Resources: Self-Compassion and Compassion for Others
In Buddhist teachings, compassion is described as a “quivering of the heart” in response to suffering. Compassion awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability – our own, or that of another. It’s the medicine we most need to bring healing to our world.
The resources below explore ways we can cultivate self-compassion and compassion for others:
Talks on Compassion
Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 2
If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts. Drawing on practices from...
Disarming Our Hearts: Guidance from the Bodhisattva Path – Part 1
If we realized how profoundly our chronic judgment creates separation and blocks the flow of love, we’d dedicate more deeply to disarming our hearts. Drawing on practices from...
The Wise Heart of Radical Acceptance
When we are caught in self-judgment we forget the truth of who we are - our wholeness, awareness and love. This talk examines how we take the imperfect waves of our being...
Compassion for All Living Beings
We often talk of widening the circles of compassion. This talk explores the qualities of mature compassion, what blocks us from this embodied and inclusive caring, and how each...
From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence
From Dragons to Schmoos – Meeting Life with Compassionate Presence - The trance of unworthiness is sustained by our aversion to the dragons – the difficult emotions and related...
Compassion – Part 2 of Present Heart: The Universal Expressions of Love
Part 2: Compassion - the tender resonance of heart - awakens as we allow ourselves to be touched by our shared vulnerability. This series reflects on four primary expressions of...
Trusting the Gold – A Celebration of Tara’s New Book
The essence of the spiritual path is realizing, trusting and living from our natural awareness and love. This talk explores the two key pathways that help us awaken from the...
Our Refuge of Heartspace
Amidst the great emotional reactivity of our times, this talk looks at: How do we hold this? What will allow us to respond wisely to our hurting world? How can we widen the...
Radical Love: Part 2 – Loving Ourselves into Healing
Radical love sees and cherishes the sacred that lives through all beings. In this talk, we’ll look at the barrier to loving the life that is right here—what we call self—and how...
Radical Love: Part 1 – Reflections that Awaken our Heart
Radical love arises from the purity of our awake awareness, and cuts through the delusion of being separate and not OK. It comes from and brings out our intrinsic...
Your Awake Heart is Calling You
As individuals and societies, we are pulled by both the insecurity of our evolutionary past, and by our awake heart, our capacity for mindfulness and compassion. This talk...
The Heart Crosses the Abyss – Three Inner Trainings
In the moments when we either resist or get possessed by our strong emotions, we are in a trance, and cut off from openhearted awareness. This talk explores the truth that “it’s...
Shame, Healing and Transformation
Being at war with ourselves blocks us from evolving our consciousness and living from our hearts. This talk distinguishes between toxic and healthy shame, as well as shame about...
Sustaining Our Caring
All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically...
Sheltering In Love – Part 1
During this time of pandemic, we need, more than ever, to feel our connectedness—true belonging with our own being, each other and all life. These talks explore the bodhisattva...
Meditations on Compassion
Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence (19:52 min.)
Starting with scanning through the body and awakening the senses, we then rest in presence, with the breath as a home base. The meditation invites an openness to whatever arises,...
Meditation: Loving What Is (18:49 min.)
While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions...
Meditation: Compassion Practice – Tonglen (23:39 min.)
Our deepest wisdom and purest actions arise out of open-hearted presence. This meditation, a compassion practice or tonglen, is drawn from the Tibetan tradition and carries us...
Meditation: RAIN of Self-Compassion (17:27 min.)
One of the great sufferings is turning on ourselves with judgment and/or self-aversion. This practice brings the acronym RAIN to this pain. It helps us cultivate a healing...
Meditation: Suffering and Compassion (8:07 min.)
This brief meditation is a version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice: With the support of the breath we allow ourselves to open to the realness of suffering, and then offer it into...
Meditation: Loving What Is (18:50 min.)
While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions...
Meditation: A Witnessing, Kind Presence (19:55 min.)
Starting with scanning through the body and awakening the senses, we then rest in presence, with the breath as a home base. The meditation invites an openness to whatever arises,...
Meditation: Tonglen – Discovering the Boundless Space of Compassion (5:53 min.)
This short version of the Tibetan Tonglen practice guides us in courageously opening to the suffering within us and all beings, and allowing that suffering to be held in the...
Meditation: Embodied Metta (19:36 min.)
Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our...
Meditation: Calling on Loving Presence (from retreat) (18:18 min)
Often, when we’re really struggling, the only way to find compassion for ourselves is by reaching out to a larger source of love. We might for instance take refuge by calling on...
Short Talk & Meditation: Tonglen – Radical Compassion (32:43 min)
We are conditioned to avoid suffering - our own and others. By pulling away, we also contract our heart and disconnect from our innate capacity for compassion. This short talk...
Meditation: Awakening Compassion with Tonglen (11:35 min)
Our hearts awaken as we let ourselves be touched by the suffering within and around us. They shine as we respond with care to what has touched us. This meditation uses the breath...
Meditation: The RAIN of Compassion (34:54 min) (from retreat)
This new version of the acronym RAIN is a powerful way of bringing compassion to the life within you, and to attuning and deepening compassion for others. Given at the 2015...
Meditation: The RAIN of Self-Compassion (10:42 min)
This meditation is included at the end of the RAIN of Self-Compassion talk. This talk explores three key features of the trance of unworthiness and introduces this guided...
Other Resources on Compassion
Blog: The RAIN of Self-Compassion
The RAIN of Self-Compassion View or download the PDF version Link to talk: The RAIN of Self-Compassion Link to Meditation: The RAIN of Self-Compassion Translations: تأمل مطر من...
Blog: Being a Mirror of Goodness: An Intention for the New Year
Blog: Being a Mirror of Goodness: An Intention for the New Year Adapted from: Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINTara Brach,...
Blog: Discovering the Gold – Remembering Our True Nature by Cultivating Mindfulness and Compassion
Discovering the Gold: Remembering Our True Nature by Cultivating Mindfulness and Compassion I remember when I was on a book tour for Radical Acceptance, one of the places I...
Blog: Reaching Out For Compassion
At a weekend workshop I led, one of the participants, Marian, shared her story about the shame and guilt that had tortured her. Marian’s daughter, Christy, in recovery for...
Blog: From Self-judgment to Compassion
We were three days into a weeklong meditation retreat when one of my students, Daniel, came in to see me for his first interview. He plopped down in the chair across from me, and...
Blog: Connecting with Our ‘Soul Sadness’
Marge, a woman in our meditation community, was in a painful standoff with her teenage son. At fifteen, Micky was in a downward spiral of skipping classes and using drugs, and...
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