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Tara Brach's Dharma Talks
Tara Brach
A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
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2014-06-04 Awakening from Virtual Reality 1:22:24
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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!"
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-05-28 Humility 1:18:29
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-05-21 Heart Training on the Bodhisatva Path 56:38
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-05-14 Question and Response 1:17:24
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-05-07 Am I Dreaming? (retreat talk) 68:15
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2014 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2014-05-04 Return of the Prodigal Son (retreat talk) 1:10:30
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Drawing on Henri Nouwen’s book that interprets this famous parable, this talk looks at the ways we cut off from loving awareness, and the process of homecoming. Our inquiry, reflections and a guided meditation focus on an essential and often overlooked element of transformation: our capacity to trust in love, to let love in.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2014 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2014-04-30 Part 2 - Conflict - From Fight Flight Freeze to Attend Befriend 1:17:26
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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.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-04-23 Awakening Through Conflict 1:22:33
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As long as we are identified as separate selves, we will inevitably experience conflict with others. If we learn to release blame and deepen attention to our embodied experience, conflict can become a portal for more loving, alive relationships and awakening into the fullness of our being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-04-16 RAIN - Cultivating a Mindful Awareness 1:22:24
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The acronym RAIN is a powerful tool for interrupting habitual patterns of emotional reactivity and discovering the freedom of an awake, compassionate presence. This talk explores the components of RAIN, how it works, what makes it transformational and typical challenges people encounter. The teachings include a guided RAIN meditation.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-04-09 Loving and Losing 1:21:00
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The way that we relate to impermanence and loss shapes our capacity to live and love fully. This talk, drawing on Mary Oliver’s poem “In Blackwater Woods,” explores three elements in our response to this fleeting, precious life that are integral to our healing and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-04-02 Stress and Our Evolving Consciousness 1:20:04
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The universal experience of stress (in Buddhism, called dukkha) is a message that we are not realizing, trusting and living from our true nature. Our habitual reactions to stress - grasping, aversion, resistance - deepen emotional pain and lock us in a limiting sense of egoic-self. This talk explores how, with conscious intention and deepened attention, the stressful difficulties we encounter can become the very grounds of healing and spiritual awakening.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-03-26 Planting Ourselves in the Universe 1:15:51
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When we are lost in the trance of thinking, we disconnect from the aliveness, awareness and love that is our source. Mindfulness, a key capacity of our evolving consciousness, awakens us from an identification with thinking and enables us to inhabit a wider realm of Being. This talk explores the confines of conceptual mind and the simple yet powerful practices that cultivate mindful awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-03-19 Return of the Prodigal Son 1:21:47
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Drawing on Henri Nouwen’s book that interprets this famous parable, this talk looks at the ways we cut off from loving awareness, and the process of homecoming. Our inquiry, reflections and a guided meditation focus on an essential and often overlooked element of transformation: our capacity to trust in love, to let love in.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-03-12 Part 5: Equanimity - A Heart That is Ready for Anything 1:18:25
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Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-03-05 Part 4: Opening to Joy 1:19:08
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Our innate capacity for joy is blocked by our habitual ways of paying attention. This talk explores three key pathways of presence that connect us with our full openness and aliveness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-02-26 Part 3: A Forgiving Heart 1:21:23
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Anger is an intelligent emotion, a natural part of our evolutionary design that lets us know when we are endangered or impeded in our progress. But when it locks into ongoing resentment and blame, our heart becomes armored and we lose access to a wholeness of being. This talk explores forgiving as a process of relaxing our armoring and awakening a healing compassion for ourselves and others.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-02-19 Part 2: Heart of Compassion 1:24:50
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Most of us consciously value compassion, but move through much of life without access to the full capacity of our heart. This talk explores the self-compassion that is the very grounds of loving our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-02-12 Mindfulness in Education: Enabling Children to Realize their Full Potential 39:28
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This talk explores stress-related emotional suffering and how mindfulness and compassion practices can serve our children’s natural intelligence, creativity and openheartedness. Trainings in presence are the hope for this next generation, and the healing of our world. CULTIVATING RESILIENCE: MINDFULNESS TRAINING FOR STUDENTS ~ How mindfulness training can benefit students and the adults who nurture them An evening with Tara Brach and Congressman Tim Ryan at Walt Whitman HS, Bethesda, MD. Talk given on 2013/10/07.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-02-08 Heart Presence (retreat talk) 64:34
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2014 IMCW Women's Retreat: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
2014-02-07 Morning Instruction - Question/Response 13:14
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2014 IMCW Women's Retreat: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
2014-02-07 Morning Meditation and Instruction 29:50
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2014 IMCW Women's Retreat: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation
2014-02-05 Part 1: Universal Faces of Love 1:24:25
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Lovingkindness, or metta, is the first of the four divine abodes in buddhist teachings. This talk explores the habitual patterns of fears and wants that obscure this innate quality of heart and key ways that we awaken ourselves to its luminous presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-01-22 Listening to the Song 1:24:51
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Listening with our full heart and attention is the gateway to understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to deep listening, and offers ways of paying attention that awaken a healing listening presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2014-01-08 Path of True Refuge 1:23:56
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This talk explores the three archetypal gateways to liberation - awareness (Buddha), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha). It includes guided reflections and a refuge ceremony that can help us discover the path “inside out” through daily life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-12-30 Morning Instructions - Question and Response 9:45
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-30 Morning Meditation 29:23
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-29 Realizing Our Undefended and Awakened Heart 66:42
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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 the wilderness of our embodied being and encircling this life with love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-28 Walking Meditation Instruction 6:20
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-28 Morning Instructions - Question/Response 11:10
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-28 Morning Instructions and Meditation 33:43
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW New Year's Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2013-12-18 Part 2: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love 1:18:50
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This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence - in relating inwardly and in communicating with others - that awakens and frees our hearts. At end of talk - La Sarmiento shares "Holiday Dharma" as part of Solstice celebration.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-12-11 Part 1: Evolving Toward Unconditional Love 1:27:04
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This two part series explores the evolutionary conditioning of fear and judgment that contracts us away from love and acceptance, and the quality of mindful presence—in relating inwardly and in communicating with others—that awakens and frees our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-11-27 The Evolving of Generosity 1:26:21
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This talk explores how we can open out of the habit of grasping and deliberately nourish our natural capacity for generosity, for living love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-11-20 Accessing Innate Wisdom 1:24:52
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Wisdom is an innate capacity, but often covered over by trance. This talk explores how we abandon ourselves as we busily seek ways to feel more worthy, loveable and safe. We then look at the pathway home, the radical non-doing and space of silence that allows wisdom and love to flow through.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-11-13 Part 2: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening 1:22:24
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We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-11-06 Part 1: Vulnerability, Intimacy, & Spiritual Awakening 1:29:13
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We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-10-30 Healing Self-Doubt 1:22:57
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Siddhartha Gautama’s last challenge before enlightenment was doubt, and to some degree, most of us live with limiting beliefs about our own worthiness and goodness. This talk looks at the tenacity of self-doubt and the power of mindfulness, investigation and compassion in releasing its grip.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-10-24 Guided Heart Meditation: Taking Refuge in the Beloved 23:06
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2013-10-23 Wings of Homecoming 67:41
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Part of incarnating is to feel separate and forget the mysterious oneness that is our home. This talk explores the two dimensions of awareness that when awakened reveal the openness, lucidity and love that expresses our true nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2013-10-22 Guided Meditation: Compassion Practice - Tonglen 28:56
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2013-10-20 Guided Forgiveness Practice 32:13
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Instructions, then a guided forgiveness meditation.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2013-10-19 The Heartspace That is Our True Home (retreat talk) 64:37
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(retreat talk) - By dedicating ourselves to loving the life that is right here--ourselves--we discover the heartspace that holds this world. This talk explores the pathways of forgiveness, offering and letting in love, and gratitude that reveal the vastness of loving presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2013 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2013-10-16 Part 2: Happiness 1:25:49
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This 2-part series explores conditioned and unconditioned happiness: What blocks us from experiencing true well-being, and the skillful means that allow this natural expression of our being to shine through.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-10-09 Part 1: Happiness 1:15:46
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This 2-part series explores conditioned and unconditioned happiness: What blocks us from experiencing true well-being, and the skillful means that allow this natural expression of our being to shine through.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-10-02 Loving Life, Loving Earth 69:31
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What will it take to have us collectively awaken to the suffering of our earth and respond? This talk looks at how we are destroying our larger body, the earth; what stops us from recognizing and opening to the suffering of loss, and ways we can evolve our consciousness and act on behalf of this precious life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-09-25 Part 2 - Entering the Wilderness 1:13:50
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On all spiritual paths, we journey into the inner wilderness to discover the nature of nature - the truth of who we are. The entry is through bringing a kind and full presence to the life of our bodies. These two talks explore the conditioning that leads us to dissociation, and the blessings of full aliveness, open heartedness and wisdom that arise when we come home to embodied presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-09-18 Part 1 - Entering the Wilderness 1:21:51
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On all spiritual paths, we journey into the inner wilderness to discover the nature of nature - the truth of who we are. The entry is through bringing a kind and full presence to the life of our bodies. These two talks explore the conditioning that leads us to dissociation, and the blessings of full aliveness, open heartedness and wisdom that arise when we come home to embodied presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-09-11 Peace Work 1:22:36
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The hope for inner and world peace lies in our evolutionary capacity to shift from Fight-Flight-Freeze reactivity to responding to aggravation with Attend-Befriend. This talk explores the three elements on this path of awakening that support us in this transformation: Remembering our true aspiration; taking full responsibility (for whatever arises in our experience) and widening the circles of our caring to include all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-09-04 From Egoic to Unconditioned Loving 1:25:33
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When we are caught in the sense of separation and unmet needs, our love is marbled with fear and attachment. This talk describes the chain of conditioning that perpetuates the constrictions of egoic love and explores several courageous activities--sharing our vulnerability, expressing love, extending and receiving love-- that awaken us to the vastness and freedom of pure loving awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2013-08-28 Part 2: Relating to the Fearsome Deities 1:28:33
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Whenever Mara--the shadow side--appeared during the Buddha's life, his response was simple and liberating: "I see you Mara," and,"Please, come…let's have tea." In that spirit, this talk explores three approaches to relating to fear with a mindful and compassionate presence. The flute meditation at the end of the talk is given by Akal Dev. Please support this podcast by donating at dharmaseed.org. Your donations allow us to continue to freely offer the teachings!
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

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