Talks: Reflections on the Path

Question & Response with Tara: Working with Difficult Weather
In this talk Tara responds to questions from participants on how to bring a healing attention to anger, sleepiness, great loss and the wounds of our world. She grounds the teachings in the two wings of clear recognition (of what is happening) and an allowing presence, one that is full with compassion.

My Religion is Kindness
The expression of inner freedom is a kind heart. This talk explores how we armor our hearts, and the pathways of awakening our natural capacity for loving unconditionally. The session includes an experiential inquiry that helps reveal the ways we create separation, and the possiblity of healing and freeing our heart.

Vesak – Path of Awakening
In the Buddhist tradition, the spring celebration of Vesak honors the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death. The archetypal theme that plays through these three events, and the core teaching of the Buddha, is that we each have the capacity to realize profound inner freedom, happiness and peace. We are no different than the Buddha, and our path is to realize the luminosity of our spirit.

Golfing with Monkeys
The Buddha taught that in any moment that we have an argument with life, we suffer. This talk explores the ways we are conditioned to think life should be different, and how the natural arising of unpleasant experience becomes locked into suffering. An experiential reflection guides us in how to respond, rather than react, to life’s challenges…inhabiting a wise heart

Realizing Our Natural Joy – Part 2
In the buddhist teachings, joy is a natural expression of our awakened heart. In these two talks we will explore how we block off joy, and ways that we can cultivate and embody this intrinsic facet of our being.

Realizing Our Natural Joy – Part 1
In the buddhist teachings, joy is a natural expression of our awakened heart. In these two talks we will explore how we block off joy, and ways that we can cultivate and embody this intrinsic facet of our being.

Meeting Fear with a Wise Heart – Part 2
These talks investigate how fear, nature’s protector, proliferates and becomes a trance of fear and the cause of deep suffering. We look at the “body of fear”- the thoughts, physicality, emotions and behaviors that express and fuel the trance of fear. Through stories and guided reflections we explore the ways that buddhist meditation can free us from the grip of unhealthy fear.

Meeting Fear with a Wise Heart – Part 1
These talks investigate how fear, nature’s protector, proliferates and becomes a trance of fear and the cause of deep suffering. We look at the “body of fear”- the thoughts, physicality, emotions and behaviors that express and fuel the trance of fear. Through stories and guided reflections we explore the ways that buddhist meditation can free us from the grip of unhealthy fear.

A Wise Understanding of Desire
We lose huge swaths of our life when caught in wanting experience to be more and different. Yet if we bring a mindful presence to the thoughts and feelings of wanting, we discover a portal into full aliveness and freedom. This talk explores how to recognize and investigate...

The Two Wolves
Empathy and aggression are both part of our evolutionary survival equipment. We awaken spiritually as we bring awareness to the vulnerability that drives aggression, and discover that we can directly cultivate our capacity to experience loving connection.

Our Heart’s Aspiration
This talk weaves two teachings that are key to awakening. “The most important thing is remembering the most important thing” helps us be guided by the compass of our heart in living our lives. And discovering that “what we long for is already here” lets us trust that the love or peace we seek is found in the fullness of presence.

Befriending the Deities
The fruit of practice is releasing our identification with core beliefs and fear-based emotions, and realizing and inhabiting our Natural awareness. This is described as the N in RAIN – an acronym that can guide us in awakening loving presence.

The Art of Practice – RAIN
This second class in the Art of Practice reviews the basic components of meditation training and illustrates through several stories, the use of the acronym RAIN in awakening loving presence. The session includes a period of question/answer.

The Art of Practice – Mindfulness
In the Art of Practice, we explore key techniques in preparing the grounds for true meditation. These include relaxation, identifying a home base, awakening the senses and re-mindfulness. These “skillful means” allow us to arrive Here, and to rest in a natural mindfulness, awake and open awareness.

Listening Presence
A full and listening presence is the gateway to genuine intimacy with our self and others. This talk explores the challenges to deep listening and the teachings and practices that guide us in developing this healing and liberating capacity.

Gateways to Happiness
While we all want to be happy, our habitual ways of pursuing happiness leave us dissatisfied. What prevents us from being happy? What is true happiness? How do we relax and open to the blessings of our life that are always and already here? Though these reflections we explore together our potential to live from a profound place of inner freedom, peace and happiness.

The Power of Inquiry
Inquiry, or mindful investigation, is a direct way to deepen our attention and reveal the nature of reality. This talk explores the attitude, types of questions and practice of non-conceptual presence that awakens our deepest wisdom.

Touching Enlightenment with Our Body
We realize and inhabit the fullness of what we are through the gateway of our senses. This reflection includes how we dissociate from our bodies (hearts, each other, earth) and the pathways of belonging. The evening is dedicated to John O’Donahue, a teacher of the divine longing that carries us to belonging.

The Three Refuges
This talk reflects on the three gateways to liberating presence– Buddha nature (our awakened heartmind); Dharma (the living moment, truth, nature of things) and Sangha (spiritual community.) The evening includes a ritual of “taking refuge” that invites our dedication to each domain of awakening and freedom.

The True Revolution
In Buddhism, lovingkindness is considered a divine abode, our true home. This talk explores how we can recognize the mask that covers insecurity, inhabit our essential goodness of Being, and let ourselves touch and be touched by love. This awakening into wholeheartedness is the true revolution.
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