Tara Brach: Recent Episodes

Tara Brach

What does it truly mean to say Namaste?

In this talk, we’ll look at the deeper invitation behind this ancient greeting—not merely as a gesture, but as a living practice of recognizing the sacred essence within ourselves and one another. When we learn to look beyond fear, judgment, and the stories we carry about ourselves and others, we begin to remember our shared basic goodness. When we pause long enough to truly see one another, we nourish the possibility of compassion—not only in our relationships, but in the collective heart of humanity.

Together, we’ll explore:

– The deeper meaning of Namaste
– Seeing beyond the “small self” and conditioned identity
– Awakening to our shared basic goodness
– Transforming judgment through mindful awareness
– Bringing compassion into difficult relationships
– Living with greater reverence, belonging, and love

The post Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings appeared first on Tara Brach.

This guided meditation invites you to come home to the simple aliveness of this moment. Through mindful breathing, softening the body, and resting in the awareness that is already here, we discover that presence is not something we create—it is our true home.
As we gently release the momentum of thinking, we begin to recognize the quiet wakefulness that is always available beneath the changing flow of sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Each time we return to the immediacy of “here,” we strengthen the pathway home to ourselves.

This practice offers a refuge for times of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, or uncertainty, reminding us that freedom begins by simply arriving—fully and compassionately—in this moment.

In this meditation you’ll explore:

Cultivating inner peace and embodied presence
Mindful breathing as a portal to presence
Relaxing the body with awareness
Resting in witnessing awareness
Returning gently from distraction without judgment

The post Meditation: Being Here (21:21 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

When we pause and gently return to the living experience of this moment, we begin to discover a refuge that has always been here. This guided meditation invites you to relax the body, soften the heart, and awaken to the vibrant aliveness that is present beneath the constant stream of thinking.

Together we’ll practice using the breath and the body as a home base—learning to meet whatever arises with kindness, openness, and an accepting “yes.” As we become more intimate with our present-moment experience, we begin to realize that true peace isn’t found by changing this moment, but by fully inhabiting it.
Whether you’re new to meditation or a longtime practitioner, this practice offers a gentle pathway to greater presence, inner ease, and a deeper sense of belonging to life.

In this meditation you’ll explore:

Resting in the spacious awareness that is always here
Relaxing deeply into the body and breath
Using the body as an anchor for mindful awareness
Meeting thoughts and emotions with compassion instead of resistance
Returning again and again to the aliveness of the present moment

The post Meditation: At Home in the Moment (21:01 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

What is the difference between having goals and living from aspiration? How do we respond when fear takes over? What if self-compassion feels impossible? How do we forgive ourselves, navigate profound grief, heal from trauma, or rediscover joy in practice?

In this first Ask Me Anything session, Tara responds to heartfelt questions from our global community, exploring many of the challenges that touch us most deeply. Together we investigate how mindfulness and compassion help us meet fear, shame, loss, trauma, illness, and uncertainty—not by escaping our experience, but by discovering the awareness and love that can hold it all.

These reflections are offered as practical guidance and as an invitation to trust the innate wisdom and tenderness that live within each of us.

The post Ask Me Anything (Part 1): Fear, Self-Compassion, Grief, Trauma & Awakening appeared first on Tara Brach.

The stories we believe shape the life we experience—but they are not the truth of who we are.

In this talk, the second of a two-part series, we explore how fear-based narratives create separation, anxiety, and suffering, and how mindfulness allows us to recognize these stories without becoming trapped inside them. When we learn to meet the vulnerable feelings beneath our thoughts with compassionate awareness, we begin to rediscover the freedom, wisdom, and love of our true nature.

In this talk you’ll discover:

-Why our thoughts are maps of reality—not reality itself
-How fear-based stories create suffering in our relationships and inner life
-The practice of recognizing limiting narratives with mindfulness
-Why healing comes from meeting the emotions beneath our stories with compassion
-How presence reveals the innate goodness and belonging that no story can diminish

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, contemplative practice, and moving stories from teachers including Desmond Tutu, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Hafez, this talk offers practical guidance for loosening the grip of self-judgment and awakening to the spacious awareness that is our deepest home.

Listen to Part 1 Here

The post Stories That Imprison Our Heart – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

In this guided meditation, you’re invited to discover the breath as a refuge—a steady anchor that can return you, again and again, to the aliveness of this moment. As we soften the body, awaken the heart, and gently release the habit of being lost in thought, the simple rhythm of breathing becomes a portal to presence, peace, and belonging.

Together we’ll explore:
-How intentional breathing helps calm the nervous system and quiet the busy mind
-Relaxing the body through mindful awareness and compassionate presence
-Meeting difficult emotions with kindness rather than resistance
-Returning to the breath whenever attention wanders
-Opening the heart through loving-kindness and shared intention for all beings
Whether you’re new to meditation or a longtime practitioner, this practice offers a simple yet profound way to reconnect with your natural awareness and inner ease.

The post Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence (19:31 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Much of our suffering begins not with reality itself, but with the stories we believe about ourselves, others, and the world. In this first talk of a two-part series, I explore how unconscious narratives—shaped by fear, conditioning, and past experience—can imprison the heart and keep us feeling separate, defensive, or unworthy. Through mindfulness and compassion, we can begin to recognize these stories, loosen their grip, and awaken to the freedom of our true nature.

In this talk, Tara explores:

– How fear-based stories shape our identity and relationships
– Why the “storytelling mind” is both essential and limiting
– Recognizing the unconscious beliefs that create suffering
– The healing power of mindful awareness and self-compassion
– How love helps us release old narratives and rediscover belonging

This teaching offers practical reflections for anyone longing to move beyond self-judgment, heal old conditioning, and live with greater freedom, authenticity, and connection.

May this exploration support you in seeing beyond the stories that keep the heart small, and in remembering the boundless awareness and love that are your deepest nature.

Listen to Part 2 Here

The post Stories That Imprison Our Heart – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

When life feels overwhelming, our first instinct is often to tighten, resist, or try to control what is unfolding. Yet true freedom begins when we discover the courage to soften and allow this moment to be just as it is. Inspired by the timeless teachings of mindfulness, this guided meditation offers a gentle pathway into presence through the practice of letting go—not by pushing experience away, but by releasing the resistance that keeps the heart contracted.

Together, we’ll explore:

Letting go of repetitive thoughts and returning to presence
Releasing physical tension and softening the body
Opening beyond emotional armoring into an undefended heart
Resting in the spacious awareness that holds all experience

Discovering the peace that naturally arises when we stop resisting life
As Ajahn Chah reminds us, “If you let go a little, you’ll have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you’ll have a lot of peace.” This meditation is an invitation to experience that peace for yourself. Whether you’re seeking stress relief, emotional healing, deeper mindfulness, or a way to reconnect with your natural presence, may this practice help you come home to the awareness and love that are always here.

The post Meditation: The Art of Letting Go (19:32 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Fear is part of being human. We can’t stop life’s waves from coming—but we can learn how to meet them with awareness, compassion, and courage. In this talk, we’ll explore how meditation helps us awaken from “worrier pose”—the habitual patterns of anxiety, overthinking, and contraction that keep us from living with an open heart.

Together we’ll explore how fear becomes less an obstacle and more a doorway to awakening, and practices—including RAIN—that help us move from identifying with fear to resting in the larger awareness that can hold it all. Rather than trying to eliminate fear, we can learn to relate to it with presence, kindness, and a deep sense of belonging.

As we learn to turn toward fear with mindful presence instead of resistance, we discover that what we truly are is larger than any wave of anxiety. Beneath fear is an awake, loving awareness that has the capacity to hold every experience with wisdom and compassion.

In this talk Tara explores:

Why fear is a natural part of the human experience
How anxiety shapes the body, mind, and emotions
The difference between reacting to fear and relating to it wisely
Using the RAIN practice to meet anxiety with compassion
The importance of “resourcing” when emotions feel overwhelming
How remembering our shared humanity helps dissolve isolation and fear

The post Worrier Pose – Finding Freedom from the Body of Fear (retreat talk) appeared first on Tara Brach.

One of the great gifts of mindfulness is discovering that we can always begin again. This guided meditation invites you to return to the aliveness of the present moment through the breath, the body, and the simple recognition: “Know that you’re here.”

Together we’ll gently relax the body, awaken embodied awareness, and practice returning whenever the mind wanders. Rather than judging ourselves for drifting into thought, we discover that each moment of noticing is another opportunity to come home to presence.

As awareness opens, we begin to sense the spaciousness that holds every sound, sensation, and breath—revealing the natural peace and wakefulness that are always available. Whether you’re beginning a meditation practice or deepening an existing one, this meditation offers a nourishing refuge—a way of returning, again and again, to the living presence that is your true home.

In this meditation you’ll explore:

Relaxing deeply through breath and body awareness
Returning to the present with a gentle anchor
Working skillfully with a busy mind
Resting in open, spacious awareness
Offering compassion and blessings from embodied presence
Discovering the freedom of simply being here

Photo Credit: Paul van de Riet

The post Meditation: Know That You’re Here (19:37 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness.

These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.

NOTE: This site is not intended to diagnose or treat any physical or mental health condition. If you are in crisis, or in need of immediate assistance, find help here: https://yourlifecounts.org/find-help/#

The post Part 1: Healing Depression with Meditation appeared first on Tara Brach.

In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of whatever being in our life we most experience as calm, wise and compassionate.

How do we find that inner place of calm in the midst of the storm?

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Lynn Ungar 3/11/20, Pandemic

The post Meditation: Calling on Your Awakened Heart (25:39 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

This meditation scans the body and directly invites the awakening of key energy centers (chakras) in our body. We then rest in the openhearted awareness that includes this ever changing creative flow of aliveness.

photo: Donna Russo

The post Meditation: Awakening Our Energy Body (22:19 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

In this rich and heartful conversation, I join two dear Buddhist monks — Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho — who are in the process of founding Clear Mountain Monastery, a new Buddhist community in the Seattle area. Their bright, warm spirit brings a lighthearted and sincere presence to our dialogue, making this exchange a true joy to share.

Together, we explore many dimensions of the spiritual path — including my own journey of finding refuge during a dark time, the teachers who’ve inspired me, and the teachings that most deeply call to my heart.

We also reflect on the practice of RAIN, the dance between directing attention and opening to what’s here, and how compassion and equanimity intertwine to support us in these challenging times.

Along the way, we touch into the Pali word sanook — meaning fun or lightheartedness — which beautifully captures the spirit of our time together.

May this conversation nourish your own trust in the path and remind you of the goodness and joy that are always here, waiting to be discovered.

In this talk, we’ll look at:

how trusting our basic goodness becomes the foundation for intimacy, creativity, and awakening compassion in a suffering world.
Tara’s own journey through illness and fear, and how softening around pain opens the heart to freedom and love.
the power of the RAIN meditation to transform judgment and reactivity into mindful presence and self-acceptance.
how taking a sacred pause helps us step out of the virtual trance and re-enter embodied awareness and connection
trusting Buddha-nature — the radiant goodness that shines through all beings — as the ultimate refuge in an unraveling world.

*Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho are part of Clear Mountain Monastery Project, an aspiring Buddhist forest monastery in the Seattle area.

Website: https://www.clearmountainmonastery.org/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ClearMountainMonastery*

The post Trusting the Path: A Conversation on Refuge, Compassion, and Joy, with Tara Brach, Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho appeared first on Tara Brach.

Trust in our basic goodness directly effects our capacity for intimacy with others, creativity and living fully. This talk explores the ways that our caregivers and culture undermine that trust, primarily by giving us messages that we are “not enough” or flawed. We then explore the meditation practices that remind us of our loving hearts, and of the goodness that expresses through others. This remembrance is what nourishes a liberating quality of trust in ourselves and in our life.

Click Here to Listen to Part 1

The post Awakening Trust in a Fractured World, Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

In our everyday life we are conditioned to feel that life is happening to us, or that we are the doer. This meditation deconditions that self-centrality by bringing attention to the aliveness in our bodies, and then opening to receive the entire play of sounds, sensations and feelings in awareness.

The post Meditation: Receiving This Life in Awareness (22:37 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

In this talk, Tara explores:

how the “wanting mind” pulls us away from presence and freedom.
how unmet needs fuel craving and why substitutes never bring lasting joy.
the suffering of identifying with desire and how mindfulness offers release.
using the RAIN practice to recognize, allow, and soften the wanting mind.
tracing back desire to discover love, belonging, and freedom already here.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this – make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover you do not need them. You are beyond. ~ Sri Nisargadatta

Enjoy also – Desire and Addiction (Part 1): Voices of Longing Calling You Home

The post Desire and Addiction: Voices of Longing Calling You Home, Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

This guided meditation invites you to gently come home to the aliveness of the body. Through mindful awareness, you’ll learn to soften tension, release mental agitation, and rest in the simplicity of presence. As you bring a compassionate attention to sensations, you discover a refuge that is always here—an embodied wholeness that allows you to meet life with greater ease and tenderness.

The post Meditation: In the Body (20:29 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

In this talk, Tara explores:

how the “wanting mind” pulls us away from presence and freedom.
how unmet needs fuel craving and why substitutes never bring lasting joy.
the suffering of identifying with desire and how mindfulness offers release.
using the RAIN practice to recognize, allow, and soften the wanting mind.
tracing back desire to discover love, belonging, and freedom already here.

I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
…You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

The post Desire and Addiction: Voices of Longing Calling You Home, Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

When our hearts open to the life that is here, just as it is, we discover vast loving presence. This meditation engages the smile as we scan through and awaken to our body and senses. Then we practice meeting the changing flow of life with a full allowing, wakeful and open awareness.

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

e.e. cummings, Love is a Place

The post Meditation: The Blessings of Yes (20:10 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

During times of great collective stress, it’s common to get gripped by waves of anxiety and fear. This guided meditation, an adaptation of the Tibetan tonglen practice, helps us reconnect with our spiritual heart, the sea of love and light that can hold even the most painful waves in our lives.

The post Meditation: Remembering Your Spiritual Heart (16:52 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Thich Nhat Hanh said “no mud, no lotus.” How might anger, hatred and delusion—the mud of these times– give rise to a growing compassion and wisdom in our world? In this talk, we look directly at the angst surrounding the US elections and explore several powerful teachings and practices that can serve as the catalyst for profound transformation and an evolving of wisdom and love in our collective consciousness.

Photo: Tara Brach

The post Becoming Bodhisattvas in a Troubled World appeared first on Tara Brach.

By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the light of awareness. This meditation attunes us to these dimensions of awareness: continuous open space, heart space and full aliveness. We end with a Zen poem that invites us to rest in this living, loving awareness, and know it as home.

From one Zen poet: “Right here, right now.
Be absolutely still and notice… the experience of pure awareness… without resistance.
This attention is the universal attention. It has no boundaries.
It is awake, pure, alive and nurturing.
So dip into this awareness… rest in purity for one second… ten seconds… thirty seconds…
Keep diving in complete surrender, allowing whatever sensations to be and to move.
Keep resting in this place.
Soon you will see it is your home.
It is your essence.
Like an ice cube on the sea, you apparently melt into this ocean
and there’s only bliss… this bliss of freedom… of homecoming.

Right here, right now. Be absolutely still and notice… this experience of pure awareness.
Keep resting in this place. Soon you will see it is your home. It is your essence.”

Photo: Shannon Lavery

The post Meditation: Living Loving Awareness (20 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Listen to Part 1: Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1

The post Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

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).

The post Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (20:12 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Photo by: Jonathan Foust

The post Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

When we’re having difficulty, we typically tense up our body and mind, and armor our heart. This practice offers a pathway of relaxing that tension and tasting the peace that comes from resting in presence.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems (Counterpoint, 2012)

Photo: Jonathan Foust

The post Meditation: Resting Your Heart in Presence (20:12 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

The gift of meditation is awakening to the vast, radiant ever-creative beingness that is beyond the confines of a constricting self-sense. This talk explores how awake awareness can directly meet the clench of selfing – the thoughts, emotional tensions and core self-sense. When this occurs there’s a spontaneous releasing into the full love, wakefulness and aliveness of our being.

The post Freedom Beyond the Trance of Self appeared first on Tara Brach.

How do we meet the violence and suffering in our world with a quality of openheartedness and wisdom? In this interview Dan and Tara look at the teachings from the Bodhisattva path (path of awakening beings), Tara’s early draw to this path, and the perspectives and practices that can help us all in responding to our world with as much clarity, equanimity and love as possible.

Learn more about Dan Harris and subscribe to his new substack platform at https://www.danharris.com

The post Timeless Heart Wisdom for our Times – Tara Brach and Dan Harris appeared first on Tara Brach.

Most of us know the suffering of feeling separate from others. In this guided meditation, we explore how we can re-open our hearts by intentionally bringing a caring mindful presence to our own vulnerability, and then extending that presence to include others. When inhabiting that presence, we are able to respond to relational conflict and distance with a growing creativity and love.

Post photo: Janet Merrick

The post Meditation: Disarming Our Hearts (10:53 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Behind the activity of thinking, and the ever-changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings, there is a great and awake silence that holds all that unfolds. This space of awareness is our formless essence. Learning to open and rest into this alert, knowing vastness has the blessings of homecoming.

Photo by: Jonathan Foust

The post Guided Meditation: Resting in Knowing (20:43 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

There is no more relevant exploration than how we awaken to our connection as family, as belonging to this precious web of life. In their talks, Tara and Roshi Joan look at the cause of divides and their healing through wise contemplation, courageous engagement and the power of imagination. Each lead short reflections that help us bring our own hearts and spirit into this sacred work.

The post The Sacred Work of Bridging Divides – Teachings from Roshi Joan Halifax and Tara Brach appeared first on Tara Brach.

Given how our biases create separation and unfold into violence and suffering, this is a crucial domain for each of us to explore. In this interview, author and teacher Anurag Gupta offers his wise perspectives and invites Tara to share some of what she has learned in navigating this terrain. We explore how to come into a healing relationship with unhealthy thoughts; forgiving ourselves for bias (it’s impersonal); the inner freedom that arises from releasing bias; and how to awaken compassion and deep respect for those we have habitually dehumanized. The interview closes with Tara leading a brief reflection on undoing bias.

Anu’s recent book is: Breaking Bias – Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From – and the Science-backed Method to Unravel Them – 2024. Also available on Anu’s website at: https://www.bemorewithanu.com.

The post Waking up from Bias: A Conversation with Tara and Anurag (Anu) Gupta appeared first on Tara Brach.

Collecting, unifying and opening the mind, we begin with a listening attention, noticing sounds that are here. Relaxing open and letting sounds wash through. With the same receptivity to sounds, listen to and feel the aliveness of the body. Listening to the breath as if you’re listening to the voice of a quiet loved one – really close in, tender attention – and including the background sounds. Not pushing away anything – a very open and relaxed, receptive attention.

Sensing what’s actually happening in this moment – perhaps the sensations of the breath, the other sensations through the body, the play of light and dark in the eyes, sounds… Closing by sensing all in the foreground and in the background – that alert inner stillness, that light of awareness, that which is our deepest, formless nature.

Sensing the possibility of this presence shining through every cell, every part of your being, you might ask yourself:
Is it not true that the stillness I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the peace I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the happiness I seek is already here?
Is it not true that the love I seek is already here?

(a favorite from the archives)

The post Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind (25:06 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Starting with scanning through the body and awakening the senses, we then rest in presence, with the breath as a home base. The meditation invites an openness to whatever arises, and a gentle kind attention if we encounter physical or emotional pain. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.

The post Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence (19:52 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Happiness and freedom arise as we include all parts of our being in a loving awareness. In this talk we explore how this inner work of inclusion is the grounds of democracy, and how it enables us to participate in our relationships and society in a way that fosters communications, belonging and realization of the greater good.

The post Inner and Outer Democracy: The Practice of True Inclusion appeared first on Tara Brach.

This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go.

The meditation ends with a beautiful verse from poet Philip Booth:

As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Poem: “First Lesson,” by Philip Booth from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Viking).

Photo: Tasmania – Donna Russo

The post Meditation: Touching Peace (22:03 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

In this conversation, Tara Brach and Gabor Maté come together to explore the heart-wrenching situation in Gaza through the lens of the Bodhisattva path. Drawing from the Bodhisattva path – the commitment to alleviate suffering for all beings – they explore the importance of compassion and engaged spirituality in responding to the oppression and trauma experienced by the Palestinian and Israeli people.

This conversation is an invitation to examine our own spiritual practices and to consider how we can embody the Bodhisattva spirit in today’s world, breaking the silence and standing in solidarity with all who are suffering. It was offered as part of a series of conversations that accompany a poignant and heartbreaking film – “Where Olive Trees Weep” – about the struggles and resilience of Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Access to the full program and the film is by donation – link here.

The post What is Love Asking from Us? A Conversation between Tara Brach & Gabor Maté appeared first on Tara Brach.

This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. The training is a relaxing back, noticing the sounds that are here, feeling the aliveness of the body. We call on the two wings of wakefulness and openness, noticing what’s happening moment-to-moment with a kind, allowing attention.

We rest and relax back, discovering the presence that’s here – our senses awake… wide open awareness… awake, relaxed, and open.

Photo by: Jonathan Foust

The post Meditation: Awake, Relaxed and Open (26:27 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

This talk continues the exploration of what causes our distrust of ourselves, others and life, and the pathways to realizing and trusting who we are. We explore the steps of awakening from limiting beliefs, dissolving the resistance to direct embodied presence, and discovering the space and tenderness – the formless dimension – that is indivisible and whole.

“How can we trust basic goodness, what lets us trust?”

“…imagine how might your life change if you dedicated yourself to realizing and trusting this basic goodness sometimes called Buddha nature or loving presence that’s within.”

Enjoy Part 1: Basic Trust

The post Trusting Your Basic Goodness: Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we begin 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 is going on.

Enjoy a blog from Tara: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves

Photo: Shannon Lavery

The post Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves (25:59 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

One of the expressions of an awakened heart-mind is a basic trust in reality. These talks explore the severed belonging that gives rise to mistrust, and two primary pathways to realizing and trusting the indivisible field of loving awareness that is our source (a favorite from the archives).

“To love without holding back – to really sense with the wisdom, the reality, that it’s right here – to live from wholeness. We have this capacity.”

“Who would you be if you trusted the basic goodness and beauty is living through you? How would your life be different if you trusted that spirit, love, awareness is what you are?”

Photo by: Jonathan Foust

Enjoy Part 2: Trusting Your Basic Goodness

The post Basic Trust – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of the love you bear for yourself. All I plead with you is this – make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing. Give yourself infinity and eternity and discover you do not need them. You are beyond. ~ Sri Nisargadatta

Enjoy also – Desire and Addiction (Part 1): Voices of Longing Calling You Home

Photo by: Tara Brach

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This meditation guides us through a relaxing body scan and then explores how we can allow the breath to calm our body and bring peace to our heart.

Photo: Tara Brach

The post Meditation: Meeting Fear with a Healing Breath (22:59 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Desire is intrinsic to all living forms – the urge to exist and flourish. It turns to suffering when, due to unmet needs, it contracts, intensifies and separates us from our full aliveness and awareness. These two talks guide us in awakening from this trance, and discovering how within desire is the longing that can carry us to true belonging.

Practice with the final meditation from Part 1: Meditation on Bringing RAIN to the Wanting Mind (11:01 min.)

I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
…You have not grown old, and it is not too late
To dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

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When our hearts open to the life that is here, just as it is, we discover vast loving presence. This meditation engages the smile as we scan through and awaken to our body and senses. Then we practice meeting the changing flow of life with a full allowing, wakeful and open awareness. We close with a verse from e.e. cummings.

“What happens when the heart says “Yes” to this moment? And what happens when that “Yes” goes even deeper?”

love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

e.e. cummings, Love is a Place

The post Meditation: The Blessings of Yes (20:12 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

This practice uses the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, include sound and relax back into the awareness that is the source of all experience. By letting life be just as it is, we become pure living presence – wakeful, open and tender.

The post Meditation: Living Presence – Awakening with a Smile (18:45 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

One expression of suffering is forgetting that we are intrinsically lovable and worthy. This talk looks at the pathway to trusting our belonging, and focuses on the healing that comes from letting in love and mirroring others goodness.

Painting: Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son”

Talk includes quotes from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

You might also explore the 20th anniversary edition of Tara’s book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha. Above includes a link to free download 10 Guided Meditations that accompany the book.

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The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

Our human loneliness and suffering arise from getting identified in a mental ego, and separating ourselves from the living web of our natural world. This talk explores the pathway back to sacred relationship, and offers reflections and practices that awaken intimacy with the non-human world.

Photo: Shannon Lavery

The post From Ego to Eco-Identity – Homecoming to Sacred Relationship appeared first on Tara Brach.

This guided meditation includes a full body scan, and the recognition of the formless awareness that includes and is the source of all experience. By recognizing that awareness we discover the silence and stillness that is the ground of all experience.

The post Meditation: Embodied Awareness (17:23 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

If we are suffering, we are believing an interpretation of reality that is limiting and untrue. At these times we are imprisoned in a painful looping of fear-driven thoughts and feelings. This talk explores the ways our practices of mindfulness, compassion and loving presence can guide us from addictive thinking to perceiving life with a wise heart.

The post From Head to Heart appeared first on Tara Brach.

This guided practice awakens all the senses with an embodied presence, allowing an opening to the moment-to-moment changing flow of experience. We then relax back, resting as the changeless open awareness that is conscious of the flow, and includes all life.

The post Meditation: Awareness and Flow (20:17 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

In describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit – to live from embodied presence. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.

May we be blessed to live from embodied presence… to realize the love and creativity and freedom that are our essence. ~ Tara

This very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now… with its aches and it pleasures… is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive. ~ Pema Chödron

Go with the pain, let it take you. Open your palms and your body to the pain. It comes in waves like the tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then, retreating, leaving you empty and clear… with a deep breath – it has to be as deep as the pain – one reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain, as though the pain were not yours but your body’s. The spirit lays the body on the altar. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Listen to Part 1 here

Video – Part 2 below:

The post Embodied Presence (Part 2) – Planting Our Roots in the Universe – Working with Pain appeared first on Tara Brach.

The receptivity of listening awakens us to the living stream of life. This meditation guides us in listening to sounds, and then listening to and feeling the aliveness of our bodies and the movement of the breath. We close with a simple offering of lovingkindness to our inner life and our world.

Resting with the breath as a raft might rest and move with the waves… ~ Tara

Post photo: Shannon Lavery

The post Meditation: A Listening Presence (20 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

In describing our human predicament and dis-ease, D.H. Lawrence says we are like a great tree with our roots in the air. We need to replant ourselves—in our bodies, hearts and spirit. These two talks are guides to replanting ourselves. In Part 1, we explore how we are so often dissociated from the life of our body, and the pathways home. Part 2 looks at the challenges of pain, fear and trauma, and how we can gradually and skillfully reconnect with a wholeness of being.

One of the realizations I keep coming back to is that the portal to presence is through awareness of this living body. ~ Tara

Within the body you are wearing, now
inside the bones and beating in the heart,
lives the one you have been searching for so long.

But you must stop running away and shake hands,
the meeting doesn’t happen
without your presence . . . your participation.

The same one waiting for you there
is moving in the trees, glistening on the water,
growing in the grasses and lurking in the shadows you create.

You have nowhere to go.
The marriage happened long ago.
Behold your mate.

Within The Body You are Wearing ~ ROBERT HALL

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This meditation includes a full body scan, and then opens the senses to all experience, allowing life to be just as it is. Awakening to the life of our body reveals the mysterious formless presence that is our source. We close with a poem from Danna Faulds.

Trust the energy that
Courses through you Trust,
Then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy.
Don’t push anything away. Follow each
Sensation back to its source
In vastness and pure presence.

Emerge so new, so fresh that
You don’t know who you are.

Welcome in the season of
Monsoons. Be the bridge
Across the flooded river
And the surging torrent
Underneath. Be unafraid of consummate wonder.

Be the energy and blaze a
Trail across the clear night
Sky like lightning. Dare to
Be your own illumination.

Trusting Prana, Danna Faulds, (with edits)

The post Meditation: Portal to Sacred Presence (20 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

The focus of this conversation is on our relationships with dogs, and more broadly, all beings. We look at what Thich Nhat Hanh called interbeing, and what happens when we shift our attention from self to who are we together.

Tara is joined by Mark Drucker, an animal lover who works in digital media and is founder of lovedog.com, and Drew Webster, a dog behavior consultant par excellence.

In this recording, Tara is being interviewed for their podcast and found herself deeply impacted by the conversation. She reports that she and her 6-month-old pup, Niki, play more. Her attention has deepened and she is more awake in their relationship, and of course that extends out to the world of relationships.

So whether you have a dog, cat, favorite tree, or human to practice on, bringing attention to interbeing means more belonging, aliveness, and love. lovedog.com

Mark Drucker

Mark is the founder of lovedog.com. He’s accrued over 25 years of executive, marketing/sales, and content creation experience in the print and digital media arenas. Mark has always been a dog and animal lover. He’s raised two Golden Retrievers, and in July 2023 adopted a 4-year-old Labrador Retriever named Hank. Mark is from New York where he built his career in publishing. He records this podcast in Boulder, CO where he’s lived since October 2022.

Drew Webster

Human Senior Partner; CDBC

Drew has two decades of experience as a dog behavior consultant, adjunct professor at University of Denver, developer of behavioral programs and an endless list of key relationships with the leaders and experts in the canine training and behavior arena around the world.

The website: lovedog.com

Tara’s episode: https://lovedog.com/podcast/homecoming-being-present-with-our-dogs/

The Podcast page on Lovedog.com: https://lovedog.com/podcast/

photo: Tara Brach

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Our being has many frequencies of aliveness and as we attend to the more subtle, we discover a portal to the radiant awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us in using the breath and attention as we scan through the body and awaken an inner luminosity. We then open the attention to rest in the whole field of awake awareness.

Post photo: Janet Merrick

The post Meditation: Lighting Up Your Energy Body (18 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Martin Luther King’s term, “Beloved Community,” points to our potential for living together with love, justice and respect. This talk explores the often hidden expressions of racism that fuel separation and violence, and pathways toward healing and freeing our collective hearts.

NOTE: At the same time as the tragic killings in Charleston, SC, Tara’s Wednesday night class was reflecting on racism and the aspiration for Beloved Community. “May we awaken our hearts from the prison of separation; may we seek to end the daily violence, injustice and oppression faced by African Americans.“

Transcript available here: “Beloved Community” – talk by Tara Brach

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The pathway to presence does not involve efforts or striving. As you will find in this simple, gentle meditation, a vibrant and healing presence is possible as we wake up all our senses and intentionally relax with our changing experience. The gift is a true sense of homecoming, and with that openheartedness and peace.

Post photo: Gary Hillesland

The post Meditation: Relaxing Open into Full Presence (21:59 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts.

Drawing on practices from the Bodhisattva path, these two talks explore the process of disarming—bridging divides with those close in, and opening our hearts to those at a distance who we consider a ‘bad other” or enemy.

As we cultivate the capacity for true disarming, we experience a growing sense of belonging, Oneness and the freedom of an awakened heart.

photo: Janet Merrick

The post Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

From the meditation closing:

As part of closing this meditation, sensing whatever wish or blessing you’d like to offer to yourself right now. What would bring healing happiness your life? Widening that heart space to include someone who is dear to you. Sensing your appreciation for that person’s goodness. Offering your wish, your blessings to them. Sensing the heart as edgeless… boundless… open… including all of life everywhere.

May all beings everywhere be filled with loving presence, held in loving presence.
May all beings everywhere find great and natural peace.
May all beings everywhere be happy, know the natural joy of being alive.
May all beings everywhere awaken and be free.

Namaste

photo: Janet Merrick

The post Meditation: Awareness is Our Home (21:45 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts.

Drawing on practices from the Bodhisattva path, these two talks explore the process of disarming—bridging divides with those close in, and opening our hearts to those at a distance who we consider a ‘bad other” or enemy.

As we cultivate the capacity for true disarming, we experience a growing sense of belonging, Oneness and the freedom of an awakened heart.

photo: Tara Brach

The post Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

As we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem from Mary Oliver.

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –

so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work

The post Meditation: Body and Spirit (19:37 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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. The three qualities often described as the essence of awareness: wakeful, open, tender.”

Listen to Part 1: Forgiveness

Listen to Part 2: Inner Fire

Explore more Resources on Forgiveness

From the talk: “And we close with that simple prayer: May all beings everywhere remember and trust the loving awareness that is our source. May all beings everywhere live in natural and great peace. May we touch true joy in living. May all beings everywhere awaken and be free. Namaste and blessings.”

The post Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror appeared first on Tara Brach.

The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

The post Meditation: Listening to Life (18:23 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Listen to Part 1: Forgiveness

The post Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.”

“Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
In our present culture,
silence is something like an endangered species…
an endangered fundamental.
The experience of silence is now so rare
that we must cultivate it and treasure it.
This is especially true for shared silence.
Sharing silence is, in fact, a political act.
When we can stand aside from the usual and
perceive the fundamental, change begins to happen.
Our lives align with deeper values
and the lives of others are touched and influenced.
Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
We endanger the delicate balance which sustains
our lives, our communities, and our planet.
Each of us can make a difference.
Politicians and visionaries will not return us
to the sacredness of life.
That will be done by ordinary men and women
who together or alone can say,
“Remember to breathe, remember to feel,
remember to care,
let us do this for our children and ourselves
and our children’s children.
Let us practice for life’s sake.”

Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”

Photo: Gary Hillesland

The post Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence (19:02 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Explore more Resources on Forgiveness

Listen to Part 2: Inner Fire

The post Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Photo: Donna Russo

The post Meditation: Living Presence – Experiencing Aliveness and Openheartedness (20:04 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Download text in PDF –

The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom,
to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
*~ bell hooks*

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has escalated dramatically since my last blog post in December 2023, and it’s spiraling into increasing devastation, torment and chaos with each passing day. The Israeli military has killed 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Almost the entire population of Gaza is displaced, more than half is struggling with starvation and disease, and there is now a famine spreading through the North. Meanwhile, since the brutal attack and hostage taking by Hamas of October 7th, many in Israel have been living with acute trauma, loss and an ongoing sense of deep endangerment.

Over these months, my deepest inquiries continue to be: What is love asking from me? How can we take action in ways that liberate ourselves and others? These questions have led me to seek a deeper understanding of the historical conditions that contributed to this current situation, to lead meditation events for those directly impacted, to contact my representatives and call for a ceasefire, to donate to humanitarian organizations and to write articles encouraging others to engage in compassionate activism. Dialogues with Palestinians, Israelis, friends, students and many others holding diverse perspectives and experiences have broadened and refined my views as well as helped illuminate my own biases. And through this time, I’ve witnessed a courage, wisdom and love in some of those closest to the suffering that has inspired my heart.

What continues to resonate as most clear and urgent is to stop the killing and do everything we can to get humanitarian aid to Gaza to address the widespread and horrendous suffering. At the same time, we must look to the future, asking ourselves what kind of action will bring justice and peace, a world where all beings are treated with respect, care and dignity. External strategies alone—like political and social activism—will never be the answer. Our human violence arises out of the delusion of separation—the perception of “us against them” that leads us to fearing and then hating and demonizing others. There will be no genuine justice and healing in our world unless we dedicate ourselves to evolving our human heart and spirit: We need to realize our intrinsic belonging to one another.

The felt sense of enlarged belonging was poignant during a meditation gathering I led for Israelis in December. After hearing many expressions of trauma and loss in the wake of Hamas’s attack and Israel’s retaliation, a woman spoke at the closing of our candle ceremony: “May we pray for all the children.” I witnessed this same sense of caring and communion in March when I led an online event for a Palestinian meditation group with members in many Arab speaking countries. One woman had seen an image of a mother in Gaza and her six emaciated, clearly starving children, all sitting by an empty cooking pot. Her vow was to recollect this image daily to keep her heart broken open. Another woman at the end of the gathering prayed through her tears: “May I keep choosing love, even when the forces of hatred are so great.” In the silence that followed, there was a palpable sense of shared presence and tenderness.

Choosing love has the power to free us from suffering. This is the essence of the Bodhisattva Path, a path dedicated to awakening our hearts and bringing healing and freedom to all beings. The practices on this path are aimed at cultivating mindfulness and compassion, which are the grounds of transformational engagement with our world.

The compassion of a Bodhisattva is inclusive of all beings. And yet when we or others are threatened or harmed, especially when we’ve been traumatized, we lose our capacity for empathy. The threatening other is experienced as bad, and not human like ourselves. This isn’t our fault. The habit of demeaning and dehumanizing others is a universal and biologically rooted response from our survival brain. It’s much simpler and faster to create an enemy—a default to black and white thinking—than to open our hearts to the complex reality that humans who cause suffering are themselves wounded and suffering.

Throughout human history, the demonizing of others has been the psychological fuel that drives warfare. We can look at any violent conflict across the globe—the civil war in Sudan, the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Syria—and we’ll see this “othering” and devaluing of human life. In this process, the other is stripped of their humanity and becomes unreal—a mere symbol of evil or threat. And when we make others less than human, we armor our hearts and are severed from our own conscience and humanity. This is what enables humans to commit and rationalize killing, torture, genocide and other acts of cruelty.

Even if we are not directly engaged in violent conflict, our habits of “bad othering” are deeply conditioned and contribute to the dividedness and violence in the collective field. The Bodhisattva Path invites each of us to wake up from this habit by bringing it into conscious awareness, and intentionally cultivating our capacity for compassion.

You might pause for a moment to look at your own psyche. Bringing to mind the situation in Gaza, or any domain of charged conflict that has been impacting you, you might sense if you have been perceiving a particular group of people as less human, less moral and less valuable than yourself or those you identify with. If so, what does this “bad othering” feel like in your heart? Can you sense the tightness of armoring? Now explore looking behind the behaviors or views of those you condemn. Is it possible to sense them as a traumatized and hurting part of our human family? As parents, children, siblings or friends who, like you, want to feel safe, valued, loved and free? Notice what happens when you let your heart be touched by this larger reality.

Breaking free of dehumanization and awakening compassion requires a courageous, honest, and sustained mindfulness. It is natural that Palestinians, Israelis, and others who are most traumatized in this conflict may not be capable of a mindful presence right now. However for those of us who care and have the willingness, this crisis calls on us to deepen our dedication to the Bodhisattva’s inner work. As Thich Nhat Hanh taught, “Man is not our enemy.” We need to open wide our hearts so our actions serve the healing and freedom of all beings.

Some fear that an inclusive compassion—one that encompasses those we feel have caused the most harm—is too soft, that it bypasses accountability for violating others and undermines a forceful resistance to continued violence. However, compassion is not silent, indiscriminate, or neutral; rather, it calls us to relieve suffering through affirmative and determined action. Compassion-in-action has been modeled by well-known spiritual leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and expressed in the non-violence movements of the last many decades. With compassion we can oppose dominance hierarchies like racism and colonialism that harm both victims and perpetrators. With compassion we can recognize the decades of oppression and displacement of Palestinian people, as well as the hugely disproportionate killing, devastation and trauma experienced by all those living in Gaza today. At the same time, we can hold in our hearts the great historical and present trauma of the Jewish people—the centuries of persecution, the extermination of Jews in the last century, the spiking of antisemitism and the continued sense of endangerment, especially for Israelis. Only by caring for all, while acting to address the asymmetry of this conflict and the immediacy of this humanitarian catastrophe, can we ultimately bring healing to all.

While the focus of this piece is on the crisis in Gaza, there are countless domains of great pain and trauma on this planet that need our compassionate attention. These span the suffering of those in war-torn places and those facing climate emergencies, to our most close-in circle of dear ones, as well as our inner life. And the realms of suffering include all who are being violated, including non-human beings, and our living earth. On the Bodhisattva path we seek to let our hearts be touched by the pain in our world, and to respond with love and compassion, as best we can.

In this spirit, let us pause once more, and take a moment to inquire into what love is asking from us right now—either in response to the anguish of those in Gaza, or in response to any place of suffering in the world.

For me, this inquiry invokes an inner tenderness and energizes action. As I mentioned earlier, it guides me to speak and write about compassion in action. And it leads me to continue to join with others in the call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, a return of all hostages by both Israel and Hamas, removing blocks to humanitarian aid to Gaza, and an end to the United States funding of weapons for Israel. We need to stop the killing and tend to those in need. And together, to manifest a more just, compassionate future that honors the dignity and intrinsic sacredness of all beings.

May we each take refuge in presence and love, over and over.
May we listen to what love is asking from us, and act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.
May we engage together on behalf of our precious, hurting world.

With love and prayers,

TaraFor those who seek engagement in ways that might directly relieve the suffering in Gaza, please consider the below.

https://afsc.org/news/6-ways-you-can-support-palestinians-gaza

© 2024 Tara Brach, PhD, All Rights Reserved.

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The pace of change is speeding up and much of the news we receive is alarming. More than ever, we need the inner reflections and meditations that help us connect with our capacities for clarity, bravery and openheartedness. This is what Tara explores with Oren Jay Sofer, in his book entitled: Your Heart Was Made For This: Contemplative Practices to Meet a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love (2023.)

Oren teaches mindfulness, meditation and non violent communication, and his prior book is bestselling Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication (2018.) Learn more about Oren Jay Sofer and order books at: https://www.orenjaysofer.com

Please Note: At timestamp 57:41, Oren mistakenly attributes an article to George Lakey. The author of this article is Robert Reich.

The post Living with a Courageous Heart in Times of Crisis: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Oren Jay Sofer appeared first on Tara Brach.

When we learn to listen to our inner life without interference, we open to a tender and full experience of presence. This meditation guides us in awakening an intimate quality of listening, as we attend to sensations, moods, sounds and the entire dance of life.

The post Guided Meditation: Letting Life Be As It Is (21:48 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

We have strong conditioning to identify as a separate self, and to feel all the fears and attachments that arise from not realizing our true belonging. This talk includes teachings and several experiential reflections that help us wake up from the trance of separation.

As we grow familiar with the awareness and love that is our shared true nature, we naturally live from that loving, and experience a growing freedom and joy. [Spring Retreat, April 2024 – Art of Living Retreat Center]

photo: Gary Hillesland

The post Homecoming to Loving Awareness (retreat talk) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence – This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it’s natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.

The post Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence (19:23 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Many are familiar with the Dali Lama’s words “My religion is kindness.” In this conversation you will sense the gritty and real way that we struggling humans can learn to cherish one another. We talk about the relationship between boundaries and compassion; the unshakeable goodness at our core; how we belong to each other, and how judgments arise from delusion and blind us to the blessing of that belonging.

Father Greg Boyle is an American Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. He is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, author of several books, including Tattoos on the Heart; Barking to the Choir; and in 2023, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness.

Father Greg’s life and work are a huge inspiration: he is dedicated to living from love and cultivating loving community with a marginalized population of ex inmates, gang members and their families. You can find out more about Father Greg and Homeboy Industries at: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/

The post Cherishing Each Other: A Conversation with Tara Brach and Father Gregory Boyle appeared first on Tara Brach.

When we attune to the inner body, we discover a field of energy and aliveness that is the portal to pure presence. This meditation guides our attention to the inner body, opens to the play of sound and invites us to rest in the awake awareness that includes and is the grounds of this living world.

Website photo credit: Janet Merrick
Video photo credit: Paul Van de Riet

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Mindfulness and compassion, when brought to our wounded heart, have the capacity to rewire our brain and free our spirit. This talk explores the ways we get trapped in the trance of feeling unworthy and unlovable, and how, with a wise attention, we can profoundly transform our relationship with our inner life. NOTE: this talk was given at the 5-day “The Undivided Heart” residential retreat in April 2024.

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In times of stress, it’s crucial that we have pathways to quiet our minds, relax our bodies and rest in a calm, steady presence. This meditation guides us in using the breath, body scan, and a home base of presence to find that inner refuge that can carry us through difficult times.

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Just as presence is the heart of meditation, so deep listening is at the center of all conscious, loving relationships. This talk explores how our wants and fears block listening, ways we can deepen our capacity for listening, and the healing that unfolds when we truly feel heard by another.

What happens when you’re really listening?

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The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

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Relating Wisely to our Inner Life: In this conversation, recorded for the acclaimed podcast, No Small Endeavor, award winning theologian, Lee C. Camp, interviews Tara about radically accepting and loving our being, just as we are. The conversation includes an unpacking of the RAIN meditation, and stories of navigating difficulty from Tara’s life.

No Small Endeavor, produced by Great Feeling Studios and PRX, brings you thoughtful conversations with artists, theologians and philosophers about what it means to live a good life. You can find the No Small Endeavor Podcast on your favorite podcast app or listen to more episodes here.

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One translation of mindfulness, in Chinese, is “present heart.” In this guided meditation we begin by awakening through the body and the senses, and then open the attention to the changing flow of experience. The intention is to meet whatever arises with a wakeful and kind presence.

It’s so helpful to say, “What’s happening inside me right now?” Then, “Can I meet this with kindness, with a present heart?”

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An Invitation to Freedom: A conversation between Tara and Connirae Andreas: Connirae Andreas was one of the first trainers in neurolinguistic programming (NLP). She developed and wrote a book on the Core Transformation Process, and more recently, the Wholeness Process. Her new book, The Wholeness Work Essential Guide: Level I—Healing and Awakening is the focus of our conversation.

Connirae’s teachings and practices are deep and impactful. She is gifted in communicating and guiding our inner unfolding in a way that makes accessible the domains of deep awakening and freedom pointed to by great mystics, poets and teachers over the centuries. And as this conversation reveals, the Wholeness Work can be transformational for new and seasoned meditators alike.

Learn more about Connirae Andreas and The Wholeness Work here.

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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.

“Relaxing back into the space between thoughts. Relaxing with what’s right here…”

The poet Rumi writes, “Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking, live in silence, flow down and down in always widening rings of being.”

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This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We […]

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We long for soul friends, and yet often engage with each other in reactive ways – caught inside the experience of a wanting, guarded, fearful self. This talk explores practices […]

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Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others. This talk explores the practice of radical self-honesty as the grounds of being more honest with others, and bringing more love and freedom to our lives. We close with a quote from “What’s True Here,” by Danna Faulds.

The post The Honesty Challenge – Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Photo: Gary Hillesland

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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.

“Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.”

Mary Oliver

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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. “A witnessing awareness is like a kind grandmother watching children – that simply notices what’s happening without judgment.” ~Tara

As you watch your mind, as you witness thoughts, sounds, feelings, you discover yourself as the watcher. When you stay motionless, only watching, you discover yourself as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is the source of all knowing, of loving. That source alone “is.” Relax in that source, in that beingness, and abide there.

from the Indian teacher, Sri Nisargadatta

Écouter en-Français: Meditation: Being a Kind Witness

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This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.

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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 […]

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All true meditation guides us back to presence, and the mystery that is our source. In this guided meditation we awaken the senses, collect with the breath, and when lost […]

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The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep […]

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Our breath is always available as a pathway back to presence. This simple meditation guides us to relax and awaken in the body, and then establishes the breath as a […]

The post Meditation: Coming Home with the Breath (14:57 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

The Buddha said, “I would not be teaching this (a path of awakening) if genuine happiness and freedom were not possible.” While this is our potential, we each have deep […]

The post Part 1: Rewiring for Happiness and Freedom appeared first on Tara Brach.

The meditation begins with a body scan, filling the body with aliveness. Then we widen attention, becoming aware of the sounds that are happening moment-to-moment, aware of the sensations, feelings, […]

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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 […]

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Zen master Dōgen teaches that enlightenment is intimacy with all things. These two talks explore teachings and practices that cultivate intimacy – a liberating experience of relatedness and oneness with […]

The post Intimacy with Life (Part 1) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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 an offering of blessings to […]

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Grief is our natural way of expressing loss for what we love, and learning to open to grief serves the deepening and widening of our loving. This event, given at […]

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“Ask Me Anything” – Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as interviewer. Photo: Jonathan Foust

The post Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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 […]

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While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and […]

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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 […]

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“Ask Me Anything” – Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as interviewer. Photo: Jonathan Foust

The post Ask Me Anything with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1) appeared first on Tara Brach.

This practice guides us to a receptive, kind presence by starting with listening, and moving through a body scan. We then rest in an open awareness, responding to whatever arises […]

The post Meditation: Meeting Life with a Kind Presence (20:17 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

This meditation invites us to collect our attention with a calming breath, and then with the senses as a home base, settle into presence. The reminders encourage a letting go […]

The post Meditation: Resting in Breath, Relaxing into Life (21:39 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer look at how anxiety […]

The post Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness: A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer (Part 2) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Anxiety is spiking around the world and we need the radical medicine of awareness to unwind it. In this two-part conversation, Tara and Judson Brewer look at how anxiety is […]

The post Unwinding Anxiety with Awareness: A conversation with Tara and Dr. Judson Brewer (Part 1) appeared first on Tara Brach.

In this meditation we engage a relaxed and alert attention by scanning through the body, opening to sound, and resting in the awareness that includes all the senses. This presence […]

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This meditation begins with a body scan, and then we practice opening to and relaxing with our changing experience. The sitting closes with a beautiful poem by Danna Faulds, “Just […]

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Fear is a natural and universal part of our incarnation, and, when it goes on overdrive, we get imprisoned in the suffering of separation. These two talks explore how the […]

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This meditation establishes a kind attention by bringing the imagery and felt sense of a smile into the body scan and then, with the breath as a home base, opens the attention to changing experience. We end with a brief loving kindness reflection.

The post Meditation: Open-Hearted Presence (22:58 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Fear is a natural and universal part of our incarnation, and, when it goes on overdrive, we get imprisoned in the suffering of separation. These two talks explore how the RAIN meditation can help us face fear, and discover the boundless loving awareness that includes but is not contracted by currents of fear.

How did the rose ever open up its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain too frightened. ~ Hafez (Daniel Ladinsky, translation)

Image by Aravind kumar from Pixabay

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This meditation awakens the senses and then guides us into the wakeful openness that includes the whole play of sensations, feelings and sound. We become fully awake and alive as we open to the awareness that allows life to live through us.

Photo: Janet Merrick

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Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting with our inner life, and remembering we are in this together, awakening together.

Would you like the support of others in working with harmful habits? Cloud Sangha has a Mindful Friends Group forming now that can help! Learn more about Mindful Friends Groups at Cloud Sangha.

Listen to Part 1: Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit – Part 1

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Addictions of all levels of intensity arise from disconnection and are spiking globally. Humans are experiencing epidemic levels of loneliness, and this combined with engineered products and substances that are highly addictive leads to great suffering. In these two talks, we explore how we get hooked on behaviors that we know cause harm, and how mindfulness and self-compassion can serve our freedom. Key to this process is reconnecting with our inner life, and remembering we are in this together, awakening together.

Would you like the support of others in working with harmful habits? Cloud Sangha has a Mindful Friends Group forming now that can help! Learn more about Mindful Friends Groups at Cloud Sangha.

Listen to Part 2: Releasing the Habits That Imprison Your Spirit – Part 2

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In our everyday life we are conditioned to feel that life is happening to us, or that we are the doer. This meditation deconditions that self-centrality by bringing attention to the aliveness in our bodies, and then opening to receive the entire play of sounds, sensations and feelings in awareness.

photo: Janet Merrick

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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.

The post Radical Acceptance – Gateway to Love, Wisdom and Peace appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.”

Photo credit: Donna JS Russo Dogfish Art

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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.

Photo credit: Janet Merrick

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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.

The post Meditation: Embodied Spirit (16:54 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Hameed Ali is an author, spiritual teacher and founder of the Diamond Approach to Self-Realization. In this interview we explore ways of approaching awakening to who we are, and look at the importance of befriending the experience of separate self, and actively investigating the blocks – our contracted sense of identity – that obscure the goodness and love of our true nature. Our time weaves in the inspiration of Hameed’s most recent book, Nondual Love, (his pen name A.H. Almaas is listed as author.)

For more information: Diamond Approach homepage

And Nondual Love book talk.

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This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home.

Photo: Donna Russo

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This week, I began a two-part series inspired by Pema Chödron’s newest offering, How We Live is How We Die. It’s a powerful book that I highly recommend! (Here’s where you can learn more about it and pick up a copy)

One of our deepest inquiries is how to find happiness and peace in an inherently insecure world. In these talks, we’ll explore the ways we habitually try to control our lives, and the practices of presence that allow us to cherish this living world and find freedom in the midst of change and loss.

Photo: Shannon Lavery

The post Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Photo: Janet Merrick

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One of our deepest inquiries is how to find happiness and peace in an inherently insecure world. These two talks explore the ways we habitually try to control our lives, and the practices of presence that allow us to cherish this living world and find freedom in the midst of change and loss.

Photo: Janet Merrick

The post Finding True Refuge in This Living Dying World – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

The pathway to inhabiting our full presence is including, with mindfulness all parts of experience. This guided meditation explores how we can open, without resistance to the changing flow of sensations, feelings, thoughts and sounds, and discover the boundless awareness that is our true home.

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet-
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow,
Illuminated in your infinite peace.

A billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

~ rainer maria rilke

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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.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Foust

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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.

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

“Lost” by David Wagoner

Photo Credit: Christy Sharshel

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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. We close with a poem by Robert Hall.

Within the body you are wearing, now
inside the bones and beating in the heart,
lives the one you have been searching for so long.

But you must stop running away and shake hands,
the meeting doesn’t happen
without your presence . . . your participation.

The same one waiting for you there
is moving in the trees, glistening on the water,
growing in the grasses and lurking in the shadows you create.

You have nowhere to go.
The marriage happened long ago.
Behold your mate.

Robert K. Hall

Photo: Quince apple – Janet Merrick

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This guided practice awakens a relaxed and friendly attention that rests in the breath and opens to whatever is arising. We deepen that presence with the intention to truly say “Yes” to experience, allowing life to be just as it is.

Photo: Donna Russo

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This meditation begins with a body scan that guides us to awaken our senses. We relax open to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, open awareness (a morning meditation from the 2015 IMCW New Year silent retreat).

The post Meditation: Spacious Sky of Awareness (18:04) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

… Aware of the sounds that are actually here. Perhaps sensing that smile in the eyes, the mouth, the heart, and reestablishing a friendly presence, relaxing with the breath, relaxing with the life that’s here. Letting everything be just as it is.

In these last minutes, you might explore a bit more what it means to meet the moment with a friendly quality of presence – a gentle clear attention, letting this life be just as it is, moment-to-moment.

~ Tara

The post Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (17:27 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Perhaps the most universal place to collect and deepen attention is the breath. This meditation begins with an intentional breath that calms the nervous system, and then opens to a clear, intimate presence with our natural breathing. With breath as our home base, we practice returning again and again when the mind becomes distracted. As presence grows, we can let the breath be in the foreground, and include whatever waves of life come and go. This brings a quiet mind, and a peaceful, happy heart.

photo: Donna JS Russo – Dogfish Art

The post Meditation: Homecoming to Our Life Breath (15:49 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

When we live from our mental control towers, we are in a trance that confines our life. These two talks look at the primary ways we are conditioned to leave embodied presence, and the consequence of unlived life—being cut off from our vitality, intelligence and compassion. We then explore the teachings and practices that guide us to reconnect to our senses, and the sacred presence that underlies all lived experience.

Listen to Part 1 here: Part 1: Refuge in the Wilderness – Coming Home to Embodied Presence

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This meditation includes relaxing and awakening through the body, widening the lens to include sound and then letting life live through us, receiving all that arises in open awareness.

The post Meditation: Opening to Full Aliveness (17:42 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

The post Meditation: Vipassana – The Practice of Seeing Clearly (18:13 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

• More Resources on RAIN: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture

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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.

“This river of sensation ceaselessly vibrating… tingling… flowing… let it live through you.”

“Completely relax with this ever-changing dance of sound and sensation.”

The post Meditation: Opening to the River of Aliveness (17:53 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

It’s possible to actually be addicted to self-criticism, especially as a way to keep yourself safe. But evidence shows that rather than safety, this pervasive habit in our society creates deep suffering. This conversation between Tara and Dan Harris dives into strategies to deal with your own self-hatred and cultivate a forgiving heart. (Note: This was initially created as an episode for 10% Happier Podcast)

In this episode:

Why Tara says self-hatred “divides us from our ourselves”
The benefits of learning the habit to stop kicking our own asses
Simple meditations to help us with self-forgiveness
Questions that can help us understand what really matters to us, and what we really want
The power of seeing the profundity in mundane experiences
A refresher on a fan favorite meditation technique: RAIN
How to start trusting reality more than we believe the beliefs about ourselves
Forgiveness vs accountability

View this episode at the 10% Happier Podcast here:
https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/tara-brach-534

The post How to Stop the War Against Yourself – A conversation with Tara Brach & Dan Harris appeared first on Tara Brach.

Download the free PDFWhile we all need to customize meditation, this is particularly important for those living with PTSD or strong, potentially overwhelming emotions.

This talk explores how trauma cuts us off from wholeness, and is accompanied by a deep and painful experience of shame. We look at the ways meditation can be adapted to cultivate sufficient safety for the full transformational healing of mindfulness to unfold.

The gift of processing trauma is that the place of woundedness becomes a gateway into profound love, healing, and freedom.

More Resources: Working with Fear and Trauma

Watch the video: https://youtube.com/live/LBG3K4nHRb4

The post Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness – The Power of Self-Nurturing appeared first on Tara Brach.

Meditation – Relaxing into Presence or Sleep (bell at end)This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.

Photo credit: Shannon Lavery, Rodeo Beach – Marin County, California

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Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies and let sounds wash through us. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.

photo: pixabay

The post Meditation: The Silence That is Listening (10:08 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Roland is a long-term meditator, a psychopharmacologist and professor at Johns Hopkins, and a leader in researching the clinical effects of psychedelics, including their impact on those struggling with cancer, depression or addiction. At the end of 2021, he discovered he had incurable stage 4 Colon Cancer. This conversation explores the relationship between meditation and psychedelics, and how they both can serve profound spiritual awakening and deep inner freedom in the face of mortality.

Information about the endowment fund:

The Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D. Professorship Fund in Psychedelic Research on Secular Spirituality and Well-Being

“The purpose of this endowment is to support a professorship and to establish a world class, rigorous, empirical program of research with psychedelic substances to advance understanding of well-being and spirituality in the service of human flourishing for generations to come. The hallmark of this research shall be the scientific method.” Roland R. Griffiths, PhD

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Meditation: Relaxing with a Smile into Living Presence (15 min) –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.

From the meditation closing:

Sometimes the inquiry, “Am I dreaming?” can help to clarify both the trance and the veils that we’re hiding behind and what’s actually here. “Am I dreaming?” Just to sense the thoughts, stories, commentary that keeps us one step removed from this vibrant mystery that’s right here. And then relax back again. Moment to moment – relaxing with the life that’s right here …this breath …these feelings …these sensations …this life.

In these last few minutes, you might ask yourself, “Can I let go just a little bit more?” Let go of the thoughts, the veils of stories. The tension in the body – let go, relax, and let this life live through you.

We close by bringing attention to the heart. Offering your heart, whatever blessing, saying, or wish most resonates in this moment.

Sense that this world, this life, is part of your heart.

Offering those around you, those close to you in your life, and all beings, your blessings.

Photo: Lake Needwood, Gary Hillesland

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The Buddha taught that this whole life – including our thoughts, feelings and actions – arise from the tip of intention. While our intentions are usually marbled with wanting and fear, when intention comes into the light of consciousness, it unfolds into its most pure essence. This talk explores ways that when we are stuck in reactivity, we can become aware of intention, and find our way to the aspiration that expresses our most awake and loving heart.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

― Mary Oliver, from “The Summer Day”

Link to more talks on intention.

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This meditation guides us in awakening our awareness by opening to all our senses and recognizing the alert presence that is always, already here. By relaxing back into the presence over and over, we become familiar with the reality that is truly our home.

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We leave presence by contracting into thoughts and resisting the changing flow of life. This meditation guides us in gently releasing thoughts and opening to this mysterious life, just as it is.

Let go of what is past
Let go of what may come
Let go of what is happening now
Don’t try to figure anything out
Don’t try to make anything happen
Relax right now and rest

~ Tibetan teaching

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Freedom Beyond SelfingWe spend many moments in a trance of selfing – preoccupied with the stories, wants and fears of what feels to be a separate self. The suffering is that this self-fixation obscures the depth and mystery of our being. In this talk we explore how to relate wisely to selfing, and discover the light and love that express our true nature.

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When we open without resistance to the changing flow of aliveness, we discover the formless presence that is our true home. This meditation guides us through a body scan and then opening to all sounds, sensations and emotions with the energetic allowing of “Yes.”

We close with a poem by Danna Faulds, “White Dove.”

In the shared quiet, an
invitation arises like a
white dove lifting from
a limb and taking flight.
Come and live in truth.
Take your place in the
flow of grace. Draw
aside the veil you thought
would always separate
your heart from love.
All you ever longed for is
before you in this moment
if you dare draw in a
breath and whisper “Yes.”

Danna Faulds

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IntraConnected – Part 2: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel – In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, “IntraConnected.” They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms “Mwe” (me plus we.) The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics.

Dan Siegel’s new book: IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging

NOTE: “Namaste and welcome. What follows is an interview I did with Dr. Dan Siegel. It focuses on his new book, “IntraConnected.” I had intended this to be a one-podcast session, but we got so into the content that it became too long, too full. So, I’m offering it to you in two parts. I want to say in advance that I learned a lot. I found a lot of inspiration in this conversation and I trust you will, as well. Enjoy!” ~ Tara

Also listen and watch: IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel

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As we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem from Mary Oliver.

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –

so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work

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IntraConnected – Part 1: Conversation with Tara and Dan Siegel – In this conversation, Tara interviews Dan about the themes in his new book, “IntraConnected.” They explore how our identity gets formed, and the profound healing and freedom that come with widening our sense of identity from me to what Dan terms “Mwe” (me plus we.) The principles they touch on come from indigenous wisdom, the contemplative or wisdom traditions, neuroscience and quantum physics.

Dan Siegel’s new book: IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging

NOTE: “Namaste and welcome. What follows is an interview I did with Dr. Dan Siegel. It focuses on his new book, “IntraConnected.” I had intended this to be a one-podcast session, but we got so into the content that it became too long, too full. So, I’m offering it to you in two parts. I want to say in advance that I learned a lot. I found a lot of inspiration in this conversation and I trust you will, as well. Enjoy!” ~ Tara

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Our habit is to try to manage our experience from a mental control tower. This meditation awakens us through the body, and then invites us to rest in that vast presence that includes the changing flow of life. When we inhabit that openness, there’s a natural arising of peace, wakefulness and tenderness.

photo by Janet

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Our True Nature – Emptiness Dancing (retreat talk) The most profound question in spiritual life is “who (or what) am I?” This talk explores ways of inquiring into the nature of awareness, and the blessings of embodying the realization of our radiant, empty essence. This audio talk was first offered at the 2011 IMCW Fall Weeklong Retreat, and it includes several guided reflections.

Photo: Janet

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We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then invites us to discover the spacious presence in the background of all experience.

You might reflect on these words from the Tibetan tradition:

Utterly awake, senses wide open.
Utterly open, non-fixating awareness.

NOTE: This meditation was given on the 4th morning of the 2018 IMCW New Year’s Retreat. It’s especially enjoyed when the mind is a bit quieter.

Image: Australian Coast – Donna JS Russo

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In this interview, Mingyur Rinpoche shares about his 4 1/2 years on a wandering retreat and the lessons he learned from a near-death experience. The two then talk about what it means to befriend panic as well as other strong emotions, and the qualities that express our intrinsic awareness. They also talk about compassion for our world, the evolution of consciousness, and the value of hope.

About Mingyur Rinpoche and his community:
https://tergar.org/about/mingyur-rinpoche/

More references:
– Meditation Community of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: https://tergar.org/
– Joy of Living (and related course) https://joy.tergar.org/

Book links:
– The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness
– In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

– As It Is, Volume I: Essential Teachings from the Dzogchen Perspective
by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (Author), & 3 more

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Meditation: Touching Peace ~ This guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image […]

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In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of […]

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The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current […]

The post The Calling of These Times – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

We can’t truly open to the waves of life unless we recognize our Oceanness, the formless awareness that is our source. This meditation begins with awakening the senses and then […]

The post Meditation: Being the Ocean and Opening to the Waves (retreat) (26:55 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

The Dalai Lama invites us to trust in the power of heart and awareness to awake through all circumstances. What does that look like in the midst of our current […]

The post The Calling of These Times – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Mind Our Democracy Together: Spiritual Action for the Midterms and Beyond [streamed 2022-11-03] Are you feeling distressed about the future of our democracy? Are you ready to engage with others […]

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Meditation: Befriending Our Experience We begin the meditation with a sense of befriending our experience – with an intention towards gentleness and kindness as the attention goes inward. We scan […]

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Wise or spiritual hope includes the aspiration to manifest our full potential, individually and collectively, and the trust that this is possible. This talk explores how, especially in stressful times, […]

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This meditation cultivates a gentle, wakeful presence in the body, with the “smile down” and then guides us to resting in a home base of sensations or the breath. We […]

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What gives us the inner strength to meet life’s challenges with resilience, heart and wisdom? Drawing on themes in Lori’s new book, “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal,” Tara and […]

The post Cultivating Inner Strength – A Conversation with Tara Brach and Lori Deschene appeared first on Tara Brach.

Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these […]

The post Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self (14:29 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 1 While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the […]

The post The Liberating Power of Conscious Intention – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to […]

The post Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality (19:04 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Our capacity to realize the truth of who we are and to love fully, arises from moments of true acceptance. This means meeting our unfolding life with an unconditional, open […]

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This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of […]

The post Meditation: Relaxing with Life (22:51 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look […]

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This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let […]

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This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and […]

The post Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen. A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement […]

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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 […]

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Meditation: Breath by Breath – Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle […]

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Meditation: Listening to Life – The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, […]

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Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence – This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling […]

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Meditation: Living Presence – 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 […]

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Meditation: Befriending and Opening to Life – This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the […]

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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.

The post Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence (15:32 min) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self. Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning […]

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Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence – This meditation scans through the body – arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming […]

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From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence – The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors […]

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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 […]

The post Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention (19:46 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

Navigating the Dark Ages – 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 […]

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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 […]

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Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life – This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. […]

The post Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (16:07 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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 […]

The post The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness (19:49 min.) – This meditation begins by relaxing through the body, and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense […]

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The Three Steps of Letting Go: A wonderful inquiry is, “What is between me and openhearted presence?” This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release […]

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Meditation: What is Your Deepest Longing? Download text in PDF – Find a comfortable way of sitting, and allow yourself to relax and be at ease. With a receptive presence, […]

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Meditation: Realizing Your Aspiration (9:43 min.) – Beyond any meditation technique, what energizes and guides our spiritual life is aspiration. This reflection can help deepen your connection with your aspiration […]

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Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence (14:55) – Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment […]

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Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2: In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These […]

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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 […]

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Nourishing Our Spirit in Times of Collective Fear – We are living with the threat of increasing, dramatic suffering around the globe. This talk looks at the direct ways our […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

The post Meditation: Awake and Alive (18:27 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

The post Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome (18:51 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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. […]

The post Meditation: Awareness is Our Home (21:31 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

The post Responding with Heart to Painful Times: A Conversation with Tara and Frank Ostaseski appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Enjoy a blog from Tara: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves

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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.

The post Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness (24:14 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Listen to Part 1: Being Embodied here.

Listen and watch Part 2 below:

The post Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 appeared first on Tara Brach.

Apprendre à être témoin de ce qui se passe à l’intérieur de nous est la porte d’entrée vers la liberté intérieure et la réalisation profonde de qui nous sommes. Cette méditation nous guide à devenir le témoin de notre expérience avec une conscience bienveillante et sans jugement.

Cette méditation est de Tara Brach. Elle est traduite et dite avec sa permission par Dominique Fugère (Québec, Canada).

Listen in English: Meditation: Being a Kind Witness

The post Meditation: Être Un Témoin Bienveillant appeared first on Tara Brach.

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).

The post Meditation: Embodied Spirit (16:54 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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).

The post Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen (23:39 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

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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.

The post Meditation: Being a Kind Witness (18:47 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Be brave and walk through the country of your own wild heart. Be gentle and know that you know nothing. Be still. Listen. Keep walking. No one else controls access to this perfect place. Give yourself your own unconditional permission to go there. Waste no time. Enter the center of your soul.
― St. Teresa of Ávila

The post Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.”

Photo credit: Donna JS Russo Dogfish Art

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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.

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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 (from retreat).

The post Heart Meditation: Loving Kindness – Befriending our Lives (27:22 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

Photo credit: Mojpe/pixabay.com

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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.

The post Meditation: Spacious, Clear Awareness (22:42 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

The post Meditation: Spacious, Clear Awareness (22:42 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

The post Meditation: Breathing Through (17:09 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

The post The Earth is Crying in Our Hearts appeared first on Tara Brach.

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.

The post Meditation: Know That You’re Here (19:22 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

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?”

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

Mark Nepo, “Adrift”

Photo Credit: Shell Fischer

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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.

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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.

The Second Sunday Dharma Series is hosted by IMCW. To support this and other programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC, visit https://imcw.org/Giving

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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).

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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).

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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.

Six Words of Advice:

Let go of what has passed.
Let go of what may come.
Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t try to make anything happen.
Relax, right now, and rest.

~ Tilopa
translated by Ken McLeod

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