Talks: Reflections on the Path
Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence
If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of...
Radical Acceptance – Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace
Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion. all...
Cultivating Loving Kindness – Seeing the Goodness
The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the...
Love in Action: Realizing Interbeing
The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, Earth. We then look at the pathways of...
The Earth is Crying in Our Hearts
The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it's led humans to destroying our larger body, earth. We then look at the pathways of...
Living with Courageous Presence
The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart. This talk explores the ways we resist opening to vulnerability, and three key steps in cultivating a courageous presence. Ask, “What does it...
Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World – Conversation: Trisha Stotler & Tara Brach
Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World, a conversation between IMCW's executive director, Trisha Stotler and Tara Brach. The Buddhist scriptures describe a mind that “no longer shakes, in a world where everything is shaking.” Our times are deeply stressful and troubling,...
Compass of Our Heart
All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and...
Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering
This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn. (To participate you will need a 20” red...
Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 3
We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom...
Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 2
We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom...
Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 1
We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom...
Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness – An interview with Tara and Dr. Mark Hyman
Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance - a mindful, allowing presence - to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world. Photo Credit:...
Preparing Our Hearts for the Holidays
While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others. Tonight's class closes with special music:...
Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship
Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a...
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, perpetuates caste systems...
Fear and Love
Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion...
After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part 2
The blessing of the spiritual path is a homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a...
After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part I
The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a...
Wise Investigation: Dissolving the Trance
If we are suffering, it is because we are believing something that is not true and caught in emotional reactivity. A key tool in meditation is investigation–actively inquiring into what is happening inside us. When we investigate with sincere interest and care, the light of our...
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