-30 The Honesty Challenge – Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World 50:24
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Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others. This talk explores the practice of radical self-honesty as the grounds of being more honest with others, and bringing more love and freedom to our lives. We close with a quote by Danna Faulds from her book:
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-23 Meditation: Being a Kind Witness 18:01
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Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness. “A witnessing awareness is like a kind grandmother watching children – that simply notices what’s happening without judgment.” ~Tara
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-23 The Superpower of Mindful Witnessing 42:51
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The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-16 Meditation: Openhearted Presence 19:26
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This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-16 Conscious Prayer – Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness (retreat talk) 66:20
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Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Silent Retreat).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2023-08-09 Meditation: Relaxing Back into the Mystery 18:10
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All true meditation guides us back to presence, and the mystery that is our source. In this guided meditation we awaken the senses, collect with the breath, and when lost in thought, practice relaxing back into the aliveness and awareness that is always here. We close with a beautiful poem from poet Danna Faulds.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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