Tara Brach

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 3: A Mirror - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of "who am I" that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Listening to Life - The attitude of meditation is one of engaged listening – a relaxed, receptive yet intimate attention. This meditation explores how we can listen to sounds, listen to and feel sensations, and then relax back into the ocean of awareness that includes and perceives the changing waves. In this relaxing back, we realize the peace and freedom of inhabiting our wholeness and essence.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 2: Inner Fire - This 3- part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of "who am I" that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Open Awareness – Relaxing Back into Presence - This practice brings attention to the continuous space within and around the body, and the aliveness of sound, sensation and feeling that lives through us. While it's natural for attention to get distracted, the pathway home is a relaxing back into the awake space that is aware of this changing life.

Three Blessings in Spiritual Life – Part 1: Forgiveness - This 3-part series explores three capacities we all have, that when cultivated, bring spiritual awakening and serve the healing of our world. Drawing on an ancient teaching story from India, we explore together the power of a forgiving heart, the inner fire that expresses as courage and dedication, and the inquiry of "who am I" that reveals our deepest nature.

Meditation: Living Presence - The pathway to experiencing full aliveness and openheartedness is by awakening awareness throughout the body. This meditation begins by establishing a rhythmic inflow and outflow of the breath, in order to calm and collect the mind. Then continuing with the conscious breathing, we are guided through the body – bringing attention to sensations and space. This attention becomes a very vibrant living presence, and we end by experiencing that living presence as a natural openheartedness that includes all of life.

Awakening from the Landlocked Self - The Buddha taught that our suffering arises from forgetting who we are. This talk explores the trance of identifying as Somebody, and the compassionate witnessing that allows us to discover the freedom of our natural being.

Meditation: Befriending and Opening to Life - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We deepen the intention to befriend and relax with whatever arises moment-to-moment, letting life be just as it is. We offer a brief lovingkindness reflection, sensing our heart and mind, and offering whatever wish most resonates right now to ourselves and others.

2022-07-20 - Homecoming to Your True Nature: Awakening beyond the separate, fearful self - Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. This talk shines a light on this conditioning and explores the ways that mindfulness, compassion and self-inquiry reveal the freedom of our true nature.

Meditation: The Breath – Portal to Presence - The meditation begins with breathing mindfully to collect and calm the body and mind. Then the attention opens to include the changing flow in a spacious natural presence.

From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related behaviors that are a deeply conditioned part of the human experience. In this talk we explore the awakening that is possible as we recognize our reactive patterns and instead of judgment, offer a loving and healing presence (a favorite from the archives).

Meditation: Resting in Wakeful Presence - This meditation scans through the body - arriving in the foreground with sounds, feelings and sensations, like the surface waves of the sea coming and going. And in the background, experiencing an alert inner stillness – a vast presence from which all activity pours forth.

Navigating the Dark Ages - How do we process and respond to increasing societal oppression and violence? What helps us transform the energies of fear, hatred and delusion? This talk offers ways we can draw on our spiritual path to steady our heart and engage with presence, wisdom and care.

Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention - 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.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 2 - Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.

Meditation: Letting Go - One way of understanding meditation is a letting go of the habitual clenching of thoughts, the clenching that resists emotions and pulls away from aliveness itself. This meditation guides us in letting go, first through the body, and then practicing letting go of thoughts and relaxing and resting in the changing flow of experience. The blessing of letting go is a homecoming into the truth and wholeness of what we are, a realization of reality, and freedom.

The Path of Spiritual Surrender: Part 1 - Cultivating a surrendering presence allows us to release the identity of a small, separate self, and open to the truth and fullness of who we are. These two talks explore misunderstandings about surrender (such as the fear that we will become passive or condone injustice) and the practices that create the grounds for surrender, emotional healing, transformational activism and spiritual freedom.

Meditation: Befriending Your Inner Life (16:11 min.) - This meditation establishes a gentle and caring presence through bringing the image and felt sense of a smile to various domains in the body. We then settle with the breath, and practice relaxing with whatever arises, letting life be just as it is. The underlying intention is to regard all experience with a clear, interested and friendly attention. The gift is a homecoming to our naturally loving presence.

The Three Steps of Letting Go - A wonderful inquiry is, "What is between me and openhearted presence?" This talk explores the profound healing and transformation that arises when we release the blocks to our natural and loving awareness.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Open Wakefulness - This meditation begins by relaxing through the body and connecting with inner aliveness and space. We then include sounds and sense the openness to life. At the center of the practice is a relaxing back and inhabiting spacious awareness. The meditation ends as we experience the heart from the vantage of spacious awareness and offer prayers to our inner life and all life.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 2 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world– with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence - Our thoughts keep us removed from this living world. This guided practice invites us to open and relax with the moment to moment experience of our senses. It includes a poem by Ingrid Goff-Maidoff, "Wherever you are, Find a Trail."

Cultivating a Courageous Heart – Part 1 - In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding – to ourselves, each other and our world – with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Reconnecting to Silence and Presence - Only in silence and presence do we realign with what matters to our hearts. This simple practice of arriving in an embodied awareness supports us in touching the grounds of true transformation and healing. It closes with a powerful poem by Gunilla Norris, "Sharing Silence."

Nourishing Our Spirit in Times of Collective Fear -

Meditation: Whole Body Breathing - This guided meditation includes a body scan and invites the receptivity and letting-go of whole body breathing. Once we have awakened the vitality and presence throughout the body, we have access to the formless dimension, the awareness that is our source.

Self Forgiveness with RAIN - Our inability to forgive ourselves blocks healing and freedom. As we explore in this talk, the habit of judging and blaming ourselves traps us in fears, prevents intimacy with our world, and veils over the goodness and mystery of who we are. This talk includes several reflections that can support us as we cultivate a wise and forgiving heart.

Meditation: Awake and Alive - This guided practice includes a body scan, and an opening to the awareness that includes all of life. From that wakeful openness we offer a relaxed attentiveness to the changing flow, and close with loving kindness to ourselves and our world.

Equanimity – Part 4 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love

Meditation: The Space and Aliveness of Presence - We arrive in presence by deepening attention in the body; relaxing and awakening through a body scan. That presence deepens as we bring our attention to the space of awareness that includes the changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings. In that wholeness of formlessness and form, we discover our natural being - open, awake and tender.

Joy – Part 3 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - Part 3: Joy – blossoms in the moments our hearts open boundlessly to reality, to the 10,000 joys and sorrows. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: The Heartspace Where All is Welcome - This meditation scans through the body, and awakens attention to the open, inclusive awareness that all life arises in. We then explore experiencing that openness in the region of the heart, saying yes to life and including whatever is here with unconditional presence (a favorite "open space" meditation from the archives).

Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - Part 2: Compassion – the tender resonance of heart – awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Awareness Is Our Home - This guided practice helps us come into our senses through a body scan. We then rest in the awareness that is listening to and feeling the changing flow of experience. When the mind drifts, the return is a relaxing back to our senses, and to the sea of awareness that includes and experiences the waves of life.

Lovingkindness – Part 1 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love - We awaken our natural lovingkindness by learning to attend to and take in the goodness of this life. This series reflects on four primary expressions of an awake, wise heart: lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. In each talk we explore the habitual patterning that blocks our full realization of these innate capacities, and the understandings and practices that nurture their unfolding.

Meditation: Path of Love - This heart practice opens with the intention to bring a kind presence to whatever arises. After arriving with a body scan, we are guided to meet all experience with an open tender awareness. The practice ends with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer called "Is this the Path of Love?"

Responding with Heart to Painful Times: A Conversation with Tara & Frank Ostaseski - This event includes short talks addressing the suffering so many are experiencing, and questions and engagement with participants

Meditation: Present Heart - We awaken a present heart by relaxing with the breath and bringing the kindness of a smile into our bodily experience. This meditation ends with offering blessings to our inner life and all beings.

Relationships - from Reactivity to Rechoosing Love - Most of us have habitual ways we create separation from others. This talk takes a look at the roots of our emotional reactivity and ways our meditation practice can foster more loving connection in our lives.

Meditation: Meeting Life with a Spacious Heart - 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.

Compassion toward Non-Human Animals - A Conversation between Konda Mason and Tara Brach - The medicine our world most needs is compassion, and it is crucial that this include all living beings. Our societal conditioning blinds us to the horror of suffering experienced by non-human animals through our cruel system of factory farming. This conversation looks at how facing and responding to this suffering is necessary for the freedom of our own hearts, and the healing of the world.

Meditation: Entrusting Yourself to the Waves - By not resisting, by letting the waves wash through us, we began to relax. Rather than fighting the stormy surges, we rest in an ocean of awareness that embraces all the moving waves. We arrive in a sanctuary that feels large enough to hold whatever was going on.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 2 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Inhabiting Our Body, Realizing Wholeness - Awakening awareness in the body is the portal to resting in boundless and dynamic presence. This guided practice scans the body from feet up, and helps us inhabit all parts of our body. As we open to the aliveness and space inside the body, we discover a permeability that allows us to inhabit the universe of aliveness and space, form and formlessness. With this homecoming to whole beingness is an intrinsic experience of freedom.

Being Embodied: Gateway to Aliveness and Spirit – Part 1 - All that we cherish—creativity, love, wisdom, realization—arises from an embodied presence. Yet as we know, the wounds and trauma of our society and individual lives leads toward dissociation. These two talks look at the challenges to awakening through our bodies, and the practices and teachings that guide us on the path.

Meditation: Embodied Spirit - Experiencing our aliveness through our senses is the gateway to resting in formless loving presence. This meditation guides us to awakening through our body, and recognizing the backdrop of silence, of awake awareness that is the source of all being.

Engaged Spirituality during Times of Upheaval - Engaged spirituality means responding to our world's suffering with wisdom and deep care. This talk looks at three blocks to aligning our actions with our heart – "bad othering," dissociation and overwhelm. We explore how we can awaken from each reaction to suffering by drawing on our practices of presence and remembering our larger belonging.

Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen - Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, "Awakening Compassion," is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us home to the vastness of loving presence (re-mastered from the 2013 IMCW fall 7-day silent retreat).

Equanimity: The Gifts of Non-Reactive Mindful Presence - If we want to bring our intelligence, creativity and love into our relationships and world, we need to be able to access an inner refuge of presence. This talk explores how, when we're reacting from anger, clinging or fear, to pause, reconnect to the immediate experience of "just this" and remember the love and awareness that has room for the changing waves of life.

Meditation: Being a Kind Witness - Learning to witness what is going on inside us is the gateway to inner freedom and deep realization. This meditation guides us in witnessing our experience with a non-judging and kind awareness.