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Retreat Dharma Talks
at Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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IMCW Wednesday Evening Talks
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2017-10-18
Finding Peace in the Chaos
41:13
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Shell Fischer
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"If you don't become the ocean, you will be seasick every day." ~ Leonard Cohen -
During this talk, Shell will be offering a variety of different mindfulness methods we can use to approach and re-discover the calm, peace, and ease of equanimity -- or balanced awareness -- in the face of what are often called the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows that make up all the days and moments of our lives.
Shell will explore how, through our meditation practice, we can learn to accept and welcome each moment -- life as it IS -- with as much peace, compassion, and kindness as we can muster, without falling into despair and resignation, and without making anything wrong -- especially ourselves.
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2017-10-25
Meditation: Refuge in Presence
18:12
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Tara Brach
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We arrive in presence through the gateway of the body, scanning through with awareness, and then resting with the breath and body sensations. As we include whatever arises with a gentle and kind attention, our inner refuge becomes increasingly stable and openhearted. This meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.
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2017-10-25
Anger: Responding, Not Reacting
53:22
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Tara Brach
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Anger is natural, intelligent and necessary for surviving and flourishing. Yet when we are hooked by anger, it causes great personal and collective suffering. This talk explores how to transform patterns of reactivity by bringing a mindful and compassionate attention to the unmet needs that underlie angry reactivity. When we learn how to pause and connect honestly with our inner experience, we are then able to respond to others from our full intelligence and heart.
“Getting angry with another person is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.” Buddha
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2017-11-08
Meditation: Relaxed Attentiveness
20:00
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2017-11-08
Power of Prayer: From Longing to Belonging
46:14
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Tara Brach
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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?”
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2017-11-22
A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart
49:20
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Tara Brach
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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 ~
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2017-11-22
Meditation: Relax Into Happiness
19:18
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2017-11-29
Meditation: Breath by Breath
23:02
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2017-11-29
Awakening from the Trance of Fear – Part 1
45:13
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Tara Brach
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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.
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