Tara Brach

Tara Brach

Tara Brach, Ph.D is an internationally known meditation teacher and author of bestselling Radical Acceptance, True Refuge and Radical Compassion. Tara shares a weekly guided meditation and talk that address the value of mindfulness meditation and self-compassion in relieving emotional suffering, serving spiritual awakening and bringing healing to our world. read less

Our Editor's Take

On the Tara Brach podcast, the host offers lessons in Buddhism. She helps listeners develop meditation strategies, humility, and serenity following its tenets.

What would it mean to awaken to the sacredness of life and have an open-hearted presence? How does one feel alive and connected to one's soul? What would it mean to align with one's heart? How can one realize their true nature, trust goodness, and feel free? Tara, a Buddhist teacher, answers these questions and more in her podcast.

She advises letting go and cultivating happiness and self-compassion. With mindfulness meditation, it becomes possible to access one's "heartspace" and emulate the Buddha. When addressing fears, believers can, Tara states, begin facing fear and "awakening your fearless heart." In times of chaos and uncertainty, such a prospect may seem liberating to many.

On some episodes of Tara Brach, the host invites special guests. These include Dr. Judson Brewer and Frank Ostaseski. When Frank joins, he and Tara discuss the importance of experiencing grief. When one suppresses grief, they deny love. Grief is an expression of love and an essential part of the human experience. In his episode, the physician provides methods for reducing anxiety. Becoming aware is the first step. As a neurologist, he knows what being anxious does to the brain. When one learns to manage stress through awareness, they can live happier lives. Other guests include Dan Harris, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg.

Wisdom and peace come from daily effort. It requires centering spirituality in one's life. In "Three Core Reminders for Spiritual Practice," Tara gives three techniques. The first is becoming in touch with and experiencing one's emotions. The second is remembering love, and the third is not getting mired in one's thoughts. When one develops these habits, they become free. This freedom allows a person to feel loving kindness for all living beings. It opens their arms and hearts to embrace themselves and the universe.

The Tara Brach podcast provides listeners with meaningful direction. It serves to let listeners live their lives with authenticity, peacefulness, and joy. Episodes arrive twice weekly.

read less

Religion & SpiritualityReligion & Spirituality

Health & FitnessHealth & Fitness

BuddhismBuddhism

Mental HealthMental Health

Start Here

The Honesty Challenge - Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World

The Honesty Challenge - Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World

Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others. This talk explores the practice of radical self-honesty as the grounds of being more honest with others, and bringing more love and freedom to our lives.

Episodes

The Honesty Challenge - Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World

The Honesty Challenge - Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and Our World

Most of us value honesty yet are not aware of how regularly we avoid facing what’s difficult inside us, and how we are less than truthful with others. This talk explores the practice of radical self-honesty as the grounds of being more honest with others, and bringing more love and freedom to our lives.

Meditation: Vipassana - The Practice of Seeing Clearly (18:02 min.)

Meditation: Vipassana - The Practice of Seeing Clearly (18:02 min.)

Vipassana, also known as insight meditation, is training in bringing a clear, mindful attention to our moment-to-moment experience. We begin by relaxing through the body and then resting attention with the breath – or some other sensory anchor – and allowing the mind to settle. Then we open to whatever is predominant or calling our attention – sensations, emotions, sounds – meeting each arising experience with a clear, kind attention. The gift of this process is discovering balance in the midst of the changing flow, and gaining deep insight into the nature of reality.

The Gift of Self-Compassion: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Kristin Neff, PhD

The Gift of Self-Compassion: A Conversation with Tara Brach & Kristin Neff, PhD

This conversation includes what turned Tara toward a path of compassion in her early life, the evolution of the RAIN practice to include nurturing/compassion, the spiritual dimensions of self-compassion, and the role of compassion in these current times. This was initially recorded live for those in Kristin’s membership community and includes several question/responses. For more information about Kristin’s community, visit: https://self-compassion.org/self-compassion-community/?utm_source=newsletter+&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Tara_Brach

Meditation: Embodying Loving Awareness (19:39 min.)

Meditation: Embodying Loving Awareness (19:39 min.)

Love is often abstract, and not fully alive. In this practice, with the supportive image and felt sense of a smile, we are guided to awaken loving in our body, mind and whole being.

Becoming Bodhisattvas in a Troubled World

Becoming Bodhisattvas in a Troubled World

Thich Nhat Hanh said “no mud, no lotus.” How might anger, hatred and delusion—the mud of these times-- give rise to a growing compassion and wisdom in our world? In this talk we look directly at the angst surrounding the US elections, and explore several powerful teachings and practices that can serve as the catalyst for profound transformation, an evolving of wisdom and love, in our collective consciousness.

Guided Meditation: Remembering Your Spiritual Heart

Guided Meditation: Remembering Your Spiritual Heart

During times of great collective stress, it’s common to get gripped by waves of anxiety and fear. This guided meditation, an adaptation of the Tibetan tonglen practice, helps us reconnect with our spiritual heart, the sea of love and light that can hold even the most painful waves in our lives.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 2

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 2

In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding—to ourselves, each other and our world-- with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Living Loving Awareness (20 min.)

Meditation: Living Loving Awareness (20 min.)

By bringing our full attention to the aliveness in the body, we can open to the experience of interior space and the space that includes all sensations and sounds. This then allows us to perceive continuous space filled with the light of awareness. This meditation attunes us to these dimensions of awareness: continuous open space, heart space and full aliveness. We end with a Zen poem that invites us to rest in this living, loving awareness, and know it as home.

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 1

Cultivating a Courageous Heart - Part 1

In the face of violence, hatred and loss, how do we handle the reactivity we feel? Our own anger, hatred and fear? These two talks offer guidance and practice in letting our own vulnerability be a portal to responding - to ourselves, each other and our world - with courageous, wise hearts.

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (20:12 min.)

Meditation: Relaxing Back into Awareness (20:12 min.)

When we fully inhabit our body, we discover the space and wakefulness of awareness itself. In this meditation, we rest in this open awareness, and when the attention narrows into thoughts, we practice relaxing back into the openness that includes passing sounds, sensations and feelings. We close with a brief offering of lovingkindness to our own hearts and our world (with community OMs - no bell at end).

Freedom Beyond the Trance of Self

Freedom Beyond the Trance of Self

The gift of meditation is awakening to the vast, radiant ever-creative beingness that is beyond the confines of a constricting self-sense. This talk explores how awake awareness can directly meet the clench of selfing - the thoughts, emotional tensions and core self-sense. When this occurs there’s a spontaneous releasing into the full love, wakefulness and aliveness of our being.

Meditation: Resting Your Heart in Presence (20:13 min.)

Meditation: Resting Your Heart in Presence (20:13 min.)

When we’re having difficulty, we typically tense up our body and mind, and armor our heart. This practice offers a pathway of relaxing that tension and tasting the peace that comes from resting in presence.

Timeless Heart Wisdom for our Times – Tara Brach and Dan Harris

Timeless Heart Wisdom for our Times – Tara Brach and Dan Harris

How do we meet the violence and suffering in our world with a quality of openheartedness and wisdom? In this interview, Dan and Tara look at the teachings from the Bodhisattva path (path of awakening beings), Tara’s early draw to this path, and the perspectives and practices that can help us all in responding to our world with as much clarity, equanimity and love as possible. Learn more about Dan Harris and subscribe to his new substack platform at https://www.danharris.com

Guided Meditation: Disarming Our Hearts

Guided Meditation: Disarming Our Hearts

Most of us know the suffering of feeling separate from others. In this guided meditation, we explore how we can re-open our hearts by intentionally bringing a caring mindful presence to our own vulnerability, and then extending that presence to include others. When inhabiting that presence, we are able to respond to relational conflict and distance with a growing creativity and love.

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care (15:34 min.)

Meditation: Embodying Acceptance and Care (15:34 min.)

This guided meditation helps us cultivate a friendly relationship with our experience. Using the image of a smile, we bring a gentle presence alive in our bodies, and then open to the heartspace that includes all facets of life. The meditation closes with a verse from poet, Dorothy Hunt, “Peace is this Moment Without Judgment.”

The Courage to Say Yes - A Conversation with Tara and poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

The Courage to Say Yes - A Conversation with Tara and poet, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I ran across acclaimed poet, Rosemerry Trommer, several years ago in a volume where she shares about the loss of her son, Finn, who took his life at age 16. I had never read anything on grieving that touched me so deeply, that held so much wisdom, such a deep affirmation of love. I went on to read her collection All the Honey, and now her new one, The Unfolding. These books are filled with Post-its: I didn’t realize how much I needed Rosemerry’s words to remind me of what most matters. In our interview we talk about the key themes in her poems: grief, love, opening to what’s difficult and what’s beautiful… saying yes to life.

The Sacred Work of Bridging Divides - Teachings from Roshi Joan Halifax and Tara Brach

The Sacred Work of Bridging Divides - Teachings from Roshi Joan Halifax and Tara Brach

There is no more relevant exploration than how we awaken to our connection as family, as belonging to this precious web of life. In their talks, Tara and Roshi Joan look at the cause of divides and their healing through wise contemplation, courageous engagement and the power of imagination. Each lead short reflections that help us bring our own hearts and spirit into this sacred work.

Meditation: Resting in Knowing (20:43 min.)

Meditation: Resting in Knowing (20:43 min.)

Behind the activity of thinking, and the ever-changing flow of sounds, sensations and feelings, there is a great and awake silence that holds all that unfolds. This space of awareness is our formless essence, and learning to open and rest into this alert, knowing vastness has the blessings of homecoming.

Waking up from Bias: A conversation with Tara and Anurag (Anu) Gupta

Waking up from Bias: A conversation with Tara and Anurag (Anu) Gupta

Given how our biases create separation and unfold into violence and suffering, this is a crucial domain for each of us to explore. In this interview, author and teacher Anurag Gupta offers his wise perspectives and invites Tara to share some of what she has learned in navigating this terrain. We explore how to come into a healing relationship with unhealthy thoughts; forgiving ourselves for bias (it’s impersonal); the inner freedom that arises from releasing bias and how to awaken compassion and deep respect for those we have habitually dehumanized. The interview closes with Tara leading a brief reflection on undoing bias. Anu’s recent book is: Breaking Bias: Where Stereotypes and Prejudices Come From - and the Science-backed Method to Unravel Them. You can pick up your copy here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/760282/breaking-bias-by-anu-gupta/ or on Anu's website at: https://www.bemorewithanu.com.

Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind (25:06 min.)

Meditation: Collecting, Unifying and Opening the Mind (25:06 min.)

Collecting, unifying and opening the mind, we begin with a listening attention, noticing sounds that are here. Relaxing open and letting sounds wash through. With the same receptivity to sounds, listen to and feel the aliveness of the body. Listening to the breath as if you’re listening to the voice of a quiet loved one – really close in, tender attention – and including the background sounds. Not pushing away anything – a very open and relaxed, receptive attention. Sensing what’s actually happening in this moment – perhaps the sensations of the breath, the other sensations through the body, the play of light and dark in the eyes, sounds… Closing by sensing all in the foreground and in the background – that alert inner stillness, that light of awareness, that which is our deepest, formless nature.