Donate  |   Contact


The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
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.
     1 2 3 4 ... 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 ... 130 131 132 133
2018-08-15 Discovering the Power of Prayer 45:36
We all know the pain of separation and have a longing for connection. When we silently listen to and contact the depth of that longing, we are at the root of transformational prayer. This talk looks at what prayer is, who/what we are praying to, the shadow side of prayer, and ways of cultivating our prayers so that they become authentic vehicles for spiritual awakening.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-08-08 Meditation: Letting Go of Doing 21:50
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. Then we let go of any doing, and simply notice and allow the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is. In this pure allowing presence we become aware of the background silence that is listening. The invitation is to relax and be the awareness that is conscious of all that is unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-08-08 Healing Depression with Meditation – Part 2 52:19
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, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-08-01 Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence 22:55
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 IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-08-01 Healing Depression with Meditation – Part 1 55:37
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, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-07-25 Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Life 21:52
We are conditioned to scan for “what’s wrong” and contract our body and mind in anticipation of danger. This meditation helps us undo these primal survival habits, and frees us to inhabit the full aliveness, creativity and love our natural being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-07-25 Saying “Yes” – Meeting Your Edge and Softening 56:37
Our habitual ways of avoiding unpleasant experience keep us from intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This talk helps us recognize these often unconscious patterns that keep us identified with a separate, threatened self, and offers guidance in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our unbound, true, nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-07-18 Meditation: Breath by Breath – Inviting Relaxation and Ease 16:46
This meditation invites relaxation and ease. We begin with a long deep breathing that helps calm the body and mind. Then we release tensions that might be held in the body, and settle our attention in a receptive way with the breath. The intention is to discover the relaxed wakefulness that expresses our natural being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-07-18 What Is It Like Being You? 56:24
Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. This talk helps us identify the blocks to compassion—our outmoded survival equipment—and using RAIN, offers practical guidance in mindfully attuning to others’ emotional experience and awakening our natural tenderness and care. This talk includes a short introduction to the meditation: The RAIN of Compassion.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2018-07-11 Meditation: Natural, Open Awareness 16:54
When we are stressed, our attention narrows and fixates, often into obsessive thinking, worry and judgment. This meditation relaxes and opens the mind, first by a body scan and a “smile down,” and then by including all changing experience in a spacious awareness. As our attention shifts from mind objects like sensation and sound to the space of awareness itself, we discover the Beingness that is our formless home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

     1 2 3 4 ... 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 ... 130 131 132 133
Creative Commons License