Dharma Seed - dharmaseed.org: Tara Brach's most recent Dharma talks: Recent Episodes
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A pervasive but often invisible source of suffering in our culture is self-aversion. We are a busy culture, and we move through our life feeling anxious and dissatisfied, but not fully conscious of how we neglect or judge our inner experience. We suffer from a lack of belonging: to our own bodies, to each other and to the earth. When we practice Buddhist meditation, we learn how to listen deeply and hold our life tenderly.
The open space of compassion allows us to realize that our thoughts and emotions are not who we are; they are waves in our ocean. This gives us the freedom to live more wisely and love more fully.
For over thirty-five years, I've been exploring the awakening of awareness with yoga, meditation, a clinical psychology practice and relationships in spiritual community (sangha). Since the untying of emotional knots is an essential part of "waking up," it is natural for me to weave these elements into my Buddhist practice and teaching. With formal practice, and a genuine engagement in sangha, we can cultivate the qualities of heart and awareness that allow for deep emotional healing and spiritual freedom.
Buddhism guides us in slowing down, quieting and paying attention in an honest and caring way. Through our mindfulness and compassion practices, we establish a sense of intimacy and belonging to our life. We discover that there is no Buddha "out there." Rather, we realize that our true refuge is the wakefulness, openness and love of our own natural awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature (a reflection from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.comTara’s episode: https://lovedog.com/podcast/homecoming-being-present-with-our-dogs/The Podcast page on Lovedog.com: https://lovedog.com/podcast/
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.comPlease Note: At timestamp 57:41, Oren mistakenly attributes an article to George Lakey. The author of this article is Robert Reich.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation 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 presence – the awake space that is aware of this changing life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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]
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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/
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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. https://link.chtbl.com/LN08h4po?sid=TaraBrach
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Stress and overwhelm are spiking around the globe. This talk explores how we can practice with the arising of stress in ways that calm our body and tap our capacity for full presence, wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart.“Resting in the awareness that includes this changing life, regarding the changing waves with care, moment-to-moment. The moments of waking up out of thought are actually profoundly transformational. If you notice thinking and then plant the seeds of kindness, that becomes the habit of the heart.” ~TaraWe close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donohue, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life.“Our freedom comes not from what is happening, but from how we are relating to it. See if you can relate with the spirit of ‘yes,’ allowing whatever arises to be here. And if it feels difficult, painful, then bringing some real kindness – a ‘yes’ with gentleness and kindness.” ~ Tara
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation becomes truly freeing in the moments when there is no controlling whatsoever; when nothing is resisted or grasped after. This guided meditation begins with a simple body scan, relaxing and awakening to sensations in the body and then including the play of sound.We then let go of any doing, and simply notice and allow the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is. In this pure allowing presence we become aware of the background silence that is listening. The invitation is to relax and be the awareness that is conscious of all that is unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend great swaths of time in a trance that removes us from awareness of our body and senses. This meditation reconnects us by scanning through the body, including sounds and then resting in the field of awareness and aliveness. We practice relaxing and gently arriving again when thoughts carry us away; learning the pathway home to living presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart. We close with a short verse from poet Dorothy Hunt – “Peace Is This Moment Without Judgment.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Executive coach and author Stephen Josephs has worked with many top business leaders, guiding them in transcending the egoic conditioning that limit their impact on other people, and on societal change.In this conversation we look at what he’s learned about inner freedom and awakening from his own trauma, from 60 years of spiritual practice, from models of adult development, and from the poetry of Lao Tzu.Stephen and Tara have been close friends for over 50 years, and she considers him her first inspiration for a dedicated practice of meditation. His website is stephenjosephs.com.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens our senses, then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.“Listening to and feeling, the changing flow – right here, right in the center of now.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart.We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go.The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Assaf Katz is an activist and Buddhist teacher in Israel who opposes the Israeli governments’ devastating military action and long occupation in Palestine, and is dedicated to finding a path to peace. This conversation was part of an event for the Tovana mediation community in Israel. We talk about the inner process behind my circulation of a short piece responding to the violence in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel; how we can work with strong reactive emotions and trauma; what helps us to speak and act in a way that is truly serves the greater good, and what can give us hope for eventual peace. This offering includes the recording of a question/response period and a sharing of prayers.Read the article “What is Love Asking From Us?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long, deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara’s Wednesday night class, the meditation ends with a sense of melting into community – relaxed and alert.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart.We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go.The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) True listening arouses an open receptive presence that can be truly healing. This meditation awakens a listening presence; first bringing that receptive awareness to sensations and sounds, and then offering that presence to the tenderness and vulnerability of our heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Countless people live with shame and distress about their eating. Dr. Judson Brewer, scientist, professor and author of “The Hunger Habit” and many other groundbreaking books, is a thought leader in the field of habit change. He’s also a decades long practitioner of mindfulness, and a dear colleague and friend. In this conversation we explore how combining mindfulness practice with a basic understanding of habit change science can free us from unhealthy eating habits. We also look at the larger societal forces that drive overconsumption, as well as the shame that eating behaviors can evoke.Pick up your copy of The Hunger Habit at: https://drjud.com/the-hunger-habit/
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, dynamic presence (from the archives).It doesn’t matter how many times the mind drifts. It’s the gentle re-arriving that retrains your heart and mind. Just to choose to come back… Perhaps to sense what might let go a little more… If there’s something that might want to relax a bit more right now… To listen to and feel the changing moment-to-moment experience with an awake, open awareness. ~ Tara
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world (a special favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we habitually try to control our life, our true refuge—the source of peace, safety and freedom—is in the direct realization of reality itself. This talk explores three archetypal portals to true refuge—awareness (buddha), truth (dharma) and love (sangha.) With each we practice short reflections that help bring the particular gateway to refuge alive.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are lost in the trance of doing, our lives are on automatic, and contracted by sense that something’s wrong or missing. This talk explores the challenges of learning to pause, and the blessings that arise when we step out of our incessant mental and physical activity and reconnect with the being-qualities of presence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives).“The deepest expression of love is this non-doing presence because that’s when we are inhabiting who we really are.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source. The meditation closes with “Walk Slowly”, from the poetry of Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our deepest longing is to feel our belonging to each other and all life. This reflection examines the primary forces that keep us trapped in a trance of separation. We then explore two powerful dimensions of spiritual practice that can undo trance and reveal the sentience and love that is our shared essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When physical or emotional pain is too much, our conditioning is to pull away and avoid direct contact with raw feelings. The result is a trance – we are split off from the wholeness of our aliveness, intelligence and capacity to love. This talk explores how this dissociation shows up in our lives and how mindfulness enables us to integrate cut-off parts of our being in a powerful way, and awaken from this trance.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a scientist and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored a number of books, including bestselling “Born to be Good” and most recently “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life”.Our conversation covers the biological, evolutionary and cultural bases of human goodness and the centrality of awe in the human experience. We explore the blocks to experiencing our full potential, and ways we can cultivate our innate capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives.Learn more about Dacher’s latest book at: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/622175/awe-by-dacher-keltner/
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The divides in our world can only exist if we humans are divided from our own full being and habituated to divides with others. In this reflection we explore bridging inner and relational divides as the grounds for evolving consciousness in our species and awakening to more connectedness and love in our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep breath, and awakening a full relaxed presence as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm. Resting fully in this presence is the gateway to deep peace and inner freedom.“Little breath breathe me gently, row me, for I am the river I am learning to cross.” – W.S. Merwin
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our deep potential is to live from an awake, loving heart. This talk looks at how, with a kind and mindful attention, we can decondition habitual tendencies toward grasping and self-centeredness, and nourish the sense of connectedness and care that gives rise to generosity. As we bring these heart practices alive in our most immediate relationships, they have the power to evolve consciousness in widening circles across the world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment-to-moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Dalai Lama regularly says that everyone wants to be happy, nobody wants to suffer. Arthur Brooks, in his new book on getting happier (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey) digs into the practical and science-based approaches that increase deep wellbeing. In this conversation Tara and Arthur discuss the ingredients of happiness, the role of unhappiness in our lives, how to work with core ego-fears, the power of metacognition, the necessity of transcendence of small self and the love that is the grounds of true happiness.Learn more about Arthur’s work & pick up a copy of his new book, Build the Life You Want at: https://arthurbrooks.com.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Loch Kelly is an author, psychotherapist and highly respected meditation teacher known for his instructions for effortless mindfulness. Our rich and wide-ranging conversation includes themes of interconnectedness, the natural weaves of psychology and meditation, the healing of self-compassion, the power of short glimpses into the nature of reality, RAIN, prayer, awakening through social identities, turning toward dying, centering joy and much more!Loch Kelly is the creator of the new groundbreaking Meditation and Wellness App, Mindful Glimpses. This new app seamlessly weaves together ancient wisdom, cutting-edge psychology, and neuroscience research. Drawing from over 40 years of mindfulness teaching and psychotherapy practice, Loch Kelly has crafted an app that provides simple yet advanced micro-meditations to return you to home base anytime of the day.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our attention habitually fixates on the foreground of thoughts and feelings, and fuels an unconscious identification with a sense of separate self. This meditation guides us in recognizing the awareness that is the background and source of all experience. By resting in and as the awareness that we are, all sense of separation dissolves revealing the vastness and oneness of Being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world. …calling on the presence of your heart and offering whatever blessing or wish you’d like to offer to yourself… whatever prayer of care. Then in that heart-space including other beings in this world. Holding the world in your heart and sensing your prayer of care for all beings. ~ Tara (from the meditation)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Stephen Fulder is a senior Buddhist teacher, author and peace activist who lives and teaches in Israel. In this conversation Stephen shares about his experience during the unfolding violence in the Middle East, and what he and his community are doing to tend to the huge trauma people are feeling.He talks about being with intense fear and emotions, and how to talk with those who have very different views. And he shares about the past decades of the deep and powerful work he’s been involved in, bringing groups of Israeli and Palestinian people together to find their shared hearts and humanity. Together Stephen and Tara look at what our true refuge is in the midst of a world in crisis and pathways that can carry us to that precious space of equanimity, compassion and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we get stuck in difficult emotions like hatred, anger and fear, we are in a trance of separation – disconnected from the whole of our inner experience, each other and the web of life. This talk explores four inquiries that help us reconnect with presence and heart. Rather than reacting with aggression or blame, these inquiries allow us to respond to our struggling world with our naturally wise and caring heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A key pathway to full presence is awakening through the body. This meditation guides us through a body scan, relaxing and receiving the play of sensations. We then deepen attention to the breath, and rest with the rhythmic waves of breathing, experiencing the background of the whole domain of physical aliveness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we can’t forgive ourselves, we remain imprisoned and separate from our world. This talk explores forgiving as a process of relaxing open the clenched fist of self-blame. As forgiving becomes deep and full, we discover the freedom of a spacious, awake and loving heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In his recent book, The New Saints, Lama Rod Owens offers teachings and practices that awaken our longing for freedom, and help us realize the truth of who we are. This week, I sat down with Lama Rod to talk about how an authentic path of liberation must include the often unexamined layers of our personal and societal existence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.“It’s in that gap between thoughts that the light shines through – this mystery, this living mystery of what’s right here… opening to and relaxing into the life that’s right here.” ~ Tara
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) At the core of our suffering is our universal human predicament: an illusion that we are a separate self. This talk explores how this identification as a self obscures our belonging to loving awareness, and offers a powerful set of practices that shine a light on self-centeredness and relaxes its grip.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Here’s a link to Jane’s most recent book: The Asking: New and Selected Poems. The interview includes readings from this beautiful collection.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with gathering awareness of the breath. We then reflect on our deepest intention, sensing what most matters. With a listening attention, becoming aware of sounds that arise and pass away. We scan through the body, sensing the changing experience of energy and aliveness. Letting everything happen… not opposing anything… not controlling… moment to moment. Listening to and feeling this moment as an ever-changing river of experience. Opening to this changing flow and letting life flow through us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this rich and full two-part interview, Tara speaks with renowned poet Jane Hirshfield about the interface between poetry and meditation, the centrality of acceptance, and the pathways of remembrance that reveal our belonging to this world and open us to caring. Here’s a link to Jane’s most recent book: The Asking: New and Selected Poems. The interview includes readings from this beautiful collection.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with them, feeling them fully and mentally whispering, “this belongs,” or “this too.” By not resisting, we discover the sea of awareness that has room for all the waves.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying “Yes” to the life that is here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 that release identification with these scales that confine us, so we can remember the sacredness living through ourselves and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 by Danna Faulds from her book:
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging (from the 2016 IMCW Spring Silent Retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of well-being, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 in thought, practice relaxing back into the aliveness and awareness that is always here. We close with a beautiful poem from poet Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 home base for our attention. Our practice is to notice when the mind becomes distracted, and gently return to our breath and senses. This helps the mind to become increasingly settled, calm and clear. We close with a short heart blessing.“As you let your attention go inward, you might ask yourself a very simple question: What is most important to me? What is it that brings me to practice right now? What does your heart long for?"
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of wellbeing, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 our living world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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, or emotions that are here. Again and again, the invitation is to relax back into presence, intimate with the life living through you. In allowing life to be just as it is, we inhabit pure Beingness, at home in the dynamic and tender awareness that is our shared essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 our living world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 the Upaya Zen Center on June 25, 2023, includes short meditations and talks by Frank and Tara, and powerful sessions of questions and responses.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) “Ask Me Anything” – Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as interviewer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) “Ask Me Anything” – Tara responds to your questions, with Jonathan Foust, her husband and known meditation teacher, as interviewer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 with a gentle attention.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 of thoughts, shifting from virtual reality into the aliveness of moment-to-moment experience. In that letting go into life we find the stillness, wakefulness and openness of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 is stabilized with the use of a home base, for many the breath, and reminders to “relax back” when the mind naturally drifts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Jud offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a pioneer and leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction. Together they explore the power of particular mindfulness-based strategies, including noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing curiosity and cultivating self-care. They shine a light on the genesis of worrying, how it perpetuates anxiety and ways we can become disenchanted with the habit.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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. (Part 2)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In our everyday life we are conditioned to feel that life is happening to us, or that we are the doer. This meditation de-conditions 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A.H. Almaas 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 his most recent book, Nondual Love, (his pen name A.H. Almaas is listed as author.)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we have the courage to pause and meet fear with the mindfulness and compassion of RAIN, our awareness and wisdom awaken. This RAIN meditation will guide you in unhooking from anxiety and fear, offering a pathway to inner transformation and a fearless heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha taught that if your mind is captured by the fear and misunderstanding of limiting beliefs, “trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.” In this brief guided meditation, we’ll use the RAIN practice (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture) to bring the light of awareness on the beliefs that may be blocking us from an open and free heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Last 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! 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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! 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We often talk of widening the circles of compassion. This talk explores the qualities of mature compassion, what blocks us from this embodied and inclusive caring, and how each of us can awaken a heart that responds to our world’s suffering.This event was live-streamed and includes a talk, several guided reflections, and a Q&A session.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the “second arrow” of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential. (This talk was given at the 2016 IMCW fall retreat.)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The capacity to release the armoring of hatred and blame is intrinsic to our evolving consciousness. This talk explores the process of authentic forgiveness, and how we can use the mindfulness-based tool of RAIN to heal and free our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 global crises? These two talks explore what these times are drawing forward in us individually and collectively, and how we can live true to the full wisdom and love of our beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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, this hope gets clouded over by fear; and how when it is alive, wise hope energizes and guides all spiritual transformation. We look at three practices – 3 A’s – that help us nurture hope: Aspiration for what we love, Attending to what we love, and Actively serving what we love. This talk includes several poems by poet Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 the body, opening to sounds and the senses, resting in the awareness that includes this changing life. When the mind drifts, as it naturally does, we notice, then relax back into a receptive, listening presence. There’s nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is. Resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying “Yes” to the life that is here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 Lori explore the mindset that is conducive to growth, working with negative beliefs, ways of transforming fear, and what it means to have inner strength in facing loss and death. We also talk about what can most empower and energize us in responding to a world struggling with multiple crises.NOTE: Find Lori Deschene’s “The Tiny Buddha’s Inner Strength Journal” here: tinybuddha.com/strong. Lori also created several free companion resources, available at tinybuddha.com/strength-tools.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls.These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience.In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience.
In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience.
In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience.
In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we can’t change our past, we have the capacity in this moment to remember our deepest intention and seed the future. Intention can become the compass of our heart, guiding and creating our life experience.
In these two talks we explore how we awaken mindfulness of intention and how, when we are caught in habits that create suffering, we can find our way home to the deep intention that heals and frees us. The two talks include reflections and practices that can bring the power of intention alive in your life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us know the pain of getting stuck in fear, anxiety, anger or shame. This exploration looks at how the emotion that takes over, when we attend with mindfulness and care, can become a place of deep transformation and freedom. Included in the talk is a guided RAIN meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We deepen the intention to befriend and relax with whatever arises moment-to-moment, letting life be just as it is. We offer a brief lovingkindness reflection, sensing our heart and mind, and offering whatever wish most resonates to ourselves and others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the freedom of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and, instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation scans through the body – arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins by relaxing through the body, and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness to life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back, and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness, and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A wonderful inquiry is, “What is between me and openhearted presence?” This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release the blocks to our natural and loving awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are living with the threat of increasing, dramatic suffering around the globe. This talk looks at the direct ways our meditation practices, supported by findings of neuroscience, can help us find resilience and an open heart in the face of an uncertain and frightening future. It includes a number of short reflections and meditations.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being – open, awake and tender.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 4: Equanimity – unfolds as we find a wise balance and spaciousness in the midst of this living, dying world.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This heart practice opens with the intention to bring a kind presence to whatever arises. After arriving with a body scan, we are guided to meet all experience with an open tender awareness. The practice ends with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called “Is this the Path of Love?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our world is changing faster than we can compute or process. Accompanying these changes are a growing violence, deepening divides, great loss and much uncertainty and fear.
In this week’s talk, I’m joined by Frank Ostaseski to explore teachings and practices that can support us in meeting our inner life and our world with kindness and awareness. Our time includes engagement with those present in a live event.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The medicine our world most needs is compassion, and it is crucial that this include all living beings. Our societal conditioning blinds us to the horror of suffering experienced by non-human animals through our cruel system of factory farming. This conversation looks at how facing and responding to this suffering is necessary for the freedom of our own hearts, and the healing of the world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever was going on.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path (re-mastered talk from 2021).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Engaged spirituality means responding to our world’s suffering with wisdom and deep care. This talk looks at three blocks to aligning our actions with our heart – “bad othering,” dissociation and overwhelm. We explore how we can awaken from each reaction to suffering by drawing on our practices of presence and remembering our larger belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, a compassion practice or tonglen, is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us home to the vastness of loving presence (re-mastered from the 2013 IMCW fall 7-day silent retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we’re reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of “just this” and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this Moment Without Judgment.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Acceptance is radical because it undoes our resistance to reality. This talk explores how our meditation practice can cultivate a liberating acceptance, a heartspace that includes all of life and enables us to respond to our world with deep intelligence and compassion. all life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This heart meditation guides us in how to cultivate a deep quality of friendliness in relating to our inner life and each other. The gift of this practice is a direct sense of belonging – knowing that we can never be alone (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The ground of loving kindness is seeing the basic goodness in ourselves, each other and our world. This is what gives rise to pure appreciation, friendliness, love and the felt-sense of belonging. In this talk we explore what obscures and contracts our perceptual field, and the pathway of purposefully awakening this transformational capacity of cherishing all life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it’s led humans to destroying our larger body, Earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with a breath that calms and collects the attention, and then a body scan that enables us to awaken our senses. Finally, we relax open fully to include the changing flow of sounds and sensations, in a spacious, clear awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The suffering in our world arises out of a sense of separation—from our own bodies and hearts, each other, and this living web. These two talks explore this trance of separation and how it’s led humans to destroying our larger body, earth. We then look at the pathways of awakening to the truth of “interbeing” and responding to our precious world with love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Drawn from a classic Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice, this guided meditation invites us to open to the sufferings of the world, and let it move through our hearts and out again. The blessing of this offering of presence is that our hearts become a transformer of sorrow.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend many moments in a trance, time traveling to the past and future, lost in a virtual reality. This meditation helps us collect our attention with our breath, awaken through the body, and open the senses. We then rest in the wakeful openness that includes changing experience, aware of the mystery and vividness of being Here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The essence of courage is to willingly feel our vulnerability; this is what allows us to respond to life with an undefended, wise heart. This talk explores the ways we resist opening to vulnerability, and three key steps in cultivating a courageous presence.
Ask, “What does it mean to be courageous at this moment?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Quieting our busy bodies and minds brings alive our heart and spirit. This practice begins with a reading on silence by Gunilla Norris, and then includes guidance in letting go of tension, opening to aliveness and resting in a caring and wakeful awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Resilience and Wisdom in an Uncertain World, a conversation between IMCW’s executive director, Trisha Stotler and Tara Brach. The Buddhist scriptures describe a mind that “no longer shakes, in a world where everything is shaking.” Our times are deeply stressful and troubling, and we need individual and collective ways of responding from our deepest understanding and care. In this interview, Tara reflects on the perspectives and ways of practicing that allow us to engage in relationships and our larger society from an awake compassionate heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my heart’s will” (a favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn. (To participate you will need a 20” red string.)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Entering a new year is a wonderful opportunity to clarify our purpose. In this guided visualization, we are invited to attune to the state of our heart and our deepest aspiration.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are often at war with our difficult emotions—judging and hating ourselves for our fear, anger, clinging or shame. And as a society, we turn on others as lesser or bad, as the enemy. These talks explore how, in both domains, our continued evolution, healing and freedom depends on learning how to embrace what we have pushed away.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our healing and freedom unfolds as we bring radical acceptance – a mindful, allowing presence – to our moments. This interview looks at how we wake up out of the stories that keep us in fear and self-doubt and discover a true intimacy with ourselves and our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While the holidays can be times of loving celebration, they can also highlight relational conflicts and challenges. This talk explores how, given the stress of the season, we can bring grace and openheartedness to ourselves and others.
Tonight’s class closes with special music: “Love is the Answer” by Len Seligman (with his permission). You can learn more about Len and listen to his latest offerings at https://www.lenseligman.com
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Taking in the Goodness: Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.” This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group. The audio includes a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya (from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our incessant thinking removes us from the full aliveness, vastness and mystery of Being. This guided practice helps us inhabit our energetic forms, and rest in the vast, formless stillness that gives rise to this ever creative living world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A Conversation between Tara and Rev Angel Kyodo Williams – Our happiness and capacity to love fully arise as we face and embrace all domains of our existence. In this conversation we look at the often unexamined societal conditioning that, when unseen, perpetuates caste systems that harm ourselves and all involved. Our inquiry: For the sake of freedom, how do we deepen our attention to see the forces that cut us off from wholeness, from belonging, from living from an awake, compassionate heart?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Only when we face our fears can we discover the freedom to love without holding back. This talk looks at how unprocessed fear contracts our body, heart and mind, and on a societal level is the cause of othering and violence. We then explore how arousing mindfulness, compassion and prayer can enlarge our basic sense of Being. As we deepen attention to the nature of awareness, we discover a refuge that is timeless…a refuge that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This RAIN meditation helps us explore pathways to nurturing ourselves in a way that brings profound transformation and healing.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The blessing of the spiritual path is a homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s natural that our attention wanders, and the more we relax back, the more that becomes our habit…returning to presence. This meditation opens with conscious breathing and awakening through the body. We then rest in open awareness, and when the attention drifts, guide ourselves to rest our minds, over and over, in the aliveness and presence that is right here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being and can be held with tenderness and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The blessing of the spiritual path is homecoming to our essential nature—wakeful, loving awareness. These two talks explore the grounds of that awakening, which is a shift of identity from that of a separate self to realizing the formless luminous presence that, like a boundless ocean, includes all the waves or expressions of our being. This two-part series includes several guided reflections and invites us into the dimensions of the path that lead to true freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we are suffering, it is because we are believing something that is not true and caught in emotional reactivity. A key tool in meditation is investigation–actively inquiring into what is happening inside us. When we investigate with sincere interest and care, the light of our attention untangles difficult emotions and nourishes intimate relationships. As this light is turned toward awareness itself, it reveals the radiance and emptiness of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom, the awake space of Being, that is beyond the confines of thoughts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How we relate to change and loss is directly connected to how fully we live and love. This talk looks at the classic ways we avoid opening to the realness of loss, and how our sorrows and grief can become a portal to awakening our heart and spirit.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Unprocessed fear cuts us off from our full aliveness and spirit, and it separates us from others. This talk looks at how we bring healing to the trauma and deep fears that cause us to dissociate from our body. We focus on ways we increase safety, diminish shame and then, with a courageous, embodied and compassionate presence, learn to contact and integrate fear into our larger awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this meditation, we relax and open our body and mind, and then explore an encounter with our Future Self – the expression of our most evolved and awakened heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence. Closes with a metta (loving-kindness) prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The often unseen cause of our difficulties in relationships is the societal structures that are marked by violence and domination. This conversation looks at what blocks authentic and loving connectedness, and ways to intentionally cultivate authentic, openhearted awake relationships.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mark is a spiritual teacher, wonderful poet, and author of many books including best selling The Book of Awakening. In this wide-ranging and rich conversation, Tara and Mark explore shedding our defenses, faith, compassion for ourselves and others, spiritual practice, and facing illness, aging and death.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In Buddhism and most faiths, humility – feeling that we all share common ground, feeling neither superior or inferior to others – is both a prerequisite to awakening and an expression of mature spirituality. This talk explores how our conditioning and culture reinforce a swing from ego-inflation (self-importance, feeling special, better than others) to ego-deflation (feeling unworthy). We then look at how a wise and kind attention opens us to who we are beyond these confining egoic states, and enables us to live with humility and grace.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase “exquisite risk” to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life, and in engaging with others from full authenticity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Natalie Goldberg has inspired an entire generation to experience writing as a practice that can awaken our hearts and minds. In this interview Natalie gives guiding tips on approaching writing and, drawing on stories and verses from her beautiful recent book, “Three Simple Lines,” helps us feel the power and depth of haiku.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The openness to possibility is essential on a path of awakening and freedom. In this talk we explore what makes up mature or spiritual hope, and how two meditation practices of presence can nourish our hope.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The principles of mindful leadership are relevant for all of us—they bring out the best of who we are in our work, with our family, with our friends. Especially in these times of mistrust and dividedness, our world desperately needs each of us to cultivate the qualities of focus, presence, care, respect, clarity, and curiosity that mark a true leader. Michelle Maldonado is a brilliant teacher of mindful leadership, and she embodies the compassion and skillfulness she invites forward in others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores three powerful ways you can direct your attention when you find yourself emotionally stuck: Wake up from thoughts; feel your feelings and remember love. We explore both the habits blocking these basic movements toward freedom, and what nourishes them. Together they can serve to open your mind, awaken aliveness and heal your heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this interview-style conversation, Jonathan asks Tara questions about key themes in her new book, Trusting the Gold. They include their own relationships and ways we work with our inner life and others, in cultivating the capacity to see basic goodness and realizing a mature and liberating quality of trust.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing – the liberating intention – that guides us to freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Kristin Neff is a pioneer in self-compassion research and a leader in bringing practices of self-compassion alive in our world. This conversation is on her latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, which helps women awaken both receptive and active dimensions of compassion – tenderness and fierceness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The essence of the spiritual path is realizing, trusting and living from our natural awareness and love. This talk explores the two key pathways that help us awaken from the trance of identifying as a limited, separate self. It includes several guided meditations and a period of questions and response.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness, that is the source of all being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the moments we release all resistance, we relax open to inhabit the fullness of our Being. This meditation guides us to an embodied, openhearted presence that welcomes the changing flow of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) John O’Donahue writes, “We are so busy managing our lives, we forget this great mystery we are involved in.” This talk looks at the ways we pull away from the mystery and the path of “beginners mind” that enables us to encounter this living world with freshness, courage and wonder (a special talk from the 2013 archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) One of the great sufferings facing us is the growing divide between humans with different views, different realities. This talk looks at several levels of divides—being at war with ourselves, creating separation in our personal relationships, and societal divides. We then reflect on how we can evolve consciousness from the trance of “Fight, Flight, Freeze” to the wholeness that arises with “Tend and Befriend.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s easy to race through our seasons and miss the mystery and preciousness of unfolding moments. This meditation invites us into an embodied, openhearted presence and includes a poem by Pat Schneider called “Instructions for the Journey.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Prayer can be a creative, vibrant and infinitely tender part of our spiritual awakening. This talk explores the dimensions of embodied presence, sincere expression and silence that bring transformational power to our prayers.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We resist reality by tensing our body and contracting into thoughts. This meditation guides us into letting go of resistance by surrendering over and over into the aliveness and presence that is right here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The ritual of Namaste - bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others - helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are lost inside thoughts we lose connection with our heart, aliveness and spirit. This meditation guides us to a wakeful presence and invites us to return over and over from virtual reality into the mysterious, tender vastness that is our true being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) As a species, forgetting our belonging to our larger body of Earth is causing suffering for this entire living web. In this talk we look at what causes and sustains this trance of forgetting. We then explore the ways we each can awaken a sense of loving connectedness and active caring toward our natural world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our tension is a way of defending against the aliveness that is here and now. This meditation guides us in relaxing tension, awakening our senses and discovering the vitality and presence that express our natural being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Like a dense fog, chronic self -judgment blocks the light of our true nature. This talk explores the challenges to loving the life within us, and the pathways of practice that lead to holding our own being and all life in a boundless tender heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love (a favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) There are two common fears that can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the Archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Love is often abstract, and not fully alive. In this practice, with the supportive image and felt sense of a smile, we are guided to awaken loving in our body, mind and whole being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we’re stressed our hearts tighten and we try to control our life. This meditation guides us to relax the controlling and discover the open, tender awareness that allows life to be as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to have fears of what’s ahead, when we learn to face the inevitability of change and loss without resistance, we discover true peace and freedom in the midst. In a very direct way, our awareness of impermanence awakens unconditional loving. These two talks explore the ways we habitually deny or resist reality, and the three interrelated pathways—refuge in the present moment, love and awareness—that liberate us.
NOTE: The quoted prayer "And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well" is from 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, in her work “Revelations of Divine Love.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Deep listening expresses the purity and presence of our true nature. This meditation guides us to come into a state of listening that is spacious, receptive and profoundly wakeful and present. We close with the poem “lost” by David Wagoner.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to wake up our senses and full aliveness through a body scan, and then to rest in the formless presence that is aware of this changing dance of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening deeply is the gateway to realizing connection. It’s what allows us to move through life with a wise, loving and healing presence. These two talks explore our blocks to true listening, and offer teachings and practices that can directly cultivate this invaluable capacity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our “mask” or ego self, and not seeing past other people’s masks. In this talk we reflect together on some key filters of superior/inferior and good/bad that shape the trance of a narrowed identity, and then explore how mindfulness and kindness free us to inhabit the vastness of our natural awareness. We close with tasting the possibility of bringing the spirit of Namaste to ourselves, others and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our pathway to peace and happiness is through opening, with tenderness, to our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation guides us first to be awake in our body and senses, and then to include the changing flow of life in a spacious, kind heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The capacity to witness what is happening inside us with a non-judging attention allows us to respond to life from our full intelligence and heart. This talk looks at the role of witnessing in spiritual practice, and how we can cultivate this superpower in a way that reveals the light or spirit that lives through all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation focuses on the breath as an anchor for homecoming. We begin with an intentional breath (coherence breathing) and then establish the natural breath as a home base. The instructions are to rest in the breath, offering a relaxed, intimate intention. Other waves of sensation or emotion are included when they ask for attention as we cultivate an open and full mindful presence. Our freedom arises as we recognize the formless awareness that is our home, and the natural and ever-changing waves that live through us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to wakefully relax with the changing flow of moment to moment experience. As we open our senses fully, we discover the sacred living presence that is our very essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation (a favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, “Wherever you are, Find a Trail.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world– with courageous, wise hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, “Sharing Silence.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all seek refuge, a sense of safety or homecoming amidst the uncertainties of life. Our way of finding refuge can either imprison or free us. This talk explores the false refuges that entrap us in feeling separate and endangered, and the refuges of Awareness (Buddha,) Truth (Dharma) and Love (Sangha) that reveal our true nature. This evening gathering includes a ceremony with candles, reflection and music.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We suffer when we are caught in beliefs of our own or other’s badness, unworthiness, or lack of value. These beliefs hurt our bodies, lead to violent and/or addictive behaviors, and separate us from our own heart and each other.
This talk explores how we can discover who we are beyond these beliefs by recognizing when we are trapped, and learning how to turn to presence and love (dedicated to Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry.
This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices—Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness—that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Especially when we’re stressed, we need pathways to an allowing, kind presence. This meditation guides us to relax and open through our bodies, and then meet changing waves of experience with a sea of awareness that is intrinsically allowing and tender.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Great spiritual leaders of social movements teach that true transformation arises from realizing our interconnectedness, and the light of the divine in each being. Sadly, through human history, much suffering has come from perceiving others as bad-others, flawed humans who are excluded from our heart.
This talk looks at how our stories and mistrust of others—in personal relationships and in our society—can lead to cycles of violence, harm, and deepening alienation. We then explore the inner process that helps us shift to “bad behavior, not bad human” and allows us to respond to suffering with love-in-action.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are in our daily trance, we are often leaning forward, on our way somewhere else. In this meditation we are guided to relax back into the awareness that is always, already here. We explore relaxing back through a body scan, and then with all our senses wide open. With practice we increasingly find our pathway home by relaxing the clench of doings, and resting in what is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Strong anxiety frequently triggers fight-flight-freeze, our survival brain’s strategy for dealing with threats. This can become a trance that dominates our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and deepest experience of who we are. This talk explores how we get caught in this reactive trance, and ways of calming anxiety and radically shifting our way of relating to the experience of threat. The gift is discovering an inner freedom in the midst of life, and the capacity to respond to what arises with love-in-action.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This practice opens with a body scan, employing the image and felt sense of a smile to awaken awareness through the body. We then open to all the senses, and rest in the awareness that includes this changing life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While fear is a natural part of our make up, many of us suffering when the “on” button gets jammed. This talk looks at how our fears generate habitual patterns of physical tension, anxious thinking, emotions and behaviors; and how this constellation prevents us from inhabiting our full wisdom and love. We then explore two interrelated pathways of healing—unconditional presence, and resourcing, or cultivating access to safety and belonging (from the IMCW Fall 2018 7-Day Silent Retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice emphasizes bringing a gentle and kind attention to our bodies, and then including all experience with a receptive presence. We close by identifying a part of our being that is asking for a healing attention, and offering loving presence to ourself and then to others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Radical love sees and cherishes the sacred that lives through all beings. In this talk, we’ll look at the barrier to loving the life that is right here—what we call self—and how we can call on the light and warmth of awareness to awaken that love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When stressed, we often react with looping fear-thoughts, feelings and behaviors that cause harm to ourselves and/or others. This talk offers three interrelated strategies that can serve us when we’re triggered by stress, and help us find our way back to our natural wisdom, empathy and wholeness of being. By de-conditioning habitual reactivity, we are increasingly able to respond to our life circumstances in ways that serve healing and awakening.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation cultivates a relaxed, gentle presence with whatever expressions of life are arising in the moment. We begin by releasing and opening through the body, and then include all sensations, feelings and sounds in an intimate, allowing presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Radical love arises from the purity of our awake awareness, and cuts through the delusion of being separate and not OK. It comes from and brings out our intrinsic goodness. These talks explore the barriers to this embodied, inclusive and active loving, and include reflections that can help us to free our own hearts and bring true healing to our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to arouse mindfulness through attention to our senses, and to rest in that wakefulness with a receptive and tender presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk explores the ways we can listen to and respond to the call of our awake heart, by training ourselves to open to vulnerability (our own and others) and widen the circles of compassion (a favorite from the 2017 archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (from the 2017 archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The world is having a difficult moment. Each day we learn of a different conflict or crisis, which threatens the lives of so may people. It is easy to live with a lot of fear right now and it is even easier to react out of that fear was well. When we react out of fear we tend to create much more harm in the world.
This is a time of darkness and war and fear lies at the heart of much of the violence we are experiencing. How do we befriend our fear and offer it permission to teach us how to move through it into a state of freedom? How do we use our fear to connect to the fear so many other people are experiencing? Ultimately, how do we begin to love what is unlovable, especially our fear?
During their time together, Tara and Lama Rod call on the teachings of Buddhadharma as well as their own intrinsic wisdom to lean into fear with love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We enter a full presence through awakening our senses, and awakening to the awareness that is aware. This meditation guides us as we arouse an embodied presence, let go of any controlling, then discover the natural spaciousness and wakefulness that is the essence of what we are.
“You might feel your body breathing…”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
This meditation ends with a tribute to Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and a reading from his writings on death and life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (a special talk from the archives).
What happens when you’re really listening?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that “it’s not what’s happening, it’s how we’re relating.” We look at three key trainings that help us relate to difficult emotions with a wise and compassionate presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about our individual self and our group identity. We explore how, with self-compassion and courageous honesty, we can respond to negative, painful feelings about ourselves in a way that serves awakening and alignment with our deepest values.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We each have within us the very source of wisdom and love. This meditation calls forward that essence, our awakening heart, so we can seek guidance and nurturing for the parts of us that need a healing attention.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Spiritual hope opens us to possibility and energizes us to manifest our potential for love and wisdom. In contrast to attachment or egoic hope, which is the grasping for what will benefit a separate self, spiritual hope arises from trust in the openhearted awareness (bodhichitta) that is always and already within us. This talk explores how, as individuals and as a society, we can nourish spiritual hope, and create the grounds for healing and radical transformation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our body, and then invites us to rest in the space of loving presence, as we open to whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When anger is held in mindfulness, it can energize us to respond wisely to challenging situations. This meditation guides us in meeting personal or societal anger with RAIN – recognize, allow, investigate and nurture.
[NOTE: this meditation was given at the end of Tara’s Anger and Transformation talk on 2020-06-10. A brief context is given, then the meditation begins at 4:56.]
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The purpose of anger is to let us know there’s an obstacle to our wellbeing, and to energize us to act. While natural and necessary for survival and thriving, this powerful energy often possesses us and leads to suffering.
This talk explores how we can use the RAIN meditation in our personal and societal life, to meet anger with a mindful, compassionate presence. Freed from the identification with a limited, separate reactive self, we can listen to the message of anger, draw on the purity of its energy, and respond from our natural intelligence, creativity and care.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In times of great 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with us standing in mindful movement, guiding us in awakening awareness in the body. Then in sitting practice, we open all our senses, resting in the wakeful presence that can include the changing waves of our life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anti-Black racism is the core wound of American culture, and we each have a role to play in fighting racism, a medicine to bring to these times. This talk explores how we can offer an honest and courageous presence to key domains of this suffering. We then look at affirming that Black lives truly matter with our dedicated and wise action.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How we tolerate uncertainty - during current times and throughout our lives - has a powerful effect on our capacity for presence, aliveness and love. This talk explores the conditioned ways of reacting to insecurity that contract us, and pathways of letting go of resistance, opening to Beginner's mind and discovering a timeless, wise and loving presence in the midst of inevitable change.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Letting go means releasing the resistance we have to experiencing the present moment. This meditation guides us to let go of the thoughts that block our immediate sensory experience, the tension in the body that reduces aliveness and the armoring around the heart that dulls our sensitivity and tenderness toward life itself.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Everyone faces personal failure, and it’s an extremely raw and painful feeling. If we have the courage to stay with the feelings, failure can become a portal to the realization of who we are beyond the imperfect separate self. This talk calls on Samuel Beckett’s wonderful quote (referenced by Pema Chödron), “Fail, Fail again, Fail better,” and offers guidance on finding freedom as we move through some of our most difficult moments.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This practice begins with a full body scan and then guides us to return again and again to our senses. What we find is a dynamic presence, a Hereness that feels like home. The meditation ends with a beautiful poem by David Wagoner called, “Lost.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us in embodying loving presence through a body scan, and then meeting whatever arises with a tender heart. We close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donohue.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A key way stress disconnects us from ourselves and each other is through the limbic reactivity of blame. This talk helps us to recognize the suffering of chronic blame, resentment and anger, and to bring a healing presence to the vulnerability that underlies blame.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This classic Buddhist meditation trains us to wake up out of thoughts and to attend to our changing experience with a balanced, clear and open presence. Enjoy a bit longer meditation with several quiet pauses.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The root of suffering is the pain of separation, the fears and loneliness that arise when we have forgotten our intrinsic belonging to each other and to all of life. These next two talks look at the epidemic of loneliness predating the pandemic, and how loneliness is exacerbated in our current global crisis for those living alone, and for those feeling disconnected to themselves and others. We then explore how a courageous practice of compassionate presence - with our inner life, and in relationships - can turn the energy of loneliness into a current of healing and freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this meditation we are guided to discover the space and aliveness that fills the body, sense the space in the universe, and then to realize our Beingness as continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. When our attention contracts into thoughts, the pathway to awareness is a relaxing back, reopening to the natural openness, silence and stillness of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path - practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world. Talk 4 explores how the difficult emotions we all face can become direct portals to an inner refuge of sacred space.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our experience includes a foreground of changing experience - sounds, sensations, feelings, thoughts. In the background is an alert inner stillness, the awareness that is our true nature. This meditation guides us in opening to the moment-to-moment flow through our senses, and learning to relax back to inhabit the mystery and vastness of awake awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation includes a relaxing body scan and guidance on finding a space of peace and balance in the midst of whatever life brings us.
Also enjoy the Virginia springtime rain that accompanies us halfway through the meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life.
These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva path – practices of an awakening being dedicated to living from love. The invitation is to let this season of close-in and global suffering deepen our collective commitment to creating a more compassionate world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While it’s natural to feel fear during times of great collective crisis, our challenge is that fear easily takes over our lives. This talk explores how the mindfulness and compassion of the RAIN meditation can help us find an inner refuge in the face of fear, and deepen our loving connection with each other.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (retreat meditation).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) As part of the collective response to the Coronavirus—taking care of each other—Tara has cancelled her live class and recorded this from her home.
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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 for Now.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Dr. Jim Gordon is author of the new book, The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma. In this interview with Tara, he talks about his work with populations around the globe struggling with trauma, and some of the most powerful practices that can be done on our own in healing trauma. Jim's non-profit organization is the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC - CMBM.org.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We begin with a body scan, open to sounds and to listening to and feeling the moment. From spacious awareness the practice is simply to recognize and allow the changing flow of life. The meditation ends with the poem, “Hokusai Says” by Roger Keyes.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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, Trusting Prana.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice has a short period of relaxing the body, and establishes the breath as a home base for attention. We practice arriving again and again, deepening the pathway of homecoming. The meditation ends with lovingkindness for ourselves and our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Becoming conscious of our intentions is the first step to truly aligning our life with our heart. This talk explores identifying when we are being driven by grasping and fear, and ways we can bring compassion to unmet needs and discover the deeper longing – the liberating intention – that guides us to freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all need ways to guide our attention that allow us to find wisdom, love and freedom in the midst of our lives. This talk reviews three archetypal gateways—Buddha/awareness, Dharma/truth, and Sangha/loving community. Through teachings, guided meditations and a traditional refuge ritual, we engage together in bringing alive these pathways to healing and peace. (Note: Includes Refuges string tying ceremony and chanting the Refuges at end)
St. Teresa of Avila says, “Only at the shrine where all are welcome will God sing loud enough to be heard.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our self-protective habits of resentment and blame block intimacy and connection with ourself and others. This short talk and meditation are an invitation to deepen our understanding of the suffering of blame, and to release the armoring to loving freely.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided session includes an overview of the primary components in meditation practices, and then guidance in awakening the senses, collecting the attention, and opening mindfully to changing experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all encounter “demons” of fear, anger, hurt, craving and shame. This talk explores our key ways of resisting difficult emotions, and how “when the resistance is gone, the demons are gone.” We look at the power of mindfulness and compassion to undo resistance, and open us to the loving presence that can handle whatever energies arise. This special talk was given at the 2019 IMCW 5-Day New Year’s Silent Retreat.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Drawn from Tara’s new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.
Check www.tarabrach.com for more information on Tara’s new book, including pre-order links.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A brief meditation to gather the attention, loosen and soften the body, sense your intention for being here, and feel the quality of presence of an awakening heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Drawn from Tara’s new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention to the changing flow of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Drawn from Tara’s new book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts.
Check www.tarabrach.com for more information on Tara’s new book, including pre-order links.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this guided meditation we begin with a body scan, and rest in awareness with our senses awake. The key practice is to recognize when the mind immerses in virtual reality, reawaken our senses, and surrender again and again into the immediacy, vibrance and mystery of living presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Gratitude arises when we are in sacred relationship with life—present, open and receptive. This talk explores how central gratitude is to our physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and then looks at the ways we can directly gladden our minds with gratitude. We end with a guided meditation that includes sharings from the group, and a poem of blessing by John O’Donohue with a brief cut from Robert Gass – Om Namaha Shivaya.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation is an invitation to rest in Hereness—the immediacy and aliveness of full presence. We arrive and quiet with a conscious long deep breath, relax our bodies, awaken our senses, and then bring our attention to relaxing with our moment-to-moment experience. The poem ends with a beautiful poem called “Interlude” by poet Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens our senses through a body scan and listening to sound, and then invites us to rest in the presence that spontaneously knows the changing stream of experience. Relaxing back and letting everything be just as it is, reveals the natural presence that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and practices that help us cultivate the gift of a deep and healing listening presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening to sound is opens up to the space of pure being. In this guided practice we begin by awakening through the body, and then explore listening to sounds and silence, and to inhabiting the receptive presence that is listening, awareness itself.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening is our gateway to intimacy with our inner life, each other, our earth and spirit. These two talks look at the ways that listening gets blocked and the teachings and practices that help us cultivate the gift of a deep and healing listening presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation explores the meaning of forgiveness and its role in healing and transformation. We then are guided in a forgiveness practice that helps us release the armoring of blame, and inhabit an inclusive and open heart (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue – usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and practices that remind us of our basic goodness – the loving awareness that is our source (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat – 2019-11-06).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom. This talk explores the often unconscious ways we create separation by judging ourselves and others, and the key pathways of meditation practice that release the habit of blame and free our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation introduces the domain of “heart practices” and then 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Can be used to begin a meditation session of any length.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stuck in blame or resentment we are in a trance – the other person becomes an unreal bad other, and our own sense of being contracts into a victimized self, an angry self, a righteous self. Using the acronym RAIN, this practice guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to our inner experience, and then to viewing the other with a more open and clear heart. By awakening from the trance of blame, we are able to respond with intelligence and care to the unmet needs that underlie all conflict.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These three talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with a period of relaxing and collecting our attention with intentional long deep breathing. We then deepen embodied presence, and widen to the awareness that includes sounds, sensations, feelings, breath, and all experience. When the mind drifts from this open, awake awareness, we gently return, re-relaxing and resting in an easeful, alert presence. Recorded at Tara’s Wednesday night class, the meditation includes chanting of OM’s and ends with a sense of melting into community.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mother Teresa writes that if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other. These two talks explore the causes for severed belonging, and pathways to deepening the felt sense of belonging to our own body, heart and spirit, and to all beings. Together the talks offer a natural and powerful progression of lovingkindness or metta reflections, that when practiced regularly can open us to the peace, joy and freedom of trusting our mutual belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our beliefs and understandings about reality directly impact our moment to moment experience of living. If we believe we will never change, that blocks the transformation that brings happiness and freedom. If we trust our spiritual unfolding and are open to possibility, that guides our attention and behaviors in ways that evolve us. This talk explores how to nurture mature, spiritual hope—hope that is sourced in trusting our intrinsic goodness, and our capacity for deepening love and wisdom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We realize our true nature by relaxing back into what is always, already here. Starting by scanning and opening through the body, we explore resting in the awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all of life. The guidance is, when we recognize thoughts, to simply relax back, and allow life to be just as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While Tara is away, this talk is from 2011 after Hurricane Irene hit us with fury. Dorian is now leaving its destruction behind, just as we work with our stormy weather within.
Whether you face chronic anxiety or more violent storms of fear and anger, you can cultivate the wings of freedom–the mindfulness and compassion–that free you. This talk explores how the habit of being reactive causes us suffering and the ways these tools of meditation can be applied to the inner weather systems that most challenge us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. This meditation is a transformational practice in receiving and offering blessings. First we connect with the vulnerable tender place within us that longs to feel loved, and call on loving presence to bless us. By imagining and allowing ourselves to receive love, our hearts become open and filled with light. We then bring that inner loving presence fully alive as we offer blessings to other beings. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk was given in 2015, yet it is as timely as ever. It views the ecological dis-ease of our planet through the lens of our evolutionary unfolding. We explore the egoic trance that has precipitated the destruction of our environment, and the inner practices of presence that enable us to respond from love and wisdom (from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By imagining the space inside the body, we discover the continuous space of awareness that is the source and essence of all aliveness. This meditation is adapted from Open Focus Meditations led by Les Fehmi, Ph.D. in The Open Focus Brain.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) One of the great gifts we can offer is being a mirror of goodness, reminding one another that we can trust our essential awareness, light and love. Because our conditioning is to fixate on flaws, “good othering” takes intention and practice. This talk explores how we can develop the habit of seeing goodness, and importantly, learn to communicate our appreciation and love to others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We begin this meditation with awakening to the aliveness in our body, using the imagery of a smile, and a body scan. Then we are guided to sense the vastness of awareness and to rest in that open wakefulness, allowing the changing thoughts, sounds, sensations and feelings to come and go. When we let life be just as it is, we become a sea of awareness that includes all the waves.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation awakens an embodied presence through a body scan, and invites us to rest in the breath, while allowing the different waves of sensations, feelings and sounds to come and go. When difficult experiences arise, we breathe with them, feeling them fully and mentally whispering, “this belongs,” or “this too.” By not resisting, we discover the sea of awareness that has room for all the waves.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) These two talks address the inquiry: How do we awaken from the contempt and hatred that causes so much suffering in our world? The first talk looks at how we can use the practices of mindfulness and compassion to decondition our habits of self-blame and self-hatred, as well as the importance of helping each other defuse the trance of unworthiness. The second talk extends the use of these practices to situations where we’ve locked into external “bad othering.” These times need our deepened dedication to love: By intentionally arousing compassion for ourselves and others, we directly contribute to the evolution of consciousness in our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Using the image and felt sense of a smile, we scan through the body, and awaken a sense of aliveness, presence and tenderness. The practice then extends to mindfully include all sounds, sensations, and feelings; and when difficult experience arises, to intentionally offer care. We close with an offering of loving kindness to our own being, to others who are suffering and to all life everywhere.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are.
These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself.
This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom. NOTE: Listen to the rain, too…
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens a receptive attention to the senses, starting with physical sensations and opening to sound. Then we sense how open awake awareness is receiving the moment to moment arising and passing life. In the final part of the practice, we explore how awake awareness is receiving the experience of our heart and offer blessings to our inner life and all living beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The mature expression of hope includes three elements: the aspiration for manifesting our full potential, a trust that this is possible, and an energy that engages to serve this unfolding. In this talk, we explore the importance of hope on the spiritual path, its shadow side, and how we can nourish hope through these three elements in a way that serves inner freedom and the healing of our world (a special favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We cut off from our aliveness when we are lost in thoughts and on auto pilot. This meditation arouses a receptivity to sensation from “the inside out,” opens the awareness to sound, and then invites a full resting in receptive, dynamic presence (from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we awaken our senses, we can sense in the background a wakeful openness that is our true home. This meditation guides us by first attending to the space, aliveness and awareness that fills the body, and then by sensing how interior and exterior space is continuous, and suffused with the light of awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The gateway to full intimacy and love is our capacity to open to vulnerability. These two talks look at our ways of avoiding vulnerability, and offer guidance in learning to contact and transform our fears into awake and loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Striving in meditation only creates more tension in our psyche and a solidified sense of self. This meditation invites us to awaken our senses and relax back into the presence that is always and already here. From presence we spontaneously notice and allow the changing flow of experience, and sense the openness and wakefulness of our natural awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Much of our suffering comes from reacting to stressful situations with fear or aggression, rather than responding with wisdom and care. This talk explores the pathway of shifting from reacting to responding: this includes learning to pause, awakening the wings of mindfulness and kindness, and reconnecting with our deepest intention.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The breath can be a powerful portal to presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing with the breath, including the breath in a body scan, and then allowing the breath to serve as an anchor when the mind gets lost in thoughts. As we settle with the breath as a home base, we find we can then open to the changing waves of experience with increasing balance, clarity and ease.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation includes a mindful body scan, and awakening all our senses to our moment to moment experience. We relax open to the presence that is unobscured by thoughts, letting life be just as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part 3 on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) One of the greatest roots of suffering is being at war with ourselves. This meditation, based on the acronym RAIN (recognize-allow-investigate-nurture), guides us in releasing the armoring of blame, and relating to our inner life with greater understanding and compassion.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) For most of human history it’s been “normal” to eat non-human animals. This is now changing. We are awakening to the massive suffering of the billions of animals killed each day for food, the horrors of the animal-food industry, and the impact it has on climate change (second only to fossil fuels.) In this short talk Tara shares her personal story of transitioning to a vegan diet, and invites listeners to investigate, without judgment, their own choices in this domain.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust grows as we increasingly glimpse, embody and live from our natural Being.
NOTE: This talk was given at the Spring 2019 IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We can’t will forgiveness, but we can be willing to bring presence to our wounds, and gradually let go of the blame that contracts and dulls our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Introductions, Orientation, Instructions Tara Brach, Jonathan Foust, La Sarmiento, Kate Johnson
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part 2 on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part 3 on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This practice sets the atmosphere of loving presence with a smile-down and waking up all the senses. We relax into open awareness, receptive to the breath or whatever waves of experience are calling for attention. The invitation is to rest in Hereness, fully awake in presence. The meditation ends with a short offering of blessings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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. We close with a prayer of loving kindness.
"No matter how often the mind drifts, all that really matters is the quality of heart in the way you come back… to come back with interest and friendliness to this moment, then you plant those seeds for whatever else arises."
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Equanimity is the quality of presence that is open, balanced and non-reactive. As this talk explores, when equanimity is lacking, we become easily lost in trance, identified as a defended and controlling egoic self. When present, the solidity and constriction of egoic self dissolves, and our heart is free to respond to life with love, compassion, forgiveness and joy. Note: this talk is a favorite from the 2014 archives and includes the “Duck Meditation” and bricklayer stories.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Rumi invites us to find the barriers we’ve erected against love, and a universal one is blame. These three talks are an invitation to relax those barriers, and to open our hearts to our inner life and to all beings. Part I focuses on chronic self-judgment; Part II on the places of deep self-condemnation, and Part III on where we have locked into anger, blame or hatred of others. Each includes guided reflections that can support us in directly awakening beyond the confining thoughts and feelings of blame.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this meditation we begin with the image and felt sense of a smile to arouse an atmosphere of care, and allow that caring presence to fill our body and the entire field of awareness. We then open to the changing experience of breath, sensations, feelings, sound and thoughts. By resting in a wakeful and open heartspace, we can include all the passing waves with ease and tenderness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes an atmosphere of loving kindness with the “smile”; relaxes and awakens through the body; and guides us into a spacious presence. We then rest in that presence, letting go of any controlling, and simply allow life to be as it is. It’s in “letting be” that we come home to the luminosity and tenderness of natural awareness. We close with a verse from Mary Oliver…
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation starts with a scan that invites relaxing and awakening through the body. We then allow life – sounds, sensations, aliveness – to live through us, resting in open presence. When there is tightening, holding or confinement in thoughts, we recognize and re-open, letting go into the presence that is always here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It’s natural that we do what we can to ward off danger and further ourselves. While our control strategies – such as aggression, judging, planning, seeking approval, pretending – have a developmental role, they are not a recipe for happiness, intimacy and freedom. An essential part of our evolution is to recognize when we are over-managing our lives, and learn to let go of the controls. These talks explore how we can release the grip of the over-controller, and the profound awakening of our hearts and minds that is possible in the shift from doing to being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we attune to the reality of impermanence and death, we remember what most matters to us. But in daily life we can lose precious swaths of time in a reactive trance, on our way somewhere else, and lost in problem solving, judgment and worry. This talk reflects on four remembrances or practices – Pausing, Yes to life, Turning toward love, and Resting in awareness – that help us awaken from trance and live true to the loving presence that is our essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.
Includes a meditation to guide us in working with pain.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We miss many moments of this precious life drifting in a virtual thought world. This meditation helps us collect and calm ourselves with the breath; relax through our bodies; and then include the changing dance of sounds, sensations and feeling in open awareness. Our practice is to recognize the quality of Hereness, and when we drift, return again to this open presence, relaxing with the changing flow of life.
“…learning to relax with the flow of life… to be fully here.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The practice of visualizing and feeling a smile spreading through the body helps us access the natural tenderness and openness of our being. This meditation guides us in the smile-down, and then invites a full opening and resting in openhearted presence. We close by bringing that awake heart to an area of difficulty in our life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (a special talk from the archives).
What happens when you’re really listening?
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (a favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are not sufficiently nurtured in childhood, we are inclined toward anxiety, depression, addiction and other forms of suffering. In a deep way, we do not feel at home with others. We are disconnected from our own body, heart and spirit.
This talk explores how meditation offers “spiritual reparenting” as we learn to bring interest, understanding and love to our own inner vulnerability. This process of healing extends to our relationships with others and our larger society – by reaching out to widening circles with interest and care, we bring increasing harmony and peace to our world (a favorite from the archives).
“That question: Where does it hurt? We need to address it to everyone, if we really want to understand each other.” Ruby Sales
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are lost in thoughts our mind contracts, our body tightens and we disconnect from true openheartedness. The pathway home is through “relaxing back” and reopening our attention to our senses, relaxing through our body, and gently contacting the felt sense in our heart. By repeatedly relaxing back, we become increasingly familiar with the vibrancy, tenderness and openness of true presence.
“It’s from a relaxed presence that we can most feel the tenderness of our hearts."
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
“What does it mean to be courageous at this moment?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Internationally known Buddhist teacher and writer, Haemin Sunim, talks about his new book – Love for Imperfect Things. Then, he and Tara talk together and respond to questions.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs – no bell at end).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation invites us to imagine a clenched fist relaxing open, and explores this in releasing contractions in the body as well as the grip of thoughts. When we deeply let go and let be, our energy flows freely. We reconnect with our natural aliveness, love and awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of awareness (Buddha-nature), truth (Dharma) and love (Sangha) through stories, illustrations and reflections. We end with a Refuge ceremony that can be done by anyone who feels drawn. (To participate you will need a 20” red string.)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we’ve turned on ourselves with blame and aversion, it’s very difficult to arouse self-compassion. This talk looks at the role of nurturing in freeing our hearts, and offers practice in three key steps that enable us to embrace ourselves with a healing presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Two common fears can block us from our full potential – fear of failure (FOF), and fear of missing out (FOMO). This talk explores how to meet these fears with mindful presence, and discover within them the essence energies of loving awareness and full aliveness (a favorite from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our hearts awaken as we express and receive love in an embodied, conscious way. This guided practice brings our attention to dear ones in our life, and explores how we discover deep communion through offering and letting in love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with a receptive opening to body sensations and sounds, and the invitation to rest in wakeful presence. We are reminded that each time we awaken from thoughts and arrive again in presence, we are deepening the pathway home. The sitting closes with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk looks at three ways of awakening our hearts—seeing goodness, feeling appreciation as a bodily experience, and expressing our care. We are then guided in developing each of these capacities by focusing our attention on someone we care about, with whom we’d like to experience our full potential for loving.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Just as a cup is full with water, this body is filled with awareness. As we sense the awareness inside the body, and the awareness that listens to sounds beyond the body, we discover the continuous space of awareness that includes, and gives rise to this entire creation. Opening in this way allows for homecoming to wholeness and freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anxiety and the fear of failure is a pervasive suffering around the world. It is also increasing—along with the pace of life, over-consuming, addiction, noise, polarization and fears for our planet. How do we calm ourselves in a way that brings inner freedom and serves the healing of our larger world? These two talks explore the power of awareness in evolving ourselves beyond the anxiety that grips and confines our lives - includes working with sleep issues.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A key spiritual inquiry is, “In this moment, what most serves awakening?” Rather than a particular style of meditation practice, it is our way of relating to our experience – our attitude – that frees our hearts. This talk explores the attitudes that are an expression of our innately open, wakeful and loving awareness, and that carry us to realization. (a favorite from the archives)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anxiety and the fear of failure is a pervasive suffering around the world. It is also increasing—along with the pace of life, over-consuming, addiction, noise, polarization and fears for our planet. How do we calm ourselves in a way that brings inner freedom and serves the healing of our larger world? These two talks explore the power of awareness in evolving ourselves beyond the anxiety that grips and confines our lives.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation awakens our awareness within our body, extends to include sound, and invites a resting as awareness that includes all passing waves of experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) After relaxing our bodies and quieting our minds, this meditation guides us to open to the changing experience of being alive. We ask ourselves two questions: “What is Happening Inside me?” and “Can I be with this?” By learning to bring an unconditional presence and an accepting Yes to our lives, we begin to touch openheartedness and freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How do we awaken our natural capacities for gratitude and generosity? This talk explores the pathways of honest presence and purposeful cultivation, and offers several reflections that guide us in contacting and expressing our love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The compassion that arises from mindful awareness can heal our inner wounds, interpersonal conflict and the suffering in our world. These two talks focus on cultivating self-compassion and compassion for others. They look at the blocks to compassion and accessible powerful practices that awaken the full wisdom and tenderness of our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This practice opens with a body scan, employing the image and felt sense of a smile to awaken awareness through the body. We then open to all the senses, and rest in the awareness that includes this changing life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The compassion that arises from mindful awareness can heal our inner wounds, interpersonal conflict and the suffering in our world. These two talks focus on cultivating self-compassion and compassion for others. They look at the blocks to compassion and accessible powerful practices that awaken the full wisdom and tenderness of our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of well-being, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 in thought, practice relaxing back into the aliveness and awareness that is always here. We close with a beautiful poem from poet Danna Faulds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While fear is a natural part of our make up, many of us suffering when the “on” button gets jammed. This talk looks at how our fears generate habitual patterns of physical tension, anxious thinking, emotions and behaviors; and how this constellation prevents us from inhabiting our full wisdom and love. We then explore two interrelated pathways of healing—unconditional presence, and resourcing, or cultivating access to safety and belonging (from the 2018 IMCW Fall Retreat).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This short talk and guided meditation remind us that we each have the capacity to awaken our hearts. We explore together the lovingkindness (metta) meditation, and emphasize holding our own being and dear ones with a tender, open and loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 home base for our attention. Our practice is to notice when the mind becomes distracted, and gently return to our breath and senses. This helps the mind to become increasingly settled, calm and clear. We close with a short heart blessing.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 conditioning to get stuck in feelings of fear, deficiency and separation from others. These talks explore the two interdependent pathways of undoing the conditioning that blocks our potential. In Part I we will look at how we can intentionally arouse states of wellbeing, and with practice, develop them into ongoing traits that bring presence and joy to our lives. In Part II, we will investigate how to cultivate an unconditional presence, and the radical acceptance and love, that are the grounds of true happiness and inner freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 (a special meditation from the archives).
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts. (a special talk from the archives)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this unlived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. These talks explore the ways that we defend ourselves, and the pathway to gently, wisely and intelligently disarming and freeing our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This calming meditation practice helps settle the mind with the breath and then opens to the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all know the pain of separation and have a longing for connection. When we silently listen to and contact the depth of that longing, we are at the root of transformational prayer. This talk looks at what prayer is, who/what we are praying to, the shadow side of prayer, and ways of cultivating our prayers so that they become authentic vehicles for spiritual awakening.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This simple meditation guides us to wake up awareness of the body, and rest with the movement of the breath. We are invited to discover the presence that arises as we come home to our moment-to-moment experience. The practice ends with a short prayer, connecting with what most matters to our heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation becomes truly freeing in the moments when there is no controlling whatsoever; when nothing is resisted or grasped after. This guided meditation begins with a simple body scan, relaxing and awakening to sensations in the body and then including the play of sound. Then we let go of any doing, and simply notice and allow the changing flow of experience, letting life be just as it is. In this pure allowing presence we become aware of the background silence that is listening. The invitation is to relax and be the awareness that is conscious of all that is unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We spend great swaths of time in a trance that removes us from awareness of our body and senses. This meditation reconnects us by scanning through the body, including sounds and then resting in the field of awareness and aliveness. We practice relaxing and gently arriving again when thoughts carry us away; learning the pathway home to living presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our habitual ways of avoiding unpleasant experience keep us from intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This talk helps us recognize these often unconscious patterns that keep us identified with a separate, threatened self, and offers guidance in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our unbound, true, nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are conditioned to scan for “what’s wrong” and contract our body and mind in anticipation of danger. This meditation helps us undo these primal survival habits, and frees us to inhabit the full aliveness, creativity and love our natural being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation invites relaxation and ease. We begin with a long deep breathing that helps calm the body and mind. Then we release tensions that might be held in the body, and settle our attention in a receptive way with the breath. The intention is to discover the relaxed wakefulness that expresses our natural being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Compassion is hard wired in our organism, and can be cultivated. This talk helps us identify the blocks to compassion—our outmoded survival equipment—and using RAIN, offers practical guidance in mindfully attuning to others’ emotional experience and awakening our natural tenderness and care. This talk includes a short introduction to the meditation: The RAIN of Compassion.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Like Sisyphus eternally pushing the boulder up the hill, we can spend many moments busily trying to manage our life. This two-part talk explores how we can awaken from our non-stop doing, including the incessant inner narrative, and discover the mystery, love and freedom that arises in Being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stressed, our attention narrows and fixates, often into obsessive thinking, worry and judgment. This meditation relaxes and opens the mind, first by a body scan and a “smile down,” and then by including all changing experience in a spacious awareness. As our attention shifts from mind objects like sensation and sound to the space of awareness itself, we discover the Beingness that is our formless home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. This meditation is a transformational practice in receiving and offering blessings. First we connect with the vulnerable tender place within us that longs to feel loved, and call on loving presence to bless us. By imagining and allowing ourselves to receive love, our hearts become open and filled with light. We then bring that inner loving presence fully alive as we offer blessings to other beings. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart.
“…being loved into being more who we are is a moment of blessing. What is a blessing? A blessing is a reminder or homecoming into more realness – more love. We’re blessed when we remember.”
“Part of what keeps us from realness – in that small self identity – is the avoiding of what’s here.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Based on a wonderful myth told by Clarissa Estes, this talk looks at the way we run from “lady death” and the blessings of opening our arms and heart. If we can embrace the whole of our nature with unconditional presence – including the inevitability of change and loss–we discover deep wisdom and enduring love. (a favorite from the archives)
May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing it and no holding back, the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning, I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels into the open sea.
— from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Rainer Maria Rilke
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are lost in thought, we lose touch with the aliveness and awareness that is always here. This meditation guides us with a mindful body scan to open to our senses, then to sound and all waves of aliveness. From that open presence we end with a loving kindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) What motivates us – as individuals and as a society – to build walls and knowingly hurt others? This talk explores the evolutionary roots of “unreal othering” and how when we are hijacked by fear, it can take over and disconnect us from the very real suffering of others. We then look at how meditative strategies awaken us from othering, and reveal our intrinsic belonging. Finally, we apply this to our own lives in a reflection that helps us respond to someone we have turned into “unreal other” with compassion and wisdom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation includes a body scan, using the imagery of a smile, and establishing the senses as a portal to presence. The more we open into the aliveness of the senses, the more we discover the alert inner stillness that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Like Sisyphus eternally pushing the boulder up the hill, we can spend many moments busily trying to manage our life. This two-part talk explores how we can awaken from our non-stop doing, including the incessant inner narrative, and discover the mystery, love and freedom that arises in Being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us long to trust our goodness, but get caught in stories of deficiency and striving to affirm we’re ok. These talks look at the block to realizing the loving awareness that is our essence, and the practices that help us see this essential goodness – in ourselves, dear ones and in those we might habitually consider different or “other.” Both talks include reflections that can help us appreciate the basic goodness that lives through these precious, changing forms.
"Think of some of the people you like and are drawn to you.
Now attempt to look at each of them as if you were seeing them for the first time, not allowing yourself to be influenced by your past knowledge or experience of them, whether good or bad.
Look for things in them that you may have missed because of familiarity, for familiarity breeds staleness, blindness and boredom. You cannot love what you cannot see afresh. You cannot love what you are not constantly discovering anew."
Anthony de Mello from “The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us long to trust our goodness, but get caught in stories of deficiency and striving to affirm we’re ok. These talks look at the block to realizing the loving awareness that is our essence, and the practices that help us see this essential goodness – in ourselves, dear ones and in those we might habitually consider different or “other.” Both talks include reflections that can help us appreciate the basic goodness that lives through these precious, changing forms.
“Saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.” -Thomas Merton
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 of thoughts, shifting from virtual reality into the aliveness of moment-to-moment experience. In that letting go into life we find the stillness, wakefulness and openness of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Buddhist psychology views clinging as the source of suffering, and one of the great domains of clinging is compulsive overeating. For most of us the causes and conditions for compulsive overeating existed before we were born, during our early childhood, and in our surrounding society. We begin to release shame and self-aversion by realizing we are not alone in this suffering; and eating addiction is not “our fault.” The talk includes an exploration of how, through RAIN, we can bring mindfulness and self-compassion to compulsive eating, giving us more choice in our behavior. Ultimately we discover that this deep prison of suffering can become a portal to realizing the freedom our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation begins with a body scan, bringing the friendliness of a smile into the body, and waking up our awareness of aliveness. We widen the attention to include sound and then sense and rest in the awareness that holds all experience. Our reminders are to wake up from trance by reopening to our senses, allowing for a true intimacy with the life that lives through us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. In this guided meditation, we begin by opening to sound and then listening to and feeling the whole changing flow of life – allowing whatever is here to be just as it is. In the foreground, we notice the dance of sensations, thoughts, emotions…rising up and falling away. And in the background, a wakeful, receptive presence – the silence that is listening. When we let go of all doing and relax back into this alert stillness, we sense our true nature…our home.
In words from the Tibetan tradition: “Utterly awake, senses wide open. Utterly open, non-fixating, allowing awareness.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anger, judgment and blame create separation—from our inner life and our world. Only by releasing chronic blame can we free our hearts to truly give and receive love. This talk looks at the difference between healthy anger and the trance of blame, and through a set of reflections, teachings and stories, guides us in healing and freeing our hearts.
(from the Spring 2018 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat – previously unpublished)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this guided meditation, we include an overview of different components of mindfulness practice. The reflection includes a body scan, establishing a home base for attention, and care in how to arrive in full presence after being lost in thought. We then explore opening mindfully to different experiences and the simple and liberating practice of “being here,” letting life be just as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Forgiveness for others becomes possible when we’ve held our own being with great compassion. This short talk and guided meditation brings forth our most awake and tender presence as we ask for forgiveness, offer care to the woundedness within us, and then extend forgiveness to another who has hurt us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk offers an in-depth exploration of RAIN, applying the wings of mindfulness and compassion to painful domains of trance. We bring special attention to the fruit of RAIN, the realization of who we are beyond any limiting identity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) An intrinsic part of spiritual life is facing the truth of impermanence. When we open to the changing flow without resistance, we naturally cherish this passing life, and realize the timeless, changeless awareness that is our true home. Yet we are conditioned to grasp on to the passing pleasures (and all that we love) and resist the inevitable arising of stress and unpleasant experience. This talk includes teachings and guided reflections that help us identify the ways we are reacting to major changes in our life. We explore how to shift from reacting to meeting impermanence with an allowing presence, and then responding to our circumstances with wisdom and compassion.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation begins with a calming breath to quiet the mind and relax the body. Following this, we establish our presence with an anchor – the breath, sound or sensation – and practice “coming back” from distractions, and including whatever direct experience asks for our kind attention. The meditation ends with a short loving kindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Deep listening – to our inner life, each other and our world – is an intrinsic expression of our awakened heart. Yet because we have strong conditioning to be caught in wants and fears, there is often much interference in the field of communications. These two talks are an opportunity to intentionally deepen your capacity to listen in a way that leads to increased understanding and connection. You’ll have the opportunity to investigate what gets between you and deep listening, and to practice the key elements that nurture receptive presence.
The second talk includes questions and responses that focus on having an agenda instead of listening, the feeling that we don’t have enough time, listening when we feel reactive (hurt, defensive, intimidated, angry) and the need to feel heard.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation opens with listening and discovering the sky-like awareness that includes changing sounds, thoughts, feelings and sensations. The sounding of bells and chimes assists in connecting to and resting in the boundless and loving awareness that is our true home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Deep listening - to our inner life, each other and our world - is an intrinsic expression of our awakened heart. Yet because we have strong conditioning to be caught in wants and fears, there is often much interference in the field of communications. These two talks are an opportunity to intentionally deepen your capacity to listen in a way that leads to increased understanding and connection. You’ll have the opportunity to investigate what gets between you and deep listening, and to practice the key elements that nurture receptive presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The capacity to truly listen allows us to realize the vast and sensitive awareness that is our true essence. This meditation focuses on listening to sounds, and then listening to and feeling the whole changing flow of life. When carried off by thought, we notice and then relax back into a receptive and listening presence. There’s nothing to do, simply letting life be as it is, and resting in the freedom of awake, open awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By learning to inhabit the body, we discover the space and aliveness that fills the universe. In this meditation we are guided through the body, filling different domains with presence. We then open into the continuous awake space that is both within and surrounds the body. When we notice the mind drifts, we relax back to be that awake space, aware of the changing flow of sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds.
We close with a simple prayer: May we come home to the light, love and aliveness that’s our deep nature. May we live our lives from loving presence. May that loving presence ripple out in a way that brings peace and healing to our world. Namaste
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A gift of evolving consciousness is the capacity to recognize and honor the sacred awareness that lives through our own and all beings. This capacity is blocked by our identification with our “mask” or ego self, and not seeing past other people’s masks. In this talk we reflect together on some key filters of superior/inferior and good/bad that shape the trance of a narrowed identity, and then explore how mindfulness and kindness free us to inhabit the vastness of our natural awareness. We close with tasting the possibility of bringing the spirit of Namaste to ourselves, others and all beings.
Rumi writes: ““Are you searching for your true self? Then come out of your own prison. Leave the little creek and join the mighty river that flows into the ocean. Like an ox, don’t pull the wheel of this world on your back. Take off the burden. Whirl and circle, and rise above the wheel of the world. There is another view.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Mindful awareness of our bodies is a portal to full aliveness, wisdom and love. These two classes will explore the trance that takes us away from our body, the pathways home, ways of working with pain, and the gifts of an embodied presence.
“Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains, and the maker of canyons and mountains! All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.”
― Kabir
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation focuses on the breath as an anchor for homecoming. We begin with an intentional breath (coherence breathing) and then establish the natural breath as a home base. The instructions are to rest in the breath, offering a relaxed, intimate intention. Other waves of sensation or emotion are included when they ask for attention as we cultivate an open and full mindful presence. Our freedom arises as we recognize the formless awareness that is our home, and the natural and ever-changing waves that live through us.
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.
by Wu Men Hui-k’ai English version by Stephen Mitchell
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being - open, awake and tender.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to awaken to our senses through scanning through the body and then listening to sounds. When distracted by thoughts we relax open again and again, learning to rest in the formless awareness that includes sounds, sensations and all passing experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part 1: Lovingkindness – We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life.
This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens us to the space and aliveness in these bodies, and to resting in wakeful openness. When we get lost in thought, we practice relaxing open, and exploring the gap between thoughts. By opening beyond the veil of thinking, we discover the Beingness that is home.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice awakens attention to sensations, sounds, space and aliveness, and encourages a continued “relaxing open” from thoughts into the living stream of experience. We are learning to recognize and rest in the moment to moment flow, “being reality,” at home in what we are.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These two talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We begin with listening and then bring a receptive attention to experience the life of the body. We then open the attention to the whole field of sensations and sound, and rest in the openness and presence that includes all the changing currents of experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha taught that we live our lives on the tip of intention, it is the seed of our future. This talk explores the difference between “limbic” intentions driven by grasping or fear, and intentions that are the call of our awakening heart. You will learn how to identify and shift from a “limbic” to wise intention, and several different ways you can more readily and regularly access your deepest aspiration.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation engages the breath in a way that it connects us with our energetic aliveness and the space that holds and is intrinsic to all life. A body scan using this breath opens us to the body as a field of aliveness. We then rest in the changing flow of experience, and the still presence that is our essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Loving presence is an innate capacity, and it can be cultivated. This meditation begins with a scan arousing a relaxed tender presence in the body, then brings loving attention to our inner life, and in widening circles, to our world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores the three archetypal refuges of truth, love and awareness. We look at the outer and inner aspects of each refuge, and then through guided reflections and a Refuge Ritual, deepen our commitment to the pathways that awaken our minds and free our hearts.
NOTE: Includes a Refuge Ritual at the end of the talk – if you’d like to participate, you’ll need some red string. We use “Classic crochet thread, size 10 in red” about 36 inches per person – available at craft stores. Sing along with The Three Refuges Chant sheet (www.tarabrach.com/three-gateways-peace-freedom/)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The sign of spiritual freedom is a deep trust in our essential nature, and in the light of awareness that lives through all beings. This talk explores the conditioning that entraps us in a trance of separation and believing in a limited self. We then explore the evolutionary shift in identity that is possible as we deepen our attention and presence to the life that is here, and the loving awareness that is the source of existence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This short talk and guided meditation offers an overview of what many people find is a natural unfolding within a meditation sitting. It includes the process of arriving in an embodied presence, learning how to come back from thoughts, and then opening the attention mindfully to the changing flow of experience. The meditation provides generous space between prompts for practice.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are conditioned to go into a limbic trance—an emotional reactivity to life within and around us—that keeps us identified with a limited, separate sense of self. This talk helps us to identify the flags of trance, and to bring a healing attention that frees us to live our moments with creativity, wisdom and love. Includes the RAIN of Self-Compassion. (from the 2017 IMCW New Year’s Retreat)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) From the first morning of the IMCW 2017 New Year’s retreat, Tara offers an introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Authentic kindness must include the life within us. These two talks examine the movement from an armored to a free and loving heart. The first looks at how we can awaken from the trance of unworthiness and establish a genuinely caring relationship with our inner life. In the second we explore how self-kindness awakens us to the heartspace that naturally includes all of life.
This talk is dedicated especially to youthful listeners on this solstice evening.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Authentic kindness must include the life within us. These two talks examine the movement from an armored to a free and loving heart. The first looks at how we can awaken from the trance of unworthiness and establish a genuinely caring relationship with our inner life. In the second we explore how self-kindness awakens us to the heartspace that naturally includes all of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Learning how to recognize and rest in spaciousness, allows us to discover the love and wakefulness that is our source. This meditation guides us to discover interior space, exterior space, and then the continuous space that is suffused with awareness. We then explore how that awareness is experienced as heartspace—vast, illuminated and tender.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Behind the changing sounds, sensations, feelings and thoughts is an alert inner stillness that is purely aware. This meditation begins with accessing the receptivity of a smile, awakening through the body and opening the senses. We then sense the background of awareness and relax back to inhabit that wholeness. When the mind is distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back, and the essential practice is non-doing, allowing life to be just as it is.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Lama Gendun Rinpoche writes, “Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but it is already there, in relaxation and letting go.” This meditation turns us toward this naturally arising happiness by awakening awareness through the body, and then practicing “relaxing back,” over and over, into the aliveness and presence that is always here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.
For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! … the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a whisper, an eye glance-little maketh up the best happiness. Be still. ~ Nietzche ~
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we bring a full presence to prayer, it becomes a powerful pathway of homecoming. This talk explores how prayer heals the pain of separation, and offers practical guidance in what poet John O’Donohue calls “unearthing our ancient belonging.”
“What’s it like if you bow your head and whisper and call on something larger?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The primary qualities of a healing and freeing presence are being alert, open and tender. This meditation arouses these qualities by engaging a mindful awareness of the breath, and then a relaxed, gentle attentiveness to the changing experience of the moment. It ends by bringing lovingkindness to ourselves and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart.
“Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.” Buddha
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath, and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) These two talks look at how we relate to change – especially the notable changes involving loss of relationships and our own body and mind. We examine our strategies for avoiding uncertainty and fear; the consequences of resisting reality; our refuges of presence and compassion in the face of grief; and the gifts of opening fully to the river of change.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us in relaxing through the body, then opening to the changing river of experience. By continually relaxing back and letting go into what is unfolding, we discover the natural vastness, wakefulness and vitality of our essential Being.
The poet Danna Faulds writes: 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) These two talks look at how we relate to change – especially the notable changes involving loss of relationships and our own body and mind. We examine our strategies for avoiding uncertainty and fear; the consequences of resisting reality; our refuges of presence and compassion in the face of grief; and the gifts of opening fully to the river of change.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Spiritual resilience enables us to deepen compassion and wisdom as we navigate life’s difficulties. In this two part series, we will look at the conditions that incline us towards or away from True Resilience, and explore practical and powerful practices that nourish this precious capacity.
“The hard times are what move us to become who we really are. We grow through the tough stuff if we are willing to be present. Whatever is arising, without exception, can be a portal to awakening and freedom. If you deepen your attention to the waves, how might it awaken and free you?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes an embodied presence with the gentleness of a smile-down scan, then opens us to the heartspace that includes the changing waves of experience. It ends with a short lovingkindness meditation that offers prayers for relief of the current great suffering from floods in Texas, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Love is an innate capacity, and when we intentionally cultivate it, love shifts from a state to a trait. This meditation offers guidance on how to access love, and open ourselves to it in a way that serves this awakening of our hearts.
“Know that you’re rewiring your brain, your heart, your body, your mind – and that the more times you do this, the more you really give it 20 or 30 seconds to feel the loving directly, the more access you have to this very innate capacity in your being.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
NOTE: from August 2, 2017 for those seeking a full 30-minute open awareness guided meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are fully awake, love shines through our entire body and being. This meditation awakens that embodied love through the image and felt sense of the smile, scanning through the body, resting in loving presence and offering loving prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Spiritual resilience enables us to deepen compassion and wisdom as we navigate life’s difficulties. In this two part series, we will look at the conditions that incline us towards or away from True Resilience, and explore practical and powerful practices that nourish this precious capacity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
From the talk: “These are three qualities often described as the essence of awareness: wakeful, open, tender.”
And a blessing: “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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation can help us to access a relaxed attentiveness, or alternately, serve as a pathway to ease-filled sleep.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of “who am I” that reveals our deepest nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
Talk includes quotes from Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of our psyche. This talk explores ways we can deepen self-honesty and reconnect to a wholeness of being that enables us to live with spontaneity, confidence, wisdom and love.
A quote by Elizabeth Lessor from the talk: “My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears.”
NOTE: Tara was away this week and asked for this favorite talk from 2014-11-05 be posted.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us to awaken to sensation using the image of a smile and scanning through the body. We then open to sound and to the entire changing flow of experience. When we connect with the changing flow of sensations, feelings and sounds, we also discover the formless awareness that is our Source… and home. We end with a prayer that includes our own being and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We open to our full naturalness as we awaken the senses. This brief meditation guides us to open all the sense gates, and in that openness, experience the pure aliveness and awareness that is our essence.
NOTE: listen to the full talk: Part 2: Refuge in the Wilderness – Coming Home to Embodied Presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation instruction includes: 1 – Arriving in embodied presence with senses awake, 2 – Further collecting the attention using a primary anchor or base, and 3 – Continuing to collect around an anchor or widening to rest in open, natural awareness – in presence with what is.
Given as part of the morning guided meditation Instruction on the Spring 2017 IMCW Retreat.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our suffering arises from fear-based stories that are often outside our awareness. These include stories of our deficiency or importance, of being a victim, of being unseen or unloved, of facing failure or rejection. This is true collectively too. We have shared stories of bad “others” that fuel wars, shared stories of the value of continued growth in consumption and production that destroy our earth, shared stories of our human right to enslave and violate other animals. We have the capacity to bring the stories that separate and imprison us into the light of awareness, and with great compassion, loosen their grip. These two talks look at the ways fear-based stories create suffering, and how awakening from them reveals the freedom of our true, and universal, belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our suffering arises from fear-based stories that are often outside our awareness. These include stories of our deficiency or importance, of being a victim, of being unseen or unloved, of facing failure or rejection. This is true collectively too. We have shared stories of bad “others” that fuel wars, shared stories of the value of continued growth in consumption and production that destroy our earth, shared stories of our human right to enslave and violate other animals. We have the capacity to bring the stories that separate and imprison us into the light of awareness, and with great compassion, loosen their grip. These two talks look at the ways fear-based stories create suffering, and how awakening from them reveals the freedom of our true, and universal, belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice establishes a kind, friendly attention with the image and felt sense of a smile, and evokes an embodied presence. We open to the awake awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing sounds and sensations; and then the awake awareness that experiences our own heart. We end with a lovingkindness prayer for ourself and the world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) There is an inner freedom that expresses as happiness and peace, and it is accessible when we arrive in openhearted presence. As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible to find liberation, I would not teach about it.” In this two part talk, we will look at the conditioning that blocks happiness and two primary pathways of practice that evolve our consciousness and free our hearts.
“We rarely pause when we see something that’s delicious or beautiful or that brings up wonder. We barely pause and just take it in. We really don’t pause much, which is really the essence of savoring…”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) There is an inner freedom that expresses as happiness and peace, and it is accessible when we arrive in openhearted presence. As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible to find liberation, I would not teach about it.” In this two part talk, we will look at the conditioning that blocks happiness and two primary pathways of practice that evolve our consciousness and free our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) “What is it that allows us to open our hearts to every moment of our life? It’s the remembrance that it’s passing and it’s precious.”
Our true refuge is reality – only by opening to “things as they are” do we find true peace and freedom. This talk explores impermanence – a key feature of reality. We look at our habits of resisting change – including loss and death, the practices that awaken and open us, and the gifts of letting go into the ever-changing river of experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We start with breathing mindfully to collect and calm the body and mind. Then the attention opens to include the changing flow in a spacious natural presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Compassion is the medicine we most need as individuals and a species to heal suffering and free our spirits. The essence of compassion for ourselves and others – what I call Radical Compassion – has three key elements: it is an embodied experience (a felt sense of tenderness), it is inclusive all beings, and it naturally moves us to act from a caring heart. This two-part talk explores the alchemy of Radical Compassion and guides us in awakening this intrinsic expression of our evolutionary potential.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We are conditioned to avoid suffering - our own and others. By pulling away, we also contract our heart and disconnect from our innate capacity for compassion. This short talk and meditation is a training in touching vulnerability, and discovering the boundless heartspace that can be a transformer of sorrows.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based “over-controller,” and explore a wise way of witnessing the suffering that comes with over-controlling, and awareness practices that naturally relax and awaken us to our whole and natural Being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Instruction and Question-Response during Retreat (2017-05-02) - Topics include individualizing your meditation practice, working with the "tangles," forgiveness practice, and using the "nurturing" of RAIN.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A forgiving heart clears the way for giving and receiving love freely. This talk and meditation explores where we have become habituated in blame towards ourselves and others, and a classic three part reflection that can loosen and release the armoring around our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Compassion is the medicine we most need as individuals and a species to heal suffering and free our spirits. The essence of compassion for ourselves and others – what I call Radical Compassion – has three key elements: it is an embodied experience (a felt sense of tenderness), it is inclusive all beings, and it naturally moves us to act from a caring heart. This two-part talk explores the alchemy of Radical Compassion and guides us in awakening this intrinsic expression of our evolutionary potential.
A talk given on 4/30/2017 at the IMCW Spring Retreat
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation: Know That You're Here, Right Here (2017-04-29) - Given the first morning of the 2017 IMCW Spring Retreat, this meditation guides you through a body scan, opens to sounds, then expands to the body as a field of sensation. With no closing bells, it can serve as a way to start a longer meditation sit, or to start your journey for the day.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all have conditioning to do what we can to protect and promote our wellbeing. Our suffering arises to the degree that our life and identity become organized around controlling our experience. These two talks look at the emergence of the fear based “over-controller,” and explore a wise way of witnessing the suffering that comes with over-controlling, and awareness practices that naturally relax and awaken us to our whole and natural Being.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation awakens our senses and then guides us to rest in the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, we are invited to relax back into full living presence, into that Beingness that is the center of now.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In our daily trance we experience ourselves and others through a filter of wants, fears, stories and beliefs. Drawing on an engaging story from the legends of King Arthur, this talk explores how we can see past this conditioning by learning to see – in ourselves and others – vulnerability, goodness and awareness itself. Sometimes called “soul recognition,” this seeing is the essence of “Namaste” – realizing and honoring the sacredness that shines through all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk examines the suffering that arises when due to unmet needs for love and safety, our desire becomes narrowed and fixated on substitute gratifications. We then explore how we can bring mindfulness and self-compassion to the habits of obsessing, over-consuming and hurting ourselves and others that keep us from true happiness, connectedness and peace.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided meditation helps cultivate the heartspace that can hold our life with tenderness and grace. We begin by using the image and felt sense of a smile in a body scan, and then open to the spacious presence that includes the changing moment to moment flow of experience. The meditation closes with a few minutes of offering loving blessings to our inner life, dear ones in need and all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Poet Mark Nepo uses the phrase “exquisite risk” to describe our willingness to be fully alive, open, available, living true to our heart. This talk explores the challenges and blessings of taking the exquisite risk, both in becoming more intimate with our inner life, and in engaging with others from full authenticity.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This guided practice begins with a conscious breath that relaxes the body and mind, and then a body scan to awaken to the aliveness of the present moment. We then open into the natural awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, feelings and sensations, and practice “relaxing back” when the mind gets lost in thought.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk differentiates between egoic intentions (driven by wants and fears), and our true aspiration (deepest desires) to manifest our full potential for awake awareness and love. We explore ways to realize and open to our deepest desires when we are stuck in self-promotion, grasping and conflict, so that our aspiration becomes a compass of the heart that can guide us in living with wisdom and compassion.
“What’s my deepest intention. What really matters?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation guides us through a body scan and into a relaxed, open presence. When we realize we are lost in a thought cloud, our practice is to relax open, listening to and feeling the life of the present moment. We are training to become increasingly aware of the gap between thoughts, the space where the light of awareness shines through.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Most of us have encountered trauma either in our own direct experience or with someone in our immediate circle. This talk examines the shame and suffering that arise from trauma and how meditation practices can support a path to full spiritual healing. We focus on practices that help us access a sense of love and safety, and then increase our capacity to bring presence to the unprocessed, unlived life in the body. (Note: For many who suffer from PTSD, therapy is invaluable and these practices are not considered as a substitute.)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes a sense of presence, of being Here, through a body scan and awakening the senses. We then notice when we’re lost and relax back into the wakeful stillness – the Hereness – that is our true home. Our practice concludes with the beautiful poem “Lost” by David Wagoner.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation begins with listening to sounds as a portal to spacious awareness. In addition to guiding attention to naturally occurring sounds, Tara plays chimes and gongs to deepen the experience of receptivity and openness. The meditation progresses to include all experience - sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings - in the vast, transparent, timeless space of awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Listening is more than a communications skill, it is a capacity that awakens our awareness. As we learn to listen inwardly, we begin to understand and care for the life that is here. And as we listen to others, that same intimacy emerges. In this two-part series we examine the blocks to listening and the practices that cultivate this essential domain of human potential. Our focus is both on the transformational power of listening in our personal lives, and also the necessity for deep listening if we are to bring healing to our wider society.
"Listening is the forerunner. If we don’t listen to the pain within and around us, we can’t respond."
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The grounds of happiness, loving relationships and a just and flourishing society is honesty. And yet our current times are characterized by a plethora of deception – both societally, and often in more subtle ways, in our personal lives. This talk examines the deep conditioning we have to deceive others, and to avoid facing and acknowledging our own vulnerability. We then explore how we can commit ourselves to deepening our truth telling, and in so doing, creating a climate of integrity and trust that can lead to a more compassionate world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Meditation can empower us as we learn to access our potential for stability, strength and openness. This meditation calls on the image of a mountain as we awaken our body and mind to a full, vibrant presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The more we trust that our awareness and heart are awakening, the more we find ease, grace and true empowerment in our lives. This talk explores two pathways of deepening our sense of belonging and trust: direct presence with the pain of separation, and turning toward the loving presence that is increasingly manifesting through these human forms.
” … we need people who are able to respond from the heart – not from an angry or egoic reactivity, but from real wisdom.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 then open to whatever arises with a clear and inclusive attention, saying Yes to the life that is here.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By connecting with your future self, this reflection guides you in accessing the deep wisdom and unconditional love of your own awakening heart.
“I returned to the river. I returned to the mountains. I begged – I begged to wed every object and creature. And when they accepted, God was ever present in my arms. And He did not say, ‘Where have you been?’ For then I knew my soul – every soul – has always held him.”
Excerpt from: When I Was the Forest – Meister Eckhart
NOTE: this reflection from the closing of Tara’s talk: Trusting Our Awakening Heart
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We each have an intrinsic capacity for loving presence, and there are powerful ways of paying attention that bring this potential alive. This meditation uses the image and felt sense of a smile to bring a relaxed receptivity to the body. We then engage with our future self (our Being when our heart is fully awake) and explore what it means to embody the fullness of that wisdom and love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation establishes fertile grounds for presence by gladdening the mind, a mindful body scan, collecting the attention and including all that arises in a kind, clear presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) To live our lives fully, we need to embrace the natural unfolding of birthing and dying. Yet we are deeply conditioned to resist loss, to pull away from fear and grief. Through a powerful Inuit story shared by Clarissa Estes, this talk explores how our practices of presence can open us to what we avoid, and free us to love without holding back.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are unaware of the emotions and beliefs that shape our experience, we are in a trance characterized by an identity as a separate, incomplete self. Trance obscures the awareness and love that is our deepest essence. This talk explores the two key pathways of awakening from trance and recognizing and trusting the gold of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the "second arrow" of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Rumi said, “Whenever some kindness comes to you, turn that way – toward the source of kindness.”
This meditation guides us to look for the source of loving and to turn in that direction. It begins with a lovingkindness practice that spreads the image of a smile into the body, then continues with a practice of seeing the goodness of ourselves and others.
“What’s it like when you communicate your appreciation of goodness to another person?”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our lives are shaped by our evolutionary past - the fears and wants that arise from a separate self sense - and the pull of our evolutionary potential - our awakened heart and mind. This talk explores the power of these pulls, and the teachings and reflections that make us most available and responsive to the calling of our future self.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Prayer is a communing with our enlarged being. This talk examines less conscious forms of prayer, and how we can evolve the power of our prayers by opening into the depth of our longing, and reaching toward our true belonging.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awake awareness includes both the foreground of bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings and sounds, and the background of open, still presence. In this meditation we explore discovering interior space and aliveness, and the continuous space that all existence arises and passes in. Resting as a boundless sea of awareness, we are fully open to the changing waves of experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Tara gives brief instructions on the forgiveness practice, then guides us through a process of forgiveness of ourselves and others.
“Forgiving is a movement of your heart not to carry aversive hatred or blame. That you can care about someone and still create boundaries… Each of you has this wisdom, heart, being place that intuits that there really isn’t freedom in the moments that you’re carrying blame and judgment.”
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Question and Response from Retreat ~ After morning meditation, Tara responds to questions on deepening our meditation practice, working with unpleasant and pleasant thoughts, and forgiveness from the IMCW 2016 Spring Residential Retreat.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Shifting our relationship with fear is central to the evolution of consciousness. Our suffering arises when our thoughts, feelings and sense of identity are shaped by fear. As we learn to attend to fear with mindfulness and care, we discover the vast tender presence that has room for the waves, and can fully cherish this life.
Life’s waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from it. Night travelers are full of light, and you are too: don’t leave this companionship… The moon appears for night travelers, be watchful when the moon is full. - rumi
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) - from the first morning of the IMCW 2016 Spring weeklong retreat, Tara offers a short introductory meditation with a body scan, bringing focus to the breath, sounds, then resting in awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear mindful attention to our moment to moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath - or some other sensory anchor - and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention - sensations, emotions, sounds - meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we are stuck in blaming, disliking or hating ourselves, we are unable to love our world. This talk explores what underlies our addiction to self-blame and the teachings and practices that loosen aversive self-judgment and help us cultivate a forgiving heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The archetypal figure of the Bodhisattva (“awakening being”) reflects our potential to realize our connectedness with all beings, and care for this living world with an open tender heart. This talk explores the four types of patterning that keep us stuck in the pain of separation and the key heart practices that evolve us on the bodhisattva path.
"Compassion arises when you see the truth behind the veils."
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This new version of the acronym RAIN is a powerful way of bringing compassion to the life within you, and to attuning and deepening compassion for others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we have strong conditioning to react to aggression with more aggression, we have the capacity to pause, and instead deepen attention and connect to our natural wisdom and empathy. This talk looks at how we can directly engage in this evolutionary adaptation when we encounter trauma related conflict in our personal lives, and in a parallel way when groups of people who have been part of traumatizing conflict seek reconciliation and healing.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) 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 hearts will."
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Lovingkindness (Metta) meditation begins with a smile meditation, then proceeds with calling on loving presence with someone easy to love, then self, others and extending out to the world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In this human realm, healing and spiritual realization are rooted in awakening a love for the life that is here. This talk looks at our habit of feeling we should be different than we are, and the ways that mindfulness and self-compassion help enable us to not only embrace our inner life, but bring genuine healing to others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The scales of judgment confine us in a limited sense of self, they restrict the depth and fullness of our loving. This talk explores the genesis of projecting badness on to parts of ourselves and others, and how we can use mindfulness and self-compassion practices to evolve our consciousness and free our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In Buddhist cosmology the torment of intense desire that can never really be satisfied is depicted as the realm of Hungry Ghosts. This talk explores the attachments and addictions that so many of us struggle with, and the teachings and practices that can liberate us.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Instruction and guided meditation on the three domains of forgiveness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The sacred feminine expresses the qualities of heart that emerge as we open beyond identifying with the egoic, separate self. In this talk, Tara tracks a series of challenging experiences in her own life that catalized an awakening of heart, and explores how for each of us, the places of difficulty can help us realize our belonging to life and the loving awareness that is our true essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A special recording from the first morning of the 2015 IMCW Women's Retreat that offers further guidance and addresses some frequently asked questions about meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The sacred feminine expresses the realization of our belonging, our innate interdependence with all of life. These two classes explores inner practices that help us open to our longing to belong, and awaken the power of prayer.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The skillful use of inquiry - asking questions in a way that energizes and focuses our attention - brings what is hidden into the light of awareness. This talk explores the healing that arises as we investigate the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche, and the freedom discovered as we look into the very essence of who we are.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The trance of separation is part of our evolutionary heritage, but not the end of the story. This talk explores how several key trainings of the heart can evolve and awaken our capacity to realize connectedness, and the sacredness that shines through this living world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The most basic truths we forget, and one is this - if we don't love ourselves, we can't love life. In the most basic way, attending to and embracing our inner life reveals the nature of reality. This talk looks at the genesis of self-aversions and several pathways that open us to the loving presence that is our source.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) While we have evolved to experience a defining sense of separate self, our potential is to awaken to the formless dimension - the pure awareness is our shared source. This talk explores how we can undo the identification with thoughts, emotions and feelings that keeps us landlocked and unable to trust and live from our naturally loving and radiant essence. NOTE: beginning poem is "Landlocked in Fur," by Tukaram, from “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” (Ladinksy, 2002)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This meditation shifts attention from form to the formless source of all Being. Discover and rest in continuous space, filled with the light of awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk looks at the evolutionary fear-patterning that creates separation in our relationships, and at the practices that open us to giving and receiving love. (NOTE: talk given at the IMCW summer residential retreat on 2014-08-02)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In our daily trance of feeling separate, we spend many moments wanting others to be different so we can feel better. This talk explores the heart awakening that unfolds when we deepen our commitment to seeing what is happening inside us. Only then can we see another with clear eyes, and realize the love that arises from our inherent Oneness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Bringing presence to the contraction of fear is a universal part of spiritual awakening. This talk explores two interrelated pathways of opening to and transforming fear.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Bodhisattva means “Awakened Being.” This path of awakening has three key domains for practice: remembering intention; training our attention; and compassionate activity. This talk reviews these domains and includes guided reflections that can help bring spirituality alive in daily life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) As we cultivate mindfulness we become increasingly aware of how we move through huge swaths of our life in trance. This talk reflects on three key domains of trance, and undoing the habitual reactivity that keeps us from the loving, open awareness that is our essence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Drawing on Henri Nouwen’s book that interprets this famous parable, this talk looks at the ways we cut off from loving awareness, and the process of homecoming. Our inquiry, reflections and a guided meditation focus on an essential and often overlooked element of transformation: our capacity to trust in love, to let love in.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores stress-related emotional suffering and how mindfulness and compassion practices can serve our children’s natural intelligence, creativity and openheartedness. Trainings in presence are the hope for this next generation, and the healing of our world.
CULTIVATING RESILIENCE: MINDFULNESS TRAINING FOR STUDENTS ~ How mindfulness training can benefit students and the adults who nurture them An evening with Tara Brach and Congressman Tim Ryan at Walt Whitman HS, Bethesda, MD. Talk given on 2013/10/07.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) It is our evolutionary and spiritual potential to release unnecessary habits of violating other tribes, individuals and unwanted parts of our own being. This talk explores three essential facets of the pathway to awakening: Leaving the fortress of aversive judgment, entering the wilderness of our embodied being and encircling this life with love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Part of incarnating is to feel separate and forget the mysterious oneness that is our home. This talk explores the two dimensions of awareness that when awakened reveal the openness, lucidity and love that expresses our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Instructions, then a guided forgiveness meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) (retreat talk) - By dedicating ourselves to loving the life that is right here--ourselves--we discover the heartspace that holds this world. This talk explores the pathways of forgiveness, offering and letting in love, and gratitude that reveal the vastness of loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) La primera sesión define la meditación y describe las enseñanzas budistas que le dan contexto al camino de la practica. Exploramos las dos formas básicas de meditación - concentración y conciencia plena - y luego nos enfocamos en el entrenamiento de conciencia plena: trayendo atención de conciencia plena a la respiración y sensaciones corporales. Las meditaciones guiadas incluyen el establecimiento de una intención y la pausa sagrada; aprendiendo a "regresar" usando la respiración como un ancla; y "estando aquí" con una presencia encarnada.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) When we are stressed, our way of relating to each other is ego to ego. This talk explores the understandings and practices that enable us to embody "nameste": Honoring the sacred that lives through all beings.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The greatest truths we forget, and one of them is that if we don't love the life that is right here--what we perceive as self--we are unable to embrace our world. This talk explores the suffering of turning on ourselves and the deep freedom that arises when we commit to relating to our inner life with loving presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Morning Instructions - with RAIN, standing and walking explanation
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We can only find love and peace in this life if we are able to hold our inner life with compassion. This talk explores the subtle and therefore often unseen ways that we turn on ourselves, and the pathways to a forgiving heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all encounter the great losses of our own health and life, and of cherished others. We are conditioned to resist opening to the rawness and grief that comes with loss. This talk describes the refuge of presence in the face of loss, and the gift of timeless love that arises as we make peace with the reality of this living, dying world. [NOTE: Tara was traveling this week, so offering a well-loved talk from 2010.]
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When we forget who we are, we are living in a trance that is characterized by suffering. This talk explores the genesis of this trance, and the transformation that is possible as we bring forgiveness and mindful presence to the afflictive emotions that naturally arise.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our suffering arises from unlived life--the fears and loneliness and hurt that we have been unable to digest and include in our heart. This talk explores our conditioning to become dis-embodied and the blessings of spiritual realization that arise as we inhabit our aliveness fully.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we don't love the life we consider "self," we will not realize or live from the loving awareness that is our essence. This talk guides us in bringing a kind, accepting presence to our inner life, and discovering the vastness of what we really are.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk investigates the core conditioning that creates and sustains trance. We then explore two gateways to realizing and inhabiting our true nature - inquiry and letting go.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) By bringing a surrendering presence to mental, emotional and physical domains, we undo the trance of separation and discover our true nature. This talk explores the practices that cultivate the non-resisting space of presence, and the flavors of our essential being that are revealed: open awareness, love and a vibrant flow of awareness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) All that we cherish - love, creativity, wisdom and aliveness - becomes available when we come home to an embodied presence. This talk looks at how the two wings of mindfulness and compassion guide us in the midst of difficulty to our inner sanctuary of freedom.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Without desire, this world would not exist. While this universal energy is entirely natural, if we are not mindful of it, desire can become a narrowed fixation or addiction that creates deep suffering. This talk explores the ways we can pay attention that honor this energy without allowing it to cut us off from presence and possess us
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the moments we feel threatened, hurt or dissatisfied, we often flip into controlling mode--our body, heart and mind become contracted and we disconnect from presence. This talk explores how we can shift from controlling, to an empowering presence. When we do, our deepest wisdom and compassion begin to shape and guide our life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The habit of self-judgment not only causes emotional pain, it creates a trance that obscures the purity and vastness of our Being. This talk explores how a wakeful and forgiving heart can heal and free us. (Retreat Talk)
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha considered investigation to be a crucial capacity on the spiritual path. This talk explores how interest and wise inquiry serve emotional healing, intimacy with others and revealing the truth that sets us free.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our core conditioning expresses as both a longing for love and the pain of not trusting we are loveable. This talk explores how we create the experience of separation, and the key meditative heart- trainings that lead us to realizing and living from the truth of our connectedness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awakening arises out of presence with the changing ground of our lives. This talk explores three key gateways to liberating presence: forgiveness, inner fire (aspiration) and a deep inquiry into the nature of our own mind.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our human potential is to express the wings of presence--mindfulness and lovingkindness--through all facets of daiy living. This talk explores the practices that enable us to both serve and savor this precious life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The primary element in meditation is training to awaken from the trance of thoughts. This class explores two key ways that mindfulness supports this awakening. The first is using wise reflection to discern if thoughts are imprisoning us in fear or serving healing and freedom. The second is recognizing when we are in the virtual reality of thinking, and learning to "come back" to living presence. It is by inhabiting this non-conceptual presence that we have access to the love, wisdom and freedom that we cherish.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our conditioning is to live in a reactive trance of either resisting or become possessed by strong emotions. This reactivity fuels a trance of being separate from others, and feeling defective and insecure. In this class we explore how to free ourselves from this suffering by bringing a mindful and kind awareness to the stories and feelings that make up our emotional life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The first session defines meditation and describes the Buddhist teachings that give a context to the path of practice. We explore the two basic types of meditation--concentration and mindfulness--and then focus on the ground of mindfulness training: bringing mindful attention to the breath and bodily sensations. Guided meditations include setting intention and the sacred pause; learning to "come back" using an anchor of the breath; and "being here" with an embodied presence.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How is it possible that we humans have wreaked such havoc on this planet, on the web of life that we belong to? This talk explores the ways that egoic consciousness can lead to violating life, and how evolving consciousness can move us toward healing this earth.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) We all encounter the great losses of our own health and life, and of cherished others. We are conditioned to resist opening to the rawness and grief that comes with loss. This talk describes the refuge of presence in the face of loss, and the gift of timeless love that arises as we make peace with the reality of this living, dying world.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) (retreat talk) We can only find love and peace in this life if we are able to hold our inner life with compassion. This talk explores the subtle and therefore often unseen ways that we turn on ourselves, and the pathways to a forgiving heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The development of a mask or persona based on our activities and roles is a natural way the ego tries to protect and enhance itself. Yet unless we wake up from our identification with the mask, we are unable to discover the truth and wholeness of what we are. This talk investigates how our masks manifest and the process of wise attention that can free us from a limiting sense of separate self. Includes a guided meditation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Tara responds to questions from the sangha.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) If we can embrace the whole of our nature with unconditional presence - including the inevitability of change and loss--we discover deep wisdom and enduring love.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The attention that serves spiritual awakening is based on the capacity to recognize clearly what is happening in the present moment, and to regard what arises with a kind heart. This talk explores the challenges to a clear and honest presence, and how we cultivate understanding and compassion.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) In the Buddhist tradition, wise effort, or the purposeful dedication of our energy, is an essential part of the spiritual path. While the attitudes of grasping or fear can contract the quality of our effort and create suffering in our lives; when our effort arises from sincerity and wisdom, it creates the conditions for liberation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk explores how we cut off from the energetic parts of our inner experience and the healing and spiritual freedom that is possible when we bring awareness to the life of the body.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) A critical question on the spiritual path is how we can bring the loving presence awakened by meditation into every facet of daily life. This talk explores the conditioning that keeps us in reactive trance and the ways we can deepen our attention and align our lives with our hearts.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) There are three spiritual capacities that are essential for our freedom. The first, forgiveness, is the releasing of stories that this self, or another, is bad. It is an opening of the heart to include all parts of our own being and this world. The second, inner fire, is the energy of devotion to what most matters to us. The third, looking within to realize what we are, reveals the truth of reality itself. This talk uses an ancient Indian teaching tale and guided meditations to explore these core elements of spiritual liberation.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha taught that when our understanding of impermanence is direct and non-conceptual, it is liberating. By directly opening to the radical impermanence of all experience, including the truth of our own mortality, we discover the natural capacity to let go. With this "mind that clings to no thing" awakens wisdom, authentic spontaneity and a natural cherishing of life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) There is a saying: The road to hell is paved with bad intentions. From the Buddha we learn the path to freedom arises from wise intentions. Yet because we habitually grasp after what will immediately relieve or comfort or please us, we often do not listen to our deepest intentions. We forget that in this brief life, what matters most is loving presence. This evening of talk and guided meditations invites participants to examine intentions in their relationships, and to reflect on living from a more awake connection with our heart.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) In the face of inevitable hurts, disappointments and losses, what serves spiritual awakening? This talk explores the gifts of a forgiving heart, devotion and self-inquiry.
(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) The path of the Bodhisattva is to realize and live from the truth or our connectedness. Our practices as compassion and metta awaken us from the trance of separation and free us to embody the awakened heart.
(Insight Meditation Society - Forest Refuge) This talk explores the pathways to realizing and inhabiting our natural awareness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Pathways to recognize the openness, wakefulness, and tenderness that are the essence of being.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Understanding the trance of fear and the practices that free our heart.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Strategies for learning to directly touch the waves of experience while remembering the love and openness of our true nature.
(Spirit Rock Meditation Center) Explore bringing alive the refuges as our true nature, moment - to - moment experience and the field or relatedness. Includes guided reflections.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our deepest nature is compassionate, yet our habitual self-centeredness is an armoring that confines our heart. The Buddhist teachings free us to be of benefit to all those we touch.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) How to cultivate an open, wakeful and receptive presence, both during formal meditation and in our communications with others.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) This talk investigates the skillful means that help us open beyond our conditioned cocoon of thoughts and to realize the freshness, tenderness and boundlessness of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our conditioning to resist pain creates trance—we become identified as a small, victimized, threatened self. We have the capacity, through mindful, kind attention, to discover genuine freedom in the midst of pain.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The bodhisattva path arises out of a love for life. We awaken this love as we realize our belonging to our inner life, each other and the natual world.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Buddha taught that suffering arises when we want life to be different than it is. Radical acceptance cuts through grasping and aversion and reveals the freedom of our true nature.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Our human relationships give rise to pain and pleasure, fear, suffering and love. As we bring our experience into the light of mindful awareness, we awaken compassion and discover the truth of our connectedness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Often without realizing it, painful emotions, like fear or anger give rise to the conviction that "something is wrong". When instead we receive our inner weather with an acceptance and wise attention, we reconnect with our national compassion and wholeness.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Intention shapes our reality and is an essential part of the Buddha's Eight-Fold Path. Explore how the practice of intention -- remembering what we cherish -- can energize and guide us on the spiritual path.
(Sevenoaks Pathwork Center) Touching the source that awakens our hearts and is of benefit to all beings.
(Sevenoaks Pathwork Center) The sense of being a "separate self" seems quite real and both filters and contracts our moment to moment experience of life. This talk investigates how the compelling show of separate self arises and how we can recognize and relax into our naturally radiant, compassionate and unconfined awareness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) When we are identified inside the body of fear, our life contracts and our heart becomes hard. With the practices of mindfulness and compassion, we open our sense of being into the loving awareness that has room for fear.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) When desire unfolds into craving and addiction, it becomes the source of great suffering. This talk examines the nature of desire, and the attitudes and practices that allow us to relate to this energy with freedom. When regarded wisely, desire is the stream that returns us to the ocean of loving.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Week III - Mindfulness of Thoughts Investigating the nature of mind.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Week IV - Integrating practice into daily life.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Week I - General Introduction Mindfulness of the body and concentration on the breath adding mindfulness of sensation while encouraging opening to pleasure and pain.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Week II - Mindfulness of Emotions Exploring ways of working with difficult inner weather systems.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Cultivating the natural capacities of our awakening being. Part 2 of 2
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Cultivating the natural capacities of our awakening being. Part 1 of 2.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Awakening from the trance of self and recognizing our natural radiance.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Relating to pain and pleasure with a wise and healing attention.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Delving into how our relationships are the ground of spiritual awakening.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Bodhisattva is resolved to realize non-separation and live from this truth. On this path, we widen the circle of compassion to include all of life.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Recognizing the prison of our conceptual minds and hwo we can open into our True Nature.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Learning how to handle the difficulties we can encounter when our hearts become wakeful and compassionate.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Freeing the mind by relating skillfully and wisely with thought forms. L
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Relating to our inner weather with a wise and compassionate attention.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Cultivating the openness and connectedness that express our natural freedom.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Training our attention to recognize what is true so we may embrace this life wholeheartedly.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Discovering and inhabiting our generous natures.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Cultivating the courage to love unconditionally.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Regular mindfulness and concentration can be a creative and vital ritual of daily practice that becomes essential in opening of our hearts and minds.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Energizing our spiritual unfolding with the effort to be wakeful and relaxed.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflecting on forgiveness and the ways to open and heal our hearts by releasing the burdens that keep us contracted and heavy.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Realizing emptiness and radiant wakefulness by investigating the nature of self. Includes a quided mediation.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Facing and transforming the fear that armors our heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) The Buddha's teachings on mindfulness begin with mindfulness of our body. By cultivating embodied awareness, we develop the capacity for presence and awakening through all realms of experience.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) Awakening to the mystery of interdependence.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Exploring prayer as the bridge between longing and belonging.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Exploring the nature of fear, and the practices that cultivate courage.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) recognizing and honoring our longing for connection
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Our longing for communion arises out of loving life and is the energy that liberates our spirit. By becoming intentional in inhabiting and expressing this longing, we relax openly into the truth of belonging.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Our longing for communion arises out of loving life and is the energy that liberates our spirit. By becoming intentional in inhabiting and expressing this longing, we relax openly into the truth of belonging.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) All through history humans have sought pathways of healing, opening and awakening to the sacred. While infinitely creative, the spiritual path has several universal facets or stages of unfolding. This talk describes these stages and the practices that support transformation and freedom.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Much of our suffering is due to a pervasive and often buried sense of core deficiency. This talk investigates the source of self-aversion, how it hides and the enormous healing and freedom that is possible when this life-binding experience of shame is brought into compassionate awareness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) exploring the radical and liberating process of "letting go"
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) realizing the aspiration of out heart - living with receptivity and generosity
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) realizing the aspiration of our heart - living with receptivity and generosity
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) guidelines for wise and compassionate living
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) exploring how to include our whole lives in mindfuless and heartfulness
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) From the Buddhist perspective, craving is the cause of suffering. To the extent that we feel discomfort or suffering, we are identified with wanting life to be different is some way. This talk guides us in honesty facing our own areas of attachment, and explores the Buddhist teachings on freedom from addiction.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What mind experiences as truth, the heart experiences as love. In all spiritual traditions, the experience and cultivation of a devoted heart is integral in being wholly human and awakening to the holy.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Buddha offered a comprehensive guide to spiritual living. By reflecting on the interrelated facets of the path, we bring our practice alive in all domains.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) a reflection on the grounds of the Buddha's teachings
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Aspiring to be awake; taking refuge in caring presence.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) explore how practice awakens us from the dream of a separate self
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) seeing that all circumstances may serve to awaken our hearts and minds
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Genuine healing is the opening to wholeness. This talk explores how the practice of mindfulness brings a vitalizing and transforming healing to our bodies, hearts and minds.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) large portions of our life are raced through in a mechanical and uncaring way. this talk focuses on the ways that we compartmentalize spiritual life. guided meditations and reflections address how we can cultivate the quality of unconditional caring presence in the midst of all experience.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) experiencing refuge in Buddha Nature, Dharma and Sangha in an alive and immediate way
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Joy is the natural expression of letting go fully into life. When we open unconditionally to our experience, we become that Openness. We are free to celebrate the beauty and mystery of existence because we no longer want life to be different than it is.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) an exploration of the conditioning to resist life, and the practices that free us
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) cultivating qualities of wakefulness, openness and relaxation to undo the doings
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) experiencing and expressing the natural devotion of our awakening hearts
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) discovering how all circumstances can awaken our hearts and minds
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) The Foundation of Mindfulness: discovering healing and freedom through mindfulness of sensations
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) realizing freedom as we bring understanding and compassion to challenging circumstances
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) exploring the power of intention; invocation and wakeful presence in returning to the source
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) exploring open relaxation as the pathway to and expression of freedom
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) using practice to deepen our capacity for intimacy
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) awakening our hearts by recognizing the shadow lover
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Accessing the energies that free us. The spiritual warrior is in service of awakening: the energy is manifested through our intentionality and courage to be present.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) bringing recognition to the ways we resist life. making peace with our inner life
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) discovering the natural freedom of our hearts and minds
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) recognizing the stories we believe in, and how they stop us from being here for our lives
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) discovering awakening and freedom in the midst of all experience. "May this life be of benefit."
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) the Buddha described the path of liberation in terms of a bird with two wings--the wing of understanding and that of compassion. what the mind recognizes as truth, the heart experiences as love. it is in the awakening of heart/mind that we experience freedom and discover our Buddha nature.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) allowing what is raw, messy and confusing to be the grounds of our path
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) recognizing emptiness and awakening our natural compassion
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Including all of life in heart of lovingkindness. (Date estimated) TB29
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) awakening thoughts and moving into the sacred and wonder-filled present
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) awakening to love through mindfulness of fear and longing
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Meditation practice can be profoundly healing in working with deep personal wounds. The art of healing with meditation is possible when we understand the effects of different styles of meditation, recognize what aspects of meditation may be contraindicated and ground the healing process in a nurturing relational context.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) living life reveals that suffering is the gateway to compassion.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) we all long to belong and suffer when we live in a sense of isolation or contraction. by opening to the "10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows", we discover a deep sense belonging to the life within and around us.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) our sense of being separate and inadequate is created and maintained through our stories about life. Learning how to recognize these stories with mindfulness and compassion reconnects us with our natural, awakened being.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) using concentration skillfully to deepen mindfulness
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) coming into a wise relationship with desire
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) the Buddha taught that our relationships are an essential and beautiful ground of the spiritual path. Sangha, which means spiritual community, is a refuge that can provide inspiration, support, and profound awakening to the truth of our connectedness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Learning how we can cultivate a wise and compassionate relationship with the changing weather of our minds.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) What are the challenging energies that all humans encounter? How do they arise? What is a wise and transformative way of working with these universal forces? These talks describe what have been classically called "The Five Hindrances" and offer instructions for responding to the weather that arises.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) On the spiritual path, all experience is an opportunity to awaken and express compassion. Widening the circle of compassion begins where we are-- with our inner life and the beings we are engaged with. Our practice is to see clearly what is true, the joys and the sorrows, and experience what arises with a kind and open heart.
(Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC) What are the challenging energies that all humans encounter? How do they arise? What is a wise and transformative way of working with these universal forces? These talks describe what have been classically called "The Five Hindrances" and offer instructions for responding to the weather that arises.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) loving ourselves and our lives with a courageous heart (Date estimated) TB12
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) when we relax and open through our bodies, our minds naturally become more free. A guided set of yoga asanas designed to cultivate awareness of sensations and serve as a natural extension of formal sitting practice.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Talk 2 - balancing: how do we develop a wise relationship with the feminine
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Talk 1- masculine and feminine, "it takes two wings to fly"