Tara Brach

Meditation: Calling on Your Future Self - We have within us the wisdom and compassion that can carry us through the most challenging times. This meditation guides us in accessing these inner resources by calling on the most evolved part of our being.

Radical Acceptance - Our Gateway to Love and Freedom - Our capacity to realize the truth of who we are and to love fully, arises from moments of true acceptance. This means meeting our unfolding life with an unconditional, open and tender presence. This talk on Radical Acceptance explores how the trance of unworthiness contracts us away from presence, and how activating mindfulness and self-compassion with RAIN loosens the grip of self-aversion and awakens our hearts.

Meditation: Saying “Yes” to Reality - Our suffering comes from tensing and resisting the life that’s here. This meditation guides us to relax and awaken our body and senses, and resting in presence, allow life to be as it is. As our “Yes” to the changing flow becomes full, we discover the freedom of awake awareness itself.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 2 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Relaxing with Life - This meditation includes a mindful body scan and guidance in relaxing with the changing waves of experience. When we say “Yes” to the moment, we open to the sea of awareness that can include, with care, whatever arises.

Navigating Conflict with a Wise Heart – Part 1 - This series of talks offers guidance in transforming conflict into a portal for awakening your understanding, flexibility and compassion. We look at how to heal our own unmet needs and not be dependent on others changing; and how to engage with another person when both are dedicated to mindful communication. We also extend our exploration to societal conflict. The talks are accompanied by reflections and meditations that can directly enhance your capacity to respond to conflict from the most wise and caring part of your being.

Meditation: Resting in a Sea of Presence - This mindful body scan leads us into a practice of relaxing back into awareness, and recognizing the changing waves of sensations, sounds and feelings in the foreground. As we let go into the sea of presence, we discover am increasing sense of wholeness and peace. The meditation ends with a brief lovingkindness prayer.

Concern for All Beings: Plant-Based Eating – A conversation with Tara Brach and Tricycle‘s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen - A vegetarian diet, while encouraged in most schools of Buddhism, isn’t a requirement of the Buddhist path. But there are powerful spiritual opportunities in embracing a plant-based diet. Following a vegetarian or plant-based diet is one way to practice compassion, reduce harm, and recognize our interconnectedness with all living beings and the earth itself. So what does the dharma say about vegetarianism? How might plant-based eating support our spiritual practice? Tara and James discuss these and other important questions at the intersection of our dietary choices and spiritual path.

Survival of the Nurtured – Our Path to Belonging - We flourish when nurtured with love and understanding. Yet for so many, the violence of our society and lack of attuned caretakers has severed trust and belonging. This talk explores how meditation and conscious relating with each other can restore the connections so vital to healing and spiritual freedom. “We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured.” Louis Cozolino

Meditation: The Presence Beyond Thoughts - We spend many life moments in a trance of thinking. This meditation awakens the senses through a body scan, and attention to sound. We then rest in the presence that can come alive in the gap between thoughts—the presence that is our true home.