Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love
A Conversation between Tara and Rev Angel Kyodo Williams – Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen,...
Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend
One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We...
Healing Racialized Trauma: A Conversation with Resmaa Menakem and Tara Brach
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Resmaa Menakem speaks in a compelling way how this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational...
Awakening from the Trance of Bad-Othering
Great spiritual leaders of social movements teach that true transformation arises from realizing our interconnectedness, and the light of the divine in each being. Sadly, through human history, much suffering has come from perceiving others as bad-others, flawed...
Love and Fear During Times of War: An Interview with Lama Rod Owens
The world is having a difficult moment. Each day we learn of a different conflict or crisis, which threatens the lives of so may people. It is easy to live with a lot of fear right now and it is even easier to react out of that fear was well. When we react out of fear...
Meditation: Healing Shame with RAIN (12:59 min.)
This meditation brings the clarity and self-compassion of RAIN to the suffering of self-aversion and/or shame. It helps us see the conditioning that shaped what we judge about ourselves, and helps us remember who we are beyond our habitual and painful self-narrative....
Sustaining Our Caring
All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering...
Meditation: Meeting Anger with Awareness (15:16 min.)
When anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN – recognize, allow, investigate and nurture. [NOTE: this meditation was given at...
Anger and Transformation
The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering. This talk explores how we can use the RAIN...
A Courageous Presence with Racism
Anti-Black racism is the core wound of American culture, and we each have a role to play in fighting racism, a medicine to bring to these times. This talk explores how we can offer an honest and courageous presence to key domains of this suffering. We then look at...
Part 1 of 3 – Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us
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...
“Play a Greater Part” – Part 2 – Bodhisattva for Our Times
During scary and uncertain times, the habitual reflex is to try to find ground by creating stories about what’s happening and hardening into us-them blame. This only perpetuates the aggression and violence that is so prevalent in our societies. These two talks are a...
“Play a Greater Part” – Part 1 – Bodhisattva for Our Times
During scary and uncertain times, the habitual reflex is to try to find ground by creating stories about what’s happening and hardening into us-them blame. This only perpetuates the aggression and violence that is so prevalent in our societies. These two talks are a...