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Dharma Talks
given at Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-03-27
Meditation: Widening Rings of Being – Awakening the Senses
20:01
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Tara Brach
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If we can recognize thoughts as thoughts, it becomes possible to open from virtual to living reality. This meditation guides us in awakening the senses and discovering the freedom – the awake space of Being that is beyond the confines of thoughts.
“Relaxing back into the space between thoughts. Relaxing with what’s right here…”
The poet Rumi writes, “Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking, live in silence, flow down and down in always widening rings of being.”
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-03-20
Meditation: Openhearted Presence
21:48
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Tara Brach
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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.” ~Tara
We close with a beautiful blessing-poem from John O’Donohue, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-03-13
Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention
19:27
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Tara Brach
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This meditation calls on the image and felt sense of a smile as we scan through the body, and invites a receptive and caring presence, as we open our attention 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
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-03-06
Meditation: Letting Go of Doing
21:17
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-03-06
Part 2: Healing Depression with Meditation
55:51
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-28
Meditation: Refuge in Living Presence
22:18
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-28
Part 1: Healing Depression with Meditation
63:34
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Tara Brach
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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.
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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2024-02-21
Meditation: A Welcoming Heartspace
18:00
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Tara Brach
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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.”
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Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
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