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.”
Compassion toward Non-Human Animals
A Conversation between Konda Mason and Tara Brach The medicine our world most needs is compassion, and it is crucial that this include all living beings. Our societal conditioning blinds us to the horror of suffering experienced by non-human animals through our cruel system of...
Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2
All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the...
Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1
All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the...
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Engaged Spirituality during Times of Upheaval
Engaged spirituality means responding to our world’s suffering with wisdom and deep care. This talk looks at three blocks to aligning our actions with our heart – “bad othering,” dissociation and overwhelm. We explore how we can awaken from each reaction to suffering by drawing...
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...
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Part 2: Trusting Your Basic Goodness
This talk continues the exploration of what causes our distrust of ourselves, others and life, and the pathways to realizing and trusting who we are. We explore the steps of awakening from limiting beliefs, dissolving the resistance to direct embodied presence, and discovering the space and tenderness – the formless dimension – that is indivisible and whole.
Embodying Loving Presence (Retreat Talk)
This talk looks at the evolutionary fear-patterning that creates separation in our relationships, and at the practices that open us to giving and receiving love. (from the IMCW long weekend residential retreat – 2014-08-02)
Part 1: Basic Trust
One of the expressions of an awakened heart-mind is a basic trust in reality. These talks explore the severed belonging that gives rise to mistrust, and two primary pathways to realizing and trusting the indivisible field of loving awareness that is our source.
Evening of Inquiry
In this class, Tara offered a guided meditation, some brief words on connecting with the felt sense of our experience, and opened the class to questions.
Nourishing a Liberating Intention
The Buddha taught that this entire world arises out of the tip of intention. Intentions can arise from an egoic wants and fears, and they can arise from the wisdom of our heart that is calling us home. This talk explores the qualities that signify a liberating intention and...
Blessings of Soul Recognition
We live under an enchantment that has us see ourselves and each other as separate egoic entities. This talk draws on an Arthurian legend and explores the pathways of presence that enable us to see past the mask – our own, others – and recognize the spirit that shines through these temporary incarnations.
Awakening through Conscious Relationships
Communicating our vulnerability and learning to listen – seeking to understand another’s experience – are the keys to discovering the truth of our connectedness. This talk explores the challenges and gifts of dedicating ourselves to becoming more real, present and open in our relationships.
Freedom and Happiness in Daily Life
How you live today is how you live your life. This talk explores different meditative practices and teachings that help us reconnect with and nurture presence in the midst of the array of daily stressors.
Awakening from Virtual Reality
This talk looks at the power our virtual reality of thoughts can hold over our lives. We then explore how bringing mindful awareness to thinking enables us to heal historical wounding and discover who we are beyond the self-story in our mind. We don’t have to believe our thoughts; they are “real but not true!”
Humility
In Buddhism and most faiths, humility – feeling that we all share common ground, feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. This talk explores how our conditioning and culture reinforce a swing from ego-inflation (self-importance, feeling special, better than others) to ego-deflation (feeling unworthy). We then look at how a wise and kind attention opens us to who we are beyond these confining egoic states, and enables us to live with humility and grace.
Question and Response
Tara explores a range of questions that include working with unworthiness, recognizing aspiration, stepping out of the story and understanding the selfless quality of experience.
Heart Training on the Bodhisatva Path
Bodhisattva means “Awakened Being.” This path of awakening has three key domains for practice: remembering intention; training our attention; and compassionate activity. This talk reviews these domains and includes guided reflections that can help bring spirituality alive in daily life.
Am I Dreaming? (retreat talk)
As we cultivate mindfulness we become increasingly aware of how we move through huge swaths of our life in trance. This talk reflects on three key domains of trance, and undoing the habitual reactivity that keeps us from the loving, open awareness that is our essence.
Part 2: From Fight-Flight-Freeze to Attend-Befriend
How do we reconcile conflict when caught in reactivity sourced in trauma or deep wounding? This talk looks at the need for a larger field of belonging – a trusted other person or safe group – to engender the presence and compassion that enables us to relax and reconnect with our own wholeness and with others.