Basic Goodness and Awe: A conversation between Tara Brach and Dacher Keltner
Tara Brach
Basic Goodness and Awe: A conversation between Tara Brach and Dacher Keltner - Our conversation covers the biological, evolutionary and cultural bases of human goodness and the centrality of awe in the human experience. We explore the blocks to experiencing our full potential, and ways we can cultivate our innate capacity for finding wonder, love, creativity and beauty in our daily lives. Dacher Keltner, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, a scientist and the co-director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has authored a number of books,...
info_outline
Guided Meditation: Whole Body Breathing
Tara Brach
Guided 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.
info_outline
How Do We Bridge the Divides?
Tara Brach
How Do We Bridge the Divides? - The divides in our world can only exist if we humans are divided from our own full being and habituated to divides with others. In this reflection we explore bridging inner and relational divides as the grounds for evolving consciousness in our species and awakening to more connectedness and love in our world.
info_outline
Meditation: Breathing Our Way to Peace & Freedom
Tara Brach
Meditation: Breathing Our Way to Peace & Freedom - This meditation guides us in collecting attention with an intentional long deep breath, and awakening a full relaxed presence as the breath resumes in its natural rhythm. Resting fully in this presence is the gateway to deep peace and inner freedom. “Little breath breathe me gently, row me, for I am the river I am learning to cross.” – W.S. Merwin
info_outline
A Generous Heart
Tara Brach
A Generous Heart - Our deep potential is to live from an awake, loving heart. This talk looks at how, with a kind and mindful attention, we can decondition habitual tendencies toward grasping and self-centeredness, and nourish the sense of connectedness and care that gives rise to generosity. As we bring these heart practices alive in our most immediate relationships, they have the power to evolve consciousness in widening circles across the world.
info_outline
Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness
Tara Brach
Meditation: The Space of Loving Awareness - This meditation begins by guiding us through a scan: opening to inner space and aliveness, then to outer space, and then continuous space, filled with the light of awareness. We explore how every experience belongs to this infinite awake space of our Being, and can be held with tenderness and love.
info_outline
Conversation with Tara Brach and Arthur Brooks: Becoming Happier
Tara Brach
Becoming Happier: Conversation with Tara Brach and Arthur Brooks - The Dalai Lama regularly says that everyone wants to be happy, nobody wants to suffer. Arthur Brooks, in his new book on getting happier (co-authored with Oprah Winfrey) digs into the practical and science-based approaches that increase deep well-being. In this conversation Tara and Arthur discuss the ingredients of happiness, the role of unhappiness in our lives, how to work with core ego-fears, the power of metacognition, the necessity of transcendence of small self and the love that is the grounds of true happiness.
info_outline
Meditation: Refuge of Living Presence
Tara Brach
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.”
info_outline
The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance
Tara Brach
The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance - When we are caught in self-judgment, we forget the truth of who we are – our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being personally, and become imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness, a limited and distorted reality. We then look at how the practice of Radical Acceptance enables us to come home to a fullness of being, and live from a growing sense of loving connectedness with all beings.
info_outline
Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment
Tara Brach
Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment - When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment-to-moment experience. This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love. …Exploring what it means to unconditionally say “yes” to the life that’s here… In the moment when that “yes” becomes full, our hearts awaken...
info_outlineThe Wings of Awakening – Self-Honesty & Love (retreat talk) - We evolve our consciousness by bringing a clear and kind attention to the tangles of suffering. This talk explores how the “second arrow” of self-judgment imprisons us in emotional reactivity, and the pathways of awakening awareness that reconnect us with our full human potential. (This talk was given at the 2016 IMCW fall silent retreat.)