Please support Dharma Seed with a 2024 year-end gift.

Your donations allow us to offer these teachings online to all.

In Memoriam: Rick Woudenberg


The greatest gift is the
gift of the teachings
 
Tara Brach's Dharma Talks at Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC
Tara Brach
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.
     1 2 3 4 ... 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 ... 123 124 125 126
2021-01-06 Meditation: A Present Heart 18:32
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
2020-09-23 Freedom from the Prison of Limiting Beliefs 56:06
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
2020-09-16 The Four Remembrances 50:42
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
2020-09-09 Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart 22:00
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
2020-09-09 Awakening from the Trance of Bad-Othering 46:31
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
2020-09-02 Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness 21:28
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
2020-09-02 Transforming Your Relationship with Anxiety 1:19:29
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
2020-08-26 Meditation: Resting in Awake Awareness 18:49
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
2020-08-26 Worrier Pose: Finding Freedom from the Body of Fear 59:27
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
2020-08-19 Radical Love: Part 2 – Loving Ourselves into Healing 49:16
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

     1 2 3 4 ... 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 ... 123 124 125 126
Creative Commons License