Talks: Reflections on the Path
“The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.”
Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2
Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how...
Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1
This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are...
Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating
Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities...
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Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging
“We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.”— Louis Cozolino We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores...
Awakening through Difficult Emotions: “The Poison is the Medicine”
Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN...
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror
Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power...
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Spiritual Empowerment ~ “A Heart That is Ready for Anything”
Spiritual Empowerment ~ "A Heart That is Ready for Anything" ~ When we are trying to control life, we are removed from presence, and act in ways that separate us from others and solidify the experience of being a insecure self. This talk explores our often unconscious...
Realizing Our Undefended and Awakened Heart (retreat talk)
It is our evolutionary and spiritual potential to release unnecessary habits of violating other tribes, individuals and unwanted parts of our own being. This talk explores three essential facets of the pathway to awakening: Leaving the fortress of aversive judgment, entering...
Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Working with Attachments and Addictions
In Buddhist cosmology the torment of intense desire that can never really be satisfied is depicted as the realm of Hungry Ghosts. This talk explores the attachments and addictions that so many of us struggle with, and the teachings and practices that can liberate us. Listen to...
Trusting Our Hearts – Trust in Our Basic Goodness
Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully. This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are “not enough” or flawed. We...
Letting Go – The Freedom of Awake Awareness
We know we need to let go of harmful habits like obsessive worry, blame and over consuming to experience true well-being, yet much of the time we are stuck and judge ourselves for being out of control. This talk explores what's so difficult about letting go and how we can't...
Your Future Self: Turning Towards Your Awakened HeartMind
Our lives are shaped by our evolutionary past - the fears and wants that arise from a separate self sense - and the pull of our evolutionary potential - our awakened heart and mind. This talk explores the power of these pulls, and the teachings and reflections that make us most...
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2
The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side,...
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 1
The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side,...
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...
Loving the Life Within Us (Retreat Talk)
If we don’t love the life we consider “self,” we will not realize or live from the loving awareness that is our essence. This talk guides us in bringing a kind, accepting presence to our inner life, and discovering the vastness of what we really are. photo: Shell Fischer
That Bird Got My Wings – Mindfulness & Heartfulness
This talk looks at how we are imprisoned by a limited sense of who we are. It describes how the wings of mindfulness and heartfulness enable us to realize the spirit that is our essence. We then look at how we can bring the wings of freedom to our engagement with others. The...
Fear as a Pathway to Loving Presence – Night Travelers (retreat talk)
Transcript available here: Fear as a Pathway to Loving Presence - Night Travelers Shifting our relationship with fear is central to the evolution of consciousness. Our suffering arises when our thoughts, feelings and sense of identity are shaped by fear. As we learn to attend...
Stress and Everyday Nirvana – Part 2
Our habitual view of stress is that it is a bad thing, an obstacle to healthy living and spiritual realization. These two talks look at how our way of relating to stress determines our happiness, and invites listeners to engage with practices that radically shift our response...
Stress and Everyday Nirvana – Part 1
Our habitual view of stress is that it is a bad thing, an obstacle to healthy living and spiritual realization. These two talks look at how our way of relating to stress determines our happiness, and invites listeners to engage with practices that radically shift our response...