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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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2016-08-10 How Hope can Heal and Free Us – Part I 65:47
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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, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world. “We close with a simple prayer this evening, that all beings might remember the depth of their longing – that deep aspiration for love, for aliveness. That all beings may trust the heart and consciousness that’s always and already here. And that we may live from the depth and fullness of who we are.” ~ Tara
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-07-06 Stress and Everyday Nirvana – Part 2 1:11:13
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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 to stress and bring a healing and freeing evolution of consciousness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-06-29 Stress and Everyday Nirvana - Part 1 1:15:16
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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 to stress and bring a healing and freeing evolution of consciousness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-06-22 Reconnecting with our Lives - Healing from Dissociation 1:14:29
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Dissociation is the universal mechanism for pulling away from the pain of “too much.” While it’s necessary and natural for enduring certain situations, the ongoing habit of dissociation cuts us off from our full aliveness, creativity, and capacity for love. This talk explores the process by which we disconnect from our bodies and feelings - individually and collectively - and the practices that directly enable us to include the “unlived life" - the fear and shame, passion and loneliness - that we’ve pushed away. By including the raw energies we’ve been avoiding, we come home to a fullness that can embrace others and the whole of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-06-01 Real but Not True: Freeing Ourselves from Harmful Beliefs 1:11:30
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Thoughts and beliefs are navigational maps that are not inherently true. Rather, some serve us and others cause feelings of separation, self-aversion and/or blame of others. We can free ourselves from harmful beliefs by investigating them with a dedicated, mindful and courage presence. This talk guides us in mindful investigation through an illustrative story, an outline of steps, and a guided meditation that addresses limiting beliefs surrounding interpersonal conflict.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-05-18 Happy for No Reason - Part 1 1:11:01
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These two talks explore the two different kinds of happiness, the blocks to happiness, and the ways that mindful presence and intentional gladdening the heart (positive neuroplasticity) can open us to our full potential for true happiness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-05-12 Meditation: Gladdening the Mind 18:04
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-11 Conscious Prayer - Finding Refuge in Loving Awareness 66:25
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Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-11 Morning Question and Response 16:45
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-11 Meditation: Space of Awareness 35:22
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Awake awareness includes both the foreground of bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds, and the background of open, still presence. In this meditation we explore discovering interior space and aliveness, and the continuous space that all existence arises and passes in. Resting as a boundless sea of awareness, we are fully open to the changing waves of experience.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-09 Meditation: Guided Heart Forgiveness 28:50
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Tara gives brief instructions on the forgiveness practice, then guides us through a process of forgiveness of ourselves and others. “Forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame. That you can care about someone and still create boundaries… Each of you has this wisdom, heart, being place that intuits that there really isn’t freedom in the moments that you’re carrying blame and judgment.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-09 Question and Response from Retreat 12:10
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Question and Response from Retreat ~ After morning meditation, Tara responds to questions on deepening our meditation practice, working with unpleasant and pleasant thoughts, and forgiveness from the IMCW 2016 Spring Residential Retreat.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-09 Meditation: Mystery of Aliveness 27:40
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-08 Fear as a Pathway to Loving Presence - Night Travelers 62:42
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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 to fear with mindfulness and care, we discover the vast tender presence that has room for the waves, and can fully cherish this life. Life’s waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from it. Night travelers are full of light, and you are too: don’t leave this companionship… The moon appears for night travelers, be watchful when the moon is full. - rumi
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-07 Meditation: Basic Body Scan and Breath Awareness 12:17
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- from the first morning of the IMCW 2016 Spring weeklong retreat, Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2016 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2016-05-04 RAIN of Forgiveness 1:14:37
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The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-04-27 Listening with an Awake Heart 69:36
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True listening both nurtures and expresses evolving consciousness. This talk explores our ego-based conditioning to have an agenda or defendedness that prevents deep listening, and the strategies that evolve our capacity to listen fully to ourselves and others. When our listening is openhearted and full, it enables deep understanding and connectedness, and provides a transformative healing space for those who receive our listening attention.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-04-20 Love is Always Loving You 1:12:27
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Love is Always Loving You – This talk draws on Christian mystic Henri Nouwen’s book Return of the Prodigal Son. We explore the primary ways we leave home – leave presence, connection, beingness – and the pathways of deep attention and love that enable our return. The emphasis is on “letting in love” as a key and often missing element in practices that heal and free our hearts. Through the talk there are several reflections that lead to receiving the blessings of love and discovering that we are the source of that loving.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-04-13 Meditation - Vipassana - Practice of Seeing Clearly 18:38
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Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath - or some other sensory anchor - and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention - sensations, emotions, sounds - meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-04-13 Releasing Self-Blame - Pathways to a Forgiving Heart 53:44
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When we are stuck in blaming, disliking or hating ourselves, we are unable to love our world. This talk explores what underlies our addiction to self-blame and the teachings and practices that loosen aversive self-judgment and help us cultivate a forgiving heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-03-30 Embodied Awareness – Pain and Living Fully – Part 3 1:13:26
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The experiences we most value – feeling creative, loving, vital – require being awake in our bodies. Yet when faced with physical pain, our conditioning is to pull away from our bodies, and get lost in thoughts. This talk offers guidance in working mindfully with different levels of pain, as we cultivate our capacity to live from an embodied presence and open heart. After the talk, Tara offers a short period of question and response on embodiment.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-03-23 Embodied Awareness – Embracing Unlived Life – Part 2 1:11:23
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When we disconnect from the aliveness of our body, we are in a trance that prevents us from living and loving fully. These two talks examine our habits of dissociation – including the cutting off that comes from trauma – and the suffering of “unlived life” that this creates. We then look at how practices of mindfulness and compassion, guided by the acronym RAIN, enable us to re-enter our bodies, and discover the creativity, love and wisdom that naturally flow from embodied awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-03-09 Embodied Awareness- Embracing Unlived Life - Part 1 1:16:44
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When we disconnect from the aliveness of our body, we are in a trance that prevents us from living and loving fully. These two talks examine our habits of dissociation, and the suffering of “unlived life” that this creates. We then look at how practices of mindfulness and compassion, guided by the acronym RAIN, enable us to re-enter our bodies, and discover the creativity, love and wisdom that naturally flow from embodied awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-03-02 Bodhichitta — The Awakened Heart - Part 2 1:20:26
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While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this trance. The first talk emphasizes inner pathways of freeing our heart and the second talk explores awakening bodhichitta actively in relating with each other.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
2016-02-24 Bodhichitta: The Awakened Heart - Part 1 1:29:22
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While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this trance. The first talk emphasizes inner pathways of freeing our heart and the second talk explores awakening bodhichitta actively in relating with each other.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks

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