Donate  |   Contact


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.
     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ... 25 26 27 28
2021-08-11 Humility 54:16
Download Listen
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
2021-08-04 Taking ‘The Exquisite Risk:’ An Undefended Heart 50:22
Download Listen
Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase “exquisite risk” to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life, and in engaging with others from full authenticity.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-07-28 Writing and Haiku as Spiritual Practice: Tara interviews Natalie Goldberg 60:09
Download Listen
Natalie Goldberg has inspired an entire generation to experience writing as a practice that can awaken our hearts and minds. In this interview Natalie gives guiding tips on approaching writing and, drawing on stories and verses from her beautiful recent book, “Three Simple Lines,” helps us feel the power and depth of haiku.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-07-21 The Power of Spiritual Hope 51:39
Download Listen
The openness to possibility is essential on a path of awakening and freedom. In this talk we explore what makes up mature or spiritual hope, and how two meditation practices of presence can nourish our hope.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-07-14 Mindful Leadership: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Michelle Maldonado 1:14:07
Download Listen
The principles of mindful leadership are relevant for all of us—they bring out the best of who we are in our work, with our family, with our friends. Especially in these times of mistrust and dividedness, our world desperately needs each of us to cultivate the qualities of focus, presence, care, respect, clarity, and curiosity that mark a true leader. Michelle Maldonado is a brilliant teacher of mindful leadership, and she embodies the compassion and skillfulness she invites forward in others.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-07-07 Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice 53:51
Download Listen
This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: Wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-30 Trusting the Gold: A Conversation between Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust 45:12
Download Listen
In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with our inner life and others, in cultivating the capacity to see basic goodness and realizing a mature and liberating quality of trust.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-23 Shifting from Limbic to Liberating Intention 48:32
Download Listen
Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing – the liberating intention – that guides us to freedom.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-16 Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome 18:51
Download Listen
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
2021-06-16 Fierce Self-Compassion – A conversation between Tara Brach and Kristin Neff 61:52
View Download Listen
Kristin Neff is a pioneer in self-compassion research and a leader in bringing practices of self-compassion alive in our world. This conversation is on her latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, which helps women awaken both receptive and active dimensions of compassion – tenderness and fierceness.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-09 Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts 17:33
Download Listen
We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-09 Trusting the Gold – A Celebration of Tara’s New Book 1:26:22
View Download Listen
The essence of the spiritual path is realizing, trusting and living from our natural awareness and love. This talk explores the two key pathways that help us awaken from the trance of identifying as a limited, separate self. It includes several guided meditations and a period of questions and response.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-06-02 Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness 24:13
Download Listen
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
2021-06-02 Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 56:28
View Download Listen
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
2021-05-26 Meditation: Embodied Spirit 16:55
Download Listen
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
2021-05-26 Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1 46:56
View Download Listen
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
2021-05-19 Meditation: Yes to Life 18:48
Download Listen
In the moments we release all resistance, we relax open to inhabit the fullness of our Being. This meditation guides us to an embodied, openhearted presence that welcomes the changing flow of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-05-19 Entering the Mystery 54:24
View Download Listen
John O’Donahue writes, “We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in.” This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of “beginners mind” that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder (a special talk from the 2013 archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-05-12 Meditation: Being Here for Life 18:03
Download Listen
It’s easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called “Instructions for the Journey.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-05-12 Bridging the Divide: Learning to Tend and Befriend 52:02
Download Listen
One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of “Fight, Flight, Freeze” to the wholeness that arises with “Tend and Befriend.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-05-05 Meditation: Letting Go into Living Presence 18:31
Download Listen
We resist reality by tensing our body and contracting into thoughts. This meditation guides us into letting go of resistance by surrendering over and over into the aliveness and presence that is right here.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-05-05 Three Dimensions of Conscious Prayer 53:23
Download Listen
Prayer can be a creative, vibrant and infinitely tender part of our spiritual awakening. This talk explores the dimensions of embodied presence, sincere expression and silence that bring transformational power to our prayers.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-28 Meditation: From Head to Full Being 19:05
Download Listen
When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-28 Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings 60:00
Download Listen
The ritual of Namaste - bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others - helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-21 Meditation – Opening to Full Aliveness 18:31
Download Listen
Our tension is a way of defending against the aliveness that is here and now. This meditation guides us in relaxing tension, awakening our senses and discovering the vitality and presence that express our natural being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-21 Belonging to the Earth 48:39
Download Listen
As a species, forgetting our belonging to our larger body of Earth is causing suffering for this entire living web. In this talk we look at what causes and sustains this trance of forgetting. We then explore the ways we each can awaken a sense of loving connectedness and active caring toward our natural world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-14 “Make Love of Your Self Perfect” - retreat talk 63:24
Download Listen
Like a dense fog, chronic self -judgment blocks the light of our true nature. This talk explores the challenges to loving the life within us, and the pathways of practice that lead to holding our own being and all life in a boundless tender heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2021-04-14 Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath 17:46
Download Listen
This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC :  2021 IMCW Spring Retreat: Intimacy with Life
2021-04-07 Meditation: Relaxing into Living Presence 23:39
Download Listen
This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-04-07 Radical Self-Honesty: The Joy of Getting Real 48:32
Download Listen
Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-31 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence 11:55
Download Listen
When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-31 Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World – Part 2 64:02
Download Listen
While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-24 Meditation: Embodying Loving Awareness 19:22
Download Listen
Love is often abstract, and not fully alive. In this practice, with the supportive image and felt sense of a smile, we are guided to awaken loving in our body, mind and whole being.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-24 Transforming Two Fears: FOF and FOMO 51:03
Download Listen
There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the Archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-17 Meditation: A Kind and Allowing Presence 19:05
Download Listen
When we’re stressed our hearts tighten and we try to control our life. This meditation guides us to relax the controlling and discover the open, tender awareness that allows life to be as it is.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-17 Fear of Aging: Finding Freedom in this Impermanent World – Part 1 55:08
Download Listen
While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us. NOTE: The quoted prayer "And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well" is from 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, in her work “Revelations of Divine Love.”
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-10 Meditation: Cultivating Deep Listening 19:51
Download Listen
Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-10 The Power of Deep Listening – Part 2 50:52
Download Listen
Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-03 Meditation: Aliveness and Presence 20:49
Download Listen
This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-03-03 The Power of Deep Listening – Part 1 65:35
Download Listen
Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-24 Meditation: Continuous Space Suffused with Awareness 18:38
Download Listen
By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-24 Namaste: Seeing the Truth of Who We Are 59:18
Download Listen
A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our “mask” or ego self, and not seeing past other people’s masks. In this talk we reflect together on some key filters of superior/inferior and good/bad that shape the trance of a narrowed identity, and then explore how mindfulness and kindness free us to inhabit the vastness of our natural awareness. We close with tasting the possibility of bringing the spirit of Namaste to ourselves, others and all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-17 Meditation: A Welcoming Heartspace 18:20
Download Listen
Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-17 Awakening Our Body’s Awareness – Part 2 – (Working with Pain) 50:47
Download Listen
Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-10 Meditation: Being a Kind Witness 18:46
Download Listen
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
2021-02-10 The Superpower of Mindful Witnessing 40:52
Download Listen
The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-03 Meditation: Homecoming with the Breath 23:47
Download Listen
This meditation focuses on the breath as an anchor for homecoming. We begin with an intentional breath (coherence breathing) and then establish the natural breath as a home base. The instructions are to rest in the breath, offering a relaxed, intimate intention. Other waves of sensation or emotion are included when they ask for attention as we cultivate an open and full mindful presence. Our freedom arises as we recognize the formless awareness that is our home, and the natural and ever-changing waves that live through us.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-02-03 Awakening Our Body’s Awareness – Part 1 51:10
Download Listen
Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-01-27 Meditation: Sacred Presence 20:12
Download Listen
This meditation guides us to wakefully relax with the changing flow of moment to moment experience. As we open our senses fully, we discover the sacred living presence that is our very essence.
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
2021-01-27 Spiritual Hope 52:52
Download Listen
Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation (a favorite from the archives).
Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC

     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ... 25 26 27 28
Creative Commons License Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Dharma Seed is a 501(c)(3) Non-profit organization. email: contact@dharmaseed.org