Practicing Meditation: “Getting Out of Your Own Way”
The depth and vitality of a meditation practice depends on our sincerity, and an attitude of curiosity and friendliness. With this as the grounds, our practice will cultivate the clear seeing and openheartedness that expresses our deepest nature. This talk covers basic ingredients in a meditation practice, and includes a half hour of questions and responses.
Guided Meditation – “Just This Breath”
Compassion
This is one of my favorite little stories: One afternoon, a tired-looking dog wandered into my yard and followed me through the door into the house. He went down the hall, lay down on the couch and slept there for an hour. Since my dogs didn’t seem to mind his...
Compassion
This is one of my favorite little stories: One afternoon, a tired-looking dog wandered into my yard and followed me through the door into the house. He went down the hall, lay down on the couch and slept there for an hour. Since my dogs didn’t seem to mind his...
Being to Being – Loving Beyond the Trance
We have strong conditioning to relate to each other from a sense of separateness–persona to persona. This talk looks at what traps us in egoic relating and how several simple yet powerful reflections can open us to pure, unconditioned loving.
Guided Meditation – “Relaxing Into Presence”
Blog: A Heart That Is Ready for Anything
A Heart That Is Ready for Anything ~ When the Buddha was dying, he gave a final message to his beloved attendant Ananda, and to generations to come: “Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge.” In his last words, the Buddha...
Releasing the Barriers to Unconditional Loving
We long for love and habitually armor our hearts. This talk explores the aggression and clinging that protect our wound of feeling unlovable, and the ways that mindfulness can dissolve our defenses and reveal our inner refuge of pure loving presence.
Guided Meditation – “Open, Wakeful Presence”
A Special Evening Satsang – Question and Response – RAIN
Question and response with Tara from an evening satsang on 2013-05-13. Many of the questions that evening were about R.A.I.N. [NOTE: in 2013, Tara was using the older concept of the “N” as “Non-Identification” or “Natural...
Remembering Being
Our fear-based doings block us from realizing the formless dimension of our Being, and living from that source of wisdom and love. This talk explores the habitual control strategies that keep us from presence; and the role of mindfulness and lovingkindness in reconnecting with the ground of Being.
Blog: It’s not what’s happening…it’s how you respond
One of my favorite stories took place a number of decades ago when the English had colonized India and they wanted to set up a golf course in Calcutta. Besides the fact that the English shouldn’t have been there in the first place, the golf course was not a...
Loving Ourselves (from Spring 2013 IMCW Reteat)
The greatest truths we forget, and one of them is that if we don’t love the life that is right here–what we perceive as self–we are unable to embrace our world. This talk explores the suffering of turning on ourselves and the deep freedom that arises...