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The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
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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2022-08-10 Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire 46:34
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 of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-03 Meditation: Living Presence 19:54
The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-08-03 Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness 49:53
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 of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-27 Meditation: Befriending and Opening to Life 28:56
This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We deepen the intention to befriend and relax with whatever arises moment-to-moment, letting life be just as it is. We offer a brief lovingkindness reflection, sensing our heart and mind, and offering whatever wish most resonates to ourselves and others.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-27 Awakening from the Landlocked Self 53:04
The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-20 Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence 15:31
The meditation starts with breathing mindfully to collect and calm the body and mind. Then we open our attention to include the changing flow in a spacious natural presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-20 Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening Beyond the Separate, Fearful Self 60:38
Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the freedom of our true nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-13 Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence 19:09
This meditation scans through the body – arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-13 From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence 55:05
The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and, instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-06 Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention 19:45
This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-07-06 Navigating the Dark Ages 43:42
How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-29 Meditation: Letting Go 20:53
One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself. This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-29 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 49:03
Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-22 The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 55:01
Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-22 Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life 16:07
This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-15 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness 19:48
This meditation begins by relaxing through the body, and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness to life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back, and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness, and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-15 The Three Steps of Letting Go 44:45
A wonderful inquiry is, “What is between me and openhearted presence?” This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release the blocks to our natural and loving awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-08 Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2 56:36
In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world– with courageous, wise hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-08 Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence 14:54
Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-01 Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence 19:11
Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-06-01 Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1 46:05
In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-25 Meditation: Whole Body Breathing (21:25 min.) 21:25
This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-25 Nourishing Our Spirit in Times of Collective Fear 46:46
We are living with the threat of increasing, dramatic suffering around the globe. This talk looks at the direct ways our meditation practices, supported by findings of neuroscience, can help us find resilience and an open heart in the face of an uncertain and frightening future. It includes a number of short reflections and meditations.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-18 Meditation: Awake and Alive (18:27 min.) 18:26
This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-18 Self-Forgiveness with RAIN 57:57
Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-11 Meditation: The Space and Aliveness of Presence (21:53 min.) 21:53
We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being – open, awake and tender.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-11 Equanimity – Part 4 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 51:20
Part 4: Equanimity – unfolds as we find a wise balance and spaciousness in the midst of this living, dying world. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-04 Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome (18:51 min.) 18:51
This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-05-04 Joy – Part 3 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 53:35
Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-27 Meditation: Awareness is Our Home (21:31 min.) 21:31
This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-27 Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 52:03
Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-20 Meditation: Path of Love 18:04
This heart practice opens with the intention to bring a kind presence to whatever arises. After arriving with a body scan, we are guided to meet all experience with an open tender awareness. The practice ends with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called “Is this the Path of Love?”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-20 Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love 56:34
Part 1: Lovingkindness – We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-13 Responding with Heart to Painful Times: A Conversation with Tara and Frank Ostaseski 1:14:16
with Frank Ostaseski, Tara Brach
Our world is changing faster than we can compute or process. Accompanying these changes are a growing violence, deepening divides, great loss and much uncertainty and fear. In this week’s talk, I’m joined by Frank Ostaseski to explore teachings and practices that can support us in meeting our inner life and our world with kindness and awareness. Our time includes engagement with those present in a live event.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC 2022 IMCW Spring Retreat: Flexing the Five Strengths
2022-04-13 Meditation: Present Heart 14:15
We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC 2022 IMCW Spring Retreat: Flexing the Five Strengths
2022-04-06 Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart 22:00
Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-04-06 Relationships – from Reactivity to Rechoosing Love 51:38
Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-30 Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves 20:27
By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever was going on.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-30 Compassion toward Non-Human Animals - A Conversation between Konda Mason and Tara Brach 68:20
with Konda Mason, 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 factory farming. This conversation looks at how facing and responding to this suffering is necessary for the freedom of our own hearts, and the healing of the world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-23 Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness 24:13
Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-23 Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 57:11
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 practices and teachings that guide us on the path.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-16 Meditation: Embodied Spirit 16:54
Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-16 Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1 47:18
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 practices and teachings that guide us on the path (re-mastered talk from 2021).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-09 Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen 23:39
Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, a compassion practice or tonglen, is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us home to the vastness of loving presence (re-mastered from the 2013 IMCW fall 7-day silent retreat).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-09 Engaged Spirituality during Times of Upheaval 45:21
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 on our practices of presence and remembering our larger belonging.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-02 Meditation: Being a Kind Witness 18:46
Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-03-02 Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence 41:58
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 “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-23 Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care 15:52
This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this Moment Without Judgment.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-23 Radical Acceptance – Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace 49:17
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 life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-16 Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives 27:21
This heart meditation guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of belonging – knowing that we can never be alone (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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