Radical Compassion: Loving Ourselves and Our World into Healing, Part 1
Tara Brach
Drawn from Tara’s book, Radical Compassion (2020), these three talks explore how the RAIN practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) awakens the active, embodied caring that heals and frees our hearts. Through the framework of this practice, we look at how we can reconnect with the gold of our true nature, navigating life’s challenges with mindfulness and love. In Part 1, Tara explores: How the RAIN practice weaves mindfulness and compassion to release self-judgment and awaken our hearts. The story of the "golden Buddha" as a metaphor for...
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Meditation: Cultivating a Gentle, Kind Attention (19:07 min.)
Tara Brach
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.
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The Three Refuges - Gateways to Belonging and Freedom
Tara Brach
We all need ways to guide our attention that allow us to find wisdom, love and freedom in the midst of our lives. This talk reviews three archetypal gateways—Buddha/awareness, Dharma/truth, and Sangha/loving community. Through teachings, guided meditations and a traditional refuge ritual, we engage together in bringing alive these pathways to healing and peace. In this video, Tara explores: Spiritual practice as a journey of remembering our inherent goodness and reconnecting to what truly matters. The Three Refuges—Buddha (awareness), Dharma (truth), and Sangha (community)—as...
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Meditation: Relaxed and Awake (16:59 min.)
Tara Brach
This guided meditation helps us find ease and wakefulness in our body and mind. With the breath as our home base, we offer a gentle and full attention to the changing waves. We close with a beautiful poem, “Walk Slowly,” by Danna Faulds.
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Short Talk and Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Our Life (11:23 min.)
Tara Brach
Our habitual ways of avoiding pain keep us from experiencing intimacy with our inner life and with each other. This short talk and guided meditation offers instruction in saying “yes” to the life we encounter. As we release resistance, we discover the creativity, wisdom and love that express our truest nature (a reflection from the archives). Listen to the full talk:
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Trusting Who We Are (retreat talk)
Tara Brach
When we are suffering, we are believing something untrue - usually a limiting story about who we are. This talk explores the roots of our self-doubts, and the teachings and practices that remind us of our basic goodness - the loving awareness that is our source (given at the Fall 2019 IMCW 7-Day Silent Retreat - 2019-11-06).
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Revolutionary Love: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Valarie Kaur
Tara Brach
In a divided, reactive, and violent world, how do we embrace love and joy? How do we genuinely include our opponents in our hearts? What gives us the courage to bring our whole being into serving and savoring? And what is our vision for a new world? In this fresh and profoundly relevant conversation, Tara Brach and Valarie Kaur explore the challenges and potential of these turbulent times. Valarie, a Sikh activist, filmmaker, civil rights lawyer, and author, shares insights from her powerful books, including See No Stranger and her recent works, World of Wonder and Sage Warrior....
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Meditation: Breath by Breath – Inviting Relaxation and Ease
Tara Brach
This meditation invites relaxation and ease. We begin with a long deep breathing that helps calm the body and mind. Then we release tensions that might be held in the body, and settle our attention in a receptive way with the breath. The intention is to discover the relaxed wakefulness that expresses our natural being.
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Part 2: A Heart that is Ready for Anything - The Gateway of Equanimity
Tara Brach
In a world where the pace and magnitude of change is beyond anything ever experienced by humans, we are being called to cultivate the qualities of calm, inner balance and a steady, wise heart. These two talks look at the conditioning that fuels our emotional reactivity, and the practices that cultivate equanimity, resilience and a full, openhearted presence. We dedicate to these practices for the sake of our own freedom, and the wellbeing of all beings.
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Guided Meditation: Opening to the Sea of Presence (19:53 min.)
Tara Brach
When our body and mind is relaxed, we become filled with a very awake, dynamic quality of presence. This meditation guides us in relaxing, opening our senses and resting in the vastness and inherent freedom of our own natural awareness.
info_outlineThis guided meditation offers a pathway to quieting our mind and calming anxiety. We begin with long deep breathing, and with the breath, engage the image of a smile and relax through the body. Then we practice resting in relaxed awareness, allowing waves of thoughts, feelings and sensations to come and go.
The meditation ends with a beautiful verse from poet Philip Booth:
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
Poem: First Lesson,” by Philip Booth from Lifelines: Selected Poems 1950-1999 (Viking).