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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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2022-02-16 Cultivating Loving Kindness - Seeing the Goodness 56:46
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The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-09 Meditation: Spacious, Clear Awareness 22:41
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This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-09 Love in Action: Realizing Interbeing 53:57
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The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it’s led humans to destroying our larger body, Earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-02 Meditation: Breathing Through 17:08
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Drawn from a classic Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice, this guided meditation invites us to open to the sufferings of the world, and let it move through our hearts and out again. The blessing of this offering of presence is that our hearts become a transformer of sorrow.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-02-02 The Earth is Crying in Our Hearts 43:58
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The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it’s led humans to destroying our larger body, earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-26 Meditation: Know That You’re Here 19:22
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We spend many moments in a trance, time traveling to the past and future, lost in a virtual reality. This meditation helps us collect our attention with our breath, awaken through the body, and open the senses. We then rest in the wakeful openness that includes changing experience, aware of the mystery and vividness of being Here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-26 Living with Courageous Presence 46:53
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The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart. This talk explores the ways we resist opening to vulnerability, and three key steps in cultivating a courageous presence. Ask, “What does it mean to be courageous at this moment?”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-19 Meditation: Silence, Presence and Care 21:04
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Quieting our busy bodies and minds brings alive our heart and spirit. This practice begins with a reading on silence by Gunilla Norris, and then includes guidance in letting go of tension, opening to aliveness and resting in a caring and wakeful awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-19 Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World - A Conversation 65:22
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Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World, a conversation between IMCW’s executive director, Trisha Stotler and Tara Brach. The Buddhist scriptures describe a mind that “no longer shakes, in a world where everything is shaking.” Our times are deeply stressful and troubling, and we need individual and collective ways of responding from our deepest understanding and care. In this interview, Tara reflects on the perspectives and ways of practicing that allow us to engage in relationships and our larger society from an awake compassionate heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-12 Compass of Our Heart 50:24
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All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my heart’s will” (a favorite from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-12 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (20:04 min.) 20:03
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When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-05 Finding True Refuge: Pathways of Remembering 56:00
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This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn. (To participate you will need a 20” red string.)
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-05 Meditation: Letting Go… Letting Be (16:55 min.) 16:54
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This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2022-01-01 Meditation: What Matters to your Heart? (9:26 min.) 9:26
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Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021-22 IMCW New Year Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2021-12-29 Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 3 57:34
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We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-29 Meditation: Awakening an Intimate Presence (20:24 min.) 20:23
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This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021-22 IMCW New Year Retreat: Awakening the Heart of Compassion
2021-12-22 Meditation: Awakening Loving Presence (22:23 min.) 0:00
(Recording not available) 
Loving presence is an innate capacity, and it can be cultivated. This meditation begins with a scan arousing a relaxed tender presence in the body, then brings loving attention to our inner life, and in widening circles, to our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-22 Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 2 52:40
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We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-15 Loving Ourselves into Healing – Part 1 64:40
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We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-15 Meditation: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (16:48 min.) 16:48
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Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-08 Awakening from the Trance of Unworthiness – An interview with Tara and Dr. Mark Hyman 1:13:50
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Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance – a mindful, allowing presence – to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-08 Meditation: Refuge in Presence (18:26 min.) 18:25
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We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-01 Preparing Our Hearts for the Holidays 51:05
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While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others. Tonight’s class closes with special music: “Love is the Answer” by Len Seligman (with his permission). You can learn more about Len and listen to his latest offerings at https://www.lenseligman.com
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-12-01 Heart Meditation: Taking in the Goodness (24:31 min.) 24:34
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Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-24 Gratitude: Entering Sacred Relationship 52:25
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Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group. The audio includes a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-24 Meditation: Energy and Source (19:21 min) 19:21
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Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-17 Facing the Truths That Keep Us from Love 59:54
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A Conversation between Tara and Rev Angel Kyodo Williams – Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, from living from an awake, compassionate heart?
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-17 Meditation: Filling Our Body with Love (16:26 min.) 16:27
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When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-10 Fear and Love 59:40
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Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-10 Meditation: Awakening Self-Compassion (27:02 min.) 27:01
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This RAIN meditation helps us explore pathways to nurturing ourselves in a way that brings profound transformation and healing.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-11-03 After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part 2 58:03
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The blessing of the spiritual path is a homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2021-11-03 Meditation: The Return to Presence – Rest Your Mind in What Is (21:17 min.) 21:17
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It’s natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021 IMCW Fall Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2021-10-27 After the RAIN: The Flowering of Awake Awareness – Part I 56:19
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The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-27 Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness (18:22 min.) 18:29
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This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being and can be held with tenderness and love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-20 Wise Investigation: Dissolving the Trance 55:25
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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 our attention untangles difficult emotions and nourishes intimate relationships. As this light is turned toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-20 Meditation: Widening Rings of Being (20:00 min.) 20:00
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If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-13 Meditation: A Practice of RAIN (20:00 min.) 20:06
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The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-13 Grieving and Timeless Love 57:49
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How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-06 Realizing Your Deepest Desires 51:26
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This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-10-06 Meditation: Letting Thought Clouds Come and Go 22:00
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This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-29 Facing Fear in a Traumatized World 65:03
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Unprocessed fear cuts us off from our full aliveness and spirit, and it separates us from others. This talk looks at how we bring healing to the trauma and deep fears that cause us to dissociate from our body. We focus on ways we increase safety, diminish shame and then, with a courageous, embodied and compassionate presence, learn to contact and integrate fear into our larger awareness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-29 Meditation – The Heart-Wisdom of Your Future Self (18:55 min.) 18:54
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In this meditation, we relax and open our body and mind, and then explore an encounter with our Future Self – the expression of our most evolved and awakened heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-22 Anger: Responding, Not Reacting 53:21
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Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-22 Meditation: Present Heart 14:37
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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
2021-09-15 Radical Friendship: Conversation between Tara Brach and Kate Johnson 68:33
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The often unseen cause of our difficulties in relationships is the societal structures that are marked by violence and domination. This conversation looks at what blocks authentic and loving connectedness, and ways to intentionally cultivate authentic, openhearted awake relationships.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-15 Meditation: Sitting Like a Mountain 24:31
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Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence. Closes with a metta (loving-kindness) prayer.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-08 A Conversation Between Tara and Mark Nepo 1:16:49
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Mark is a spiritual teacher, wonderful poet, and author of many books including best selling The Book of Awakening. In this wide-ranging and rich conversation, Tara and Mark explore shedding our defenses, faith, compassion for ourselves and others, spiritual practice, and facing illness, aging and death.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-08 Meditation: Receiving Life in Open, Awake Awareness 19:31
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This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-01 The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance 62:44
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When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-09-01 Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment 18:51
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When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

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