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This week we talk to Tara Brach
Tara Brach is an American psychologist and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a guiding teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C Brach also teaches Buddhist meditation at centers for meditation and yoga in the United States and Europe including Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, the Kripalu Center,and the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.
Brach is an engaged Buddhist specializing in the application of Buddhist teachings to emotional healing. Her 2003 book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha, focuses on the use of practices such as mindfulness for healing trauma. Her 2013 book, True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart, offers practices for tapping into inner peace and wisdom in the midst of difficulty.
In This Interview, Tara Brach and I Discuss…
- The One You Feed parable
- Being kind to the parts of ourselves that are more primitive
- The difference between feelings and thoughts
- Dropping the storyline
- The question of “What am I unwilling to feel?”
- How we have to go through the difficult emotions to get to peace
- The importance of remembering the good
- Not being addicted to suffering
- The habit of looking for what’s wrong
- What’s the moment like if there is no problem
- How we tend to always anticipating a problem
- How we are almost always lost in thought
- Practicing coming into our senses
- Self-compassion as the most important quality on the spiritual path
- Only being taught one type of meditation
- Trying different types of meditation until we find the one that works best for us
- The quality that helps people progress on the path of meditation: intention
- How to deal with numbness
- Tara’s tips on dealing with depression
- How depression hates a moving target
- That depression is not our fault
- Finding refuge in difficult times
- Instead of asking “What’s the Meaning” asking “What matters to me here”
Monica Mulholland says
I love Tara and her inspiration and peace. A truly wonderful conversation. Thank you! As I was listening to the podcast, I keep looking at your logo, and was wondering if you haven’t thought about changing the color of the wolves. Whereas I love the parable of the two wolves, the logo reminds me of an antagonistic approach to black (ugly, bad, fierce) and white (pretty, beautiful, kind). Maybe it’s just me, but I wanted to share this thought.
Peace,
Monica
Eric Zimmer says
Hi Monica…thanks for the comments. We are exploring the logo. I absolutely love it but also don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes.
Els says
Exactly my thoughts, Monica!
Also: Tara explains so beautifully that we have both wolves inside of us. Ignoring, starving the difficult one, will only make him more hungry. Paying a gentle attention to it, without making it bad, will leave us more energy, more energy to feed the loving one with.
I think this parabel has often been misused, by suggesting we only need to feed the good wolf. We need to pay attention to the other one as well, as it is also part of who we are.
Thanks for this great interview!
Eric Zimmer says
Great summary!