Sharon Salzberg – Metta Hour – Ep. 57 – Real Love Series: Tara Brach

Tara Brach

For episode seven of the Real Love Podcast Series, Sharon talks with meditation teacher and author, Tara Brach.

Tara Brach is the author of many books, including the “Radical Acceptance” and “True Refuge,” and is the founder the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC. Sharon and Tara dive into the world of self-love, discussing the subtle differences between self-worth and self-love, and how the two inform each other. They also discuss how to return to compassion and love when our buttons get pushed, in particular with the current political climate in the world. Tara also offers her approach to applying mindfulness and compassion practices of R-A-I-N, and how she continues to develop these tools for herself and her students.
Tara Brach, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, internationally known meditation teacher and author of bestselling Radical Acceptance and True Refuge.  Her podcast receives over a million downloads each month. In addition to Tara’s public teaching, she is active in bringing meditation into DC area schools, prisons and to underserved populations.
The Real Love Podcast Series is a special series on the Metta Hour featuring a variety of conversations with some of the world’s finest thinkers and teachers exploring Sharon’s new book “Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection“. Real Love a field guide for anyone seeking awakened living in the 21st century – regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity or status. The book explores love is three different arena in life: love of oneself, love of an other, and love for all of life. Real Love is now available to order in hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats.

Show Notes

Self-worth vs. Self-love (Opening) – Tara and Sharon discuss self-worth and its difference from self-love. Self-worth has a particular flavor to it of how valued we are by others. Self-love is different because you can sometimes feel that you are valued but there is not a deep warm embrace.

“It is kind of like the two wings of the bird, to be really free. One is to be seen and one is to be loved; and we need both.” – Tara Brach

The Stories We Tell (6:25) – As humans, we have an incredible ability to shift the narrative. Sharon talks with Tara about the stories we tell about ourselves and those stories the world at large may be telling about us.

“If I think of my own life, the way I came to have the story about myself is completely drawn from generations of stories about who we are. My parent’s idea of who I would be; the cultures idea that this colored skin and this economic status and this religion means this. So I grew up with a self-concept that was fed by all these different streams of collective storytelling.”  – Tara Brach

RAIN (12:45) ­– Tara explains the mindfulness and compassion tool known as RAIN. She talks about how nurturing our compassion can allow us to work with difficult emotions.

“Without the compassion, the deep wounds that people were working with didn’t heal, because the key element needed was self-compassion.”   – Tara Brach

Love in other Words (18:30) – Love can be a squishy word that people do not like to use. Tara shares how to her, love describes a tender and awake heart space.

“It has to do with being spacious and tender and warm; it is more formless for me.” – Tara Brach

Fear and Unity (26:30) – How do we embody love while listening to others and not compromising our own integrity? Sharon and Tara talk about how to navigate the treacherous waters of bringing unity to a divisive world?

For more from Tara Brach, check out her last visit to the Be Here Now Network by clicking here.

 

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Photo via Alcheron