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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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2018-04-04
From Head to Heart
55:51
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-11
Meditation: A Listening, Receptive Awareness
23:56
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-11
Listening with an Awake Heart - Part 1
50:22
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-18
Meditation: Mind Like a Vast Sky
18:12
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-18
Listening with an Awake Heart – Part 2
58:35
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-25
Meditation: Cultivating a Clear and Relaxed Presence
22:00
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-04-25
Responding to Change with a Wise Heart
54:48
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-05-09
Meditation: Intimacy with Life
21:15
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-05-09
Eating Addiction: How Meditation Helps Free Us
54:01
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Tara Brach
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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.
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2018-05-16
Meditation – Resting in Breath, Relaxing into Life
21:21
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Tara Brach
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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.
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