Insight Meditation Community of Washington
meditate@imcw.org - 202-986-2922

IMCW Audio Dharma (Teaching Talks) Archives:

• 2009 - Wednesday Nights at RRUUC, Bethesda, MD
• 2008 - Wednesday Nights at RRUUC, Bethesda, MD
• 2007 - Wednesday Nights at RRUUC, Bethesda, MD
• 2006 - Wednesday Nights at RRUUC, Bethesda, MD
• Miscellaneous recordings, including events and retreats

The talks below are freely available for download. All files are in .mp3 format. To download, right-click (or Control-click on the Mac) and select "Save As".

Tara Brach's Podcasts: download iTunes, go to the iTunes store, search on "Tara Brach", subscribe, and listen to Tara Brach's Podcasts of recent dharma talks (free).
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Dear Friends,

Your generosity enables us to continue to make these talks available online. Please consider offering a donation of any size - it is greatly appreciated!

Financial support can be given by making your tax-deductible secure donation to IMCW online. Or, mail a check payable to IMCW, P.O. Box 212, Garrett Park, MD 20896.

With lovingkindness, Tara Brach - www.tarabrach.com

Part 2 - Wise Practice
This three week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

Part 1 - Wise Practice
This three week series reviews many key components of Buddhist meditation practice. Beginning with intention and attitude, we cover the strategies that help us arrive in presence, the key elements of mindfulness, working with difficult emotional states and the practices that awaken our heart. Each week will include guided meditations and reflections.

Don't Know Mind
Thoughts, and more broadly, conceptual knowledge, cannot lead to the direct realization of truth, of reality. While thoughts are an essential part of surviving and thriving, spiritual awakening only becomes possible when we step out of the trance of thinking. This talk invites listeners into the radical openness and freedom of not-knowing.

The Attitude that Perpetuates Suffering
Our conditioning is to conclude that "something is wrong" when we encounter difficulty. This way of relating to experience binds us in a trance--it locks in the identification with a separate, victimized, self; it leads to unwise action and it removes us from presence. This talk guides us in recognizing our often unconscious attitude towards what is happening, and arriving in the unconditional presence that is the source of love, wisdom and freedom.

Celebrating Vesak: Oh Nobly Born
Vesak is the Buddhist holiday that celebrates the Buddha's birth, enlightment and death. What links these events is the radical and powerful message of all Buddhist teachings: We each have the potential to realize and live from and awakened heart and mind. This talk explores how the key mythological, psychological and spiritual junctures of the Buddha's life are entirely relevant to our own transformation.

Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield: An Evening of Questions and Responses

Wise Investigation
This talk focuses on the use of inquiry and investigation in energizing a lucid, mindful presence. The interest and care that underlies wise investigation is essential in both healing difficult emotional tangles and in revealing the very nature of reality. Guided meditation included.

Intention and Spiritual Freedom - Part 2
While we can't change the past, it is our intention in this present moment that determines the unfolding of happiness and freedom in our life. When unconscious, our intentions are often shaped by craving and aversion. These two talks explore how we can become mindful of intention, and realize the depth and purity of our innate aspiration toward awakening and freedom.

Intention and Spiritual Freedom - Part 1
While we can't change the past, it is our intention in this present moment that determines the unfolding of happiness and freedom in our life. When unconscious, our intentions are often shaped by craving and aversion. These two talks explore how we can become mindful of intention, and realize the depth and purity of our innate aspiration toward awakening and freedom.

Downwind from Flowers
This talk reflects on ways that we can attend to nature--our inner body, the natural world and our relatedness to each other. Through these domains we can discover the impermanent flow of life, a gateway to pure Beingness and the healing to wholeness that arises from love.

Awakening Through Conflict
The wisdom of the Buddha can guide us not only in discovering inner freedom, but in healing that which divides us from each other. While conflict is inevitable--we are wired toward flight and flight when our needs are not met--it is possible to have our patterns of interpersonal reactivity be the very grounds for awakening. This talk draws on the work of Non Violent Comunications (Marshal Rosenberg) and explores how mindful communications are an interpersonal meditation that gives rise to compassion and understanding.

Part 2 - The Body as a Gateway to Full Presence
We have strong conditioning to take false refuge in our mind, and disconnect from our senses. These two talks explore the pathways and gifts of coming home to embodied awareness.

Part 1 - The Body as a Gateway to Full Presence
We have strong conditioning to take false refuge in our mind, and disconnect from our senses. These two talks explore the pathways and gifts of coming home to embodied awareness.

Without Anxiety About Imperfection
The nature of being human is that we get caught in anger and judgment, hurt and fear. This talk explores what it means to be without anxiety towards this universal emotional conditioning as it appears in ourselves and others. Condemning imperfection binds our identity with an imperfect self. As we learn to pause and open to the direct embodied experience of emotions, we discover a space of presence that is filled with compassion and wisdom. Like the ocean, we can include difficult waves of experience and yet remember our inherent vastness, mystery and wholeness.

Divine Abodes - Equanimity
Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Equanimity is the balanced and open quality of presence that arises when there is no resisting or grasping after experience. It is through the space of this wise presence that unconditional love is free to shine through.

Divine Abodes - Joy
Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Joy naturally arises from the heart space that welcomes all that is. This talk describes four pathways of discovering and inhabiting this intrinsic openness of Being.

Divine Abodes - Compassion
Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. Compassion naturally arises as we allow ourselves to be touched by suffering--our own, those we know, all beings. As we discover our shared vulnerability, the pain of separation dissolves and our hearts open to widening circles of belonging.

Divine Abodes - Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness, compassion, joy and equinimity, are natural expressions of our awakened heart. In this series of four talks, we will examine what arouses these qualities of a wise heart. Each talk will include guided reflections. A key theme in cultivating lovingkindness is learning to see the secret beauty--the sacred--that shines through all beings.
"DASI: Prayers by Women" - CD is available at www.karnamrita.com. You hear her beautiful chanting at the end of this talk.
Chanting with Karnamrita Dasi that is at the end of this talk.

Freedom In the Midst of Fear - Part II
One understanding of the spiritual path is relating wisely to fear. Our conditioned reaction is to feel aversion to fear and do anything but simply experience it. We discover freedom when instead of reacting, we recognize and open to fear with a kind, committed presence. While fear might or might not remain, with awareness, the suffering of being identified as a fearful self dissolves.

In Part II of this talk we explore a range of pathways for cultivating a healing and freeing presence in the midst of fear.

Freedom In the Midst of Fear - Part I
One understanding of the spiritual path is relating wisely to fear. Our conditioned reaction is to feel aversion to fear and do anything but simply experience it. We discover freedom when instead of reacting, we recognize and open to fear with a kind, committed presence. While fear might or might not remain, with awareness, the suffering of being identified as a fearful self dissolves.

In Part I of this talk, we look at how to recognize the physical, mental, emotional and behavioral facets of the body of fear.