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Dharma Talks
given at Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-14
Letting Go of Controlling: The Path of Freedom – Part 2
60:28
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-07
Meditation: Relaxed and Alert
19:37
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-07
What is the Path to Peace? A conversation with Tara Brach and Assaf Katz
61:44
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Tara Brach
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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?”
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-31
Letting Go of Controlling: The Path of Freedom – Part 1
56:09
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-24
Changing Unhealthy Habits of Eating – A Conversation between Tara and Judson Brewer
1:23:25
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Tara Brach
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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/
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-01-17
How Hope Can Heal and Free Us – Part 2
54:17
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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