Tara Brach

Bodhichitta - The Awakened Heart - Part 1 (2016-02-24) - While the brightness and warmth of our hearts is always here, like the sun when blocked by clouds, our intrinsic love can be obscured. These two talks explore how we become arrested in a confining story of separate self, and how remembering love releases us from this trance. The first talk emphasizes inner pathways of freeing our heart and the second talk explores awakening bodhichitta actively in relating with each other.

"Exploring what allows the heart to wake up..."

"...being loved into being more who we are is a moment of blessing. What is a blessing? A blessing is a reminder or homecoming into more realness - more love. We're blessed when we remember."

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Blessings of Love (2016-02-24) - A blessing is whatever reminds us of the sacred loving presence that shines through all of us. This meditation is a transformational practice in receiving and offering blessings. First we connect with the vulnerable tender place within us that longs to feel loved, and call on loving presence to bless us. By imagining and allowing ourselves to receive love, our hearts become open and filled with light. We then bring that inner loving presence fully alive as we offer blessings to other beings. The image of receiving a kiss on the brow, and offering one, is suggested as a powerful channel for the blessings that awaken our heart.

"...being loved into being more who we are is a moment of blessing. What is a blessing? A blessing is a reminder or homecoming into more realness - more love. We're blessed when we remember."

"Part of what keeps us from realness - in that small self identity - is the avoiding of what's here."

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: The Center of Now (2016-02-24) - The portal to presence is awakening through the body from the inside out, and then opening to include sound in field of aliveness. This reveals the awake space that everything’s happening in; the space that lets everything be, just as it is. It’s in that full allowing that we discover the center of now, that pure still presence that is the very source of our being. The meditation ends with an offering of prayer as that presence is experienced in the domain of the heart.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With thanks and love, Tara

The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening - Part 2 (2016-02-17) - In spiritual life, inquiry arises from our deep yearning to understand reality, and it involves bringing an interested, engaged attention to our immediate experience. These two talks explore how inquiry serves emotional healing by focusing on difficult “stuck” places, how inquiry enables us to become more intimate and understanding of others, and in the deepest way, how inquiry can reveal the deepest truth of what we are…our true nature. The talks include several guided reflections that can enrich your meditation practice and serve spiritual awakening.

"If we don't bring inquiry from the neck down, we cannot untangle the tangles. Our emotional life lives in our body, so inquiry needs to be embodied. One of the misconceptions of inquiry is that it's analytic - that it's conceptual... it's not. Inquiry is shining the light of awareness to what's actually happening - moment to moment in our bodies."

Tara's website: www.tarabrach.com

Join Tara’s email list: http://eepurl.com/6YfI

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With thanks and love, Tara

This guided meditation includes a full body scan, and the recognition of the formless awareness that includes and is source of all experience. By recognizing that awareness we discover the silence and stillness that is the ground of all experience.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Reflection: The Power of Inquiry - Untangling Emotional Tangles (2016-02-10) - This short meditation helps us get unstuck from emotional difficulty with the practice of Inquiry. We use the acronym RAIN as a guide, starting with Recognizing and Allowing what is arising, and then systematically Investigating (through inquiry) the limiting beliefs and reactive feelings that are challenging. The meditation ends by offering Nourishment to our vulnerability with kindness, and discovering the shift in our own being…in our identity…that expresses increased freedom.

(From the end of Part 1: The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening)

The Power of Inquiry in Spiritual Awakening (2016-02-10) - Parts I and II - In spiritual life, inquiry arises from our deep yearning to understand reality, and it involves bringing an interested, engaged attention to our immediate experience. These two talks explore how inquiry serves emotional healing by focusing on difficult “stuck” places, how inquiry enables us to become more intimate and understanding of others, and in the deepest way, how inquiry can reveal the deepest truth of what we are…our true nature. The talks include several guided reflections that can enrich your meditation practice and serve spiritual awakening.

"True inquiry doesn't land on an answer. It opens to a mystery that's meant to be lived."

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness with Intro (2016-02-10) - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Inhabiting Awake Awareness(2016-02-10) - This meditation begins with collecting attention with the breath, and awakens us to the experience of aliveness and inner space by scanning the body. We then open to receive all the senses in awake awareness, and to inhabiting that boundless receptive awareness that is our home.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Three Attitudes that Nourish a Liberating Practice (2016-02-03) - A key spiritual inquiry is, “In this moment, what most serves awakening?” Rather than a particular style of meditation practice, it is our way of relating to our experience - our attitude - that frees our hearts. This talk explores the attitudes that are an expression of our innately open, wakeful and loving awareness, and that carry us to realization.

Meditation - Space, Aliveness and Letting Be (2016-02-03) - This practice guides us into the openness of awareness, and then invites a deep resting, a letting be.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Part 2: Three Blessings on the Journey - Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Center of Now (2012-02-01) - Tara is on retreat, so asked for a meditation from the archives to be posted.

Part 1: Three Blessings on the Journey - Drawing on a wonderful teaching story from the Upanishads, these two talks explore the role of forgiveness, inner fire and looking at our own minds, in finding freedom.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Morning Meditation Instruction with Question and Response (retreat) (2015-12-29) - "Discover what’s happening here, beyond the veil of thinking.” Tara gives additional instructions and responds to questions after the morning meditation at the 2015 IMCW New Year retreat.

Widening the Circles of Compassion (retreat talk) (2015-12-31) - The archetypal figure of the Bodhisattva ("awakening being") reflects our potential to realize our connectedness with all beings, and care for this living world with an open tender heart. This talk explores the four types of patterning that keep us stuck in the pain of separation and the key heart practices that evolve us on the bodhisattva path.

"Compassion arises when you see the truth behind the veils."

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: RAIN of Compassion (retreat) (2015-12-29) - This new version of the acronym RAIN is a powerful way of bringing compassion to the life within you, and to attuning and deepening compassion for others. (from the 2015 New Year's retreat - a guided heart meditation)

Gateways of Remembrance: The Three Refuges (2016-01-06) - This talk explores the traditional refuges of awareness (buddha nature), truth (dharma) and love (sangha) that are at the heart of Buddhism, and found in many spiritual and religious traditions. It includes a look at our false refuges - strategies that seek to comfort and gratify, but are temporary fixes - and moves into reflections that help us remember, trust and live from our true nature. (Concludes with a ceremony tying red cords in remembrance of the refuges.)

Meditation: Relaxing Open (2016-01-06)

Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don't try to figure anything out. Don't try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest.

- Tilopa

Meditation: Letting Life Be (from 2010-09-22) - Tara is teaching retreat this week, so wanted to share this meditation from 2010 with you.

The Power of Mindful Investigation (from 2010-09-22) - We each have a deep interest in reality–in understanding what is true and who we are. In Buddhist teachings, our interest, and its expression in wise investigation, energize the path of awakening. This talk explores how mindful investigation can free us from emotional suffering, nourish loving relatedness and create the conditions for deep spiritual realization.

(Tara is on retreat this week, so she asked to share this talk from 2010.)

Meditation: Seeing the Goodness (2015-12-23) (6:11 min) - When we focus on what we appreciate in others, our very attention helps allow that person to shine (a practice meditation from the end of the "Secret Beauty - Solstice talk").

Reflection: Learning to Stay (2015-12-23) (4:30 min) - We open the door to healing by bringing a mindful and kind attention to inner vulnerability and fear (from "Secret Beauty - Solstice talk).

Secret Beauty - Solstice Talk (2015-12-23) - This solstice talk explores two pathways to realizing the Secret Beauty that is our essence. One is through the compassion that arises when we stay with vulnerability and suffering, and the other is through love that arises as we learn to see the goodness that shines through all beings.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Awaken to HeartSpace (2015-12-23) - Awaken to HeartSpace, the open awareness that is intrinsically tender and wakeful, and discover how to experience this life from the domain of heart.

This meditation is included at the end of the RAIN of Self-Compassion talk. This talk explores three key features of the trance of unworthiness and introduces this guided meditation based on a new version of the acronym RAIN that awakens self-compassion and de-conditions the suffering of being at war with ourselves.

To listen to the complete talk, go to: The RAIN of Self-Compassion.

This talk explores three key features of the trance of unworthiness and introduces a guided meditation based on a new version of the acronym RAIN that awakens self-compassion and de-conditions the suffering of being at war with ourselves.

This practice includes a body scan that opens into experience of continuous space, filled with the light of awareness.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Desire: A Current of Homecoming (2015-12-09) - Desire is intrinsic to our aliveness, yet when we have unmet needs, it can possess us. This talk explores how to relax open the grip of wanting and heal the suffering of addiction. You will learn how to bring mindfulness and compassion to the roots of desire, and be carried home to open loving presence.

“Recovery is also about spirit – about dealing with that ‘hole in the soul’ … so how does this hole get filled and become holy space?”

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Calming and Opening (2015-12-09) - This meditation guides us in collecting and quieting the mind with the breath, and then relaxing all effort, and simply resting in what is.

Free download of Tara's new 10 min meditation: "Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease" when you join her email list.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

With prayers for the Paris Climate talks: What will it take to have us collectively awaken to the suffering of our earth and respond? This talk looks at how we are destroying our larger body, the earth; what stops us from recognizing and opening to the suffering of loss, and ways we can evolve our consciousness and act on behalf of this precious life. (from 2013-10-02)

Feeling Gratitude, Giving Love - Thanksgiving 2015 (2015-11-25) - Like breathing in and breathing out, gratitude and generosity allow us to live fully. This talks explores what blocks these natural capacities, and three pathways of nourishing a grateful and giving heart.

Tara's website: www.tarabrach.com

Join Tara’s email list: http://eepurl.com/6YfI - get a free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease”.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/. With thanks and love, Tara

Meditation: Awake and Open Awareness (2015-11-25)

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: Awake and Open Awareness (with community chanting Om's) (2015-11-25)

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Heart Meditation: Loving Presence (from retreat)(2015-10-12) - Scanning the body, filling it with the image of a smile, meditation continues with loving presence of someone easy to love, our own being, and offering care to others.

Part 2: Awakening through Anger - The U-Turn to Freedom (2015-11-18) - While we have strong conditioning to react to aggression with more aggression, we have the capacity to pause, and instead deepen attention and connect to our natural wisdom and empathy. This talk looks at how we can directly engage in this evolutionary adaptation when we encounter trauma related conflict in our personal lives, and in a parallel way when groups of people who have been part of traumatizing conflict seek reconciliation and healing.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Instructions on Working with Trauma - Q and A from Retreat (2015-04-20) - a short segment that includes a message on working with trauma as part of a morning question-response session at the IMCW 2015 Spring Retreat.

Awakening through Anger - The U-Turn to Freedom (2015-11-11) - Anger is naturally triggered when we feel an obstacle to meeting our needs. How do we honor the intelligence within anger, but not get hijacked into emotional reactivity that creates suffering in our individual and collective lives? This talk explores the U-turn that enables us to offer a healing attention to the feelings and unmet needs under anger. Once present with our inner life, we are able to respond to those around us with wisdom, empathy and true strength.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”― Mark Twain

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: The Heartspace That is Home (2015-11-11) - This meditation awakens attention to the space of awareness, and then explores how this awake awareness is experienced as heartspace, the vast tenderness that is home.

Compass of Our Heart (2015-11-04) - All of our actions, our entire life experience, arises from the energy of intention. While it’s natural that our intentions are shaped by egoic wants and fears, when we bring this into conscious, compassionate awareness, we can discover the deep aspiration that guides and energizes our awakening hearts and minds. This talk explores the movement from egoic intention to liberating intention…the movement from “my will” to “my hearts will.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

2015-10-10-Morning-Instruction-and-Meditation (from the IMCW fall residential retreat)

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Relating Wisely with Imperfection (2015-10-28) - Our survival brain reacts to perceived imperfection with aversion and anxiety, and if we are habituated to this reaction, we become imprisoned in the identity of a flawed separate self. This talk explores the healing and transformation that is possible as we learn to regard imperfection with mindfulness and compassion.

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

Meditation: A Healing Breath (2015-10-28) - This meditation introduces a simple breathing practice that brings relaxation and inner ease.

Awakening Beyond Self (2015-10-21) - Suffering is our call to deepen attention and discover the truth of who we are beyond the identity of a separate, deficient self. This talk examines how thoughts, beliefs and emotions keep us trapped in a confining identity, and two pathways of practice that serve awakening and freedom.

Meditation: Letting Life Be As It Is (2015-10-21)

Ten-Minute Basic Meditation Practice (from the first morning instructions at the 2015 IMCW fall retreat) (2015-10-10)

(Retreat talk) Freeing Ourselves by Loving Ourselves (2015-10-11) - In this human realm, healing and spiritual realization are rooted in awakening a love for the life that is here. This talk looks at our habit of feeling we should be different than we are, and the ways that mindfulness and self-compassion help enable us to not only embrace our inner life, but bring genuine healing to others.

Retreat Meditation: Radiant Empty Heart (2015-10-15) - an open focus meditation given at the 2015 IMCW Fall 7-day Residential Retreat

Trusting Ourselves, Trusting Life (2015-10-07) - How can we trust in basic goodness when we encounter so much greed and violence within and around us? This talk explores three pathways of practice that enable us to bring a healing attention to our primitive survival conditioning, and cultivate the heart and awareness that express our full potential and deepest essence."Who would you be if you trusted the basic goodness and beauty that lives through you?"

Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.