Happiness is Possible: De-conditioning the Negativity Bias - Part 1 (2017-05-31)

Tara Brach

Tara, Dharma, Selfhelp, Talks, Spiritual, Buddhist, Insight, Audio, Tarabrach, Mindfulness, Rain, Psychology, Compassion, Vipassana, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Meditation, Guided, Brach, Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2017

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Happiness is Possible: De-conditioning the Negativity Bias - Part 1 - There is an inner freedom that expresses as happiness and peace, and it is accessible when we arrive in openhearted presence. As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible to find liberation I would not teach about it.” In this two part talk, we will look at the conditioning that blocks happiness and two primary pathways of practice that evolve our consciousness and free our hearts.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With gratitude and love, Tara

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.
0:09.7	To make a donation, please visit tarbrock.com.
0:25.1	My first introduction to Buddhism was when I was in high school attending a world religions
0:31.7	class. After being introduced to all the different religions, I decided that Buddhism was at
0:38.4	the very bottom of my list of what I would be interested in. There were two reasons.
0:44.6	One of the reasons was there was this incessant focus on suffering. Why are we focusing on
0:51.5	suffering? The only way out of suffering was to get rid of your desires. I thought, get
0:58.1	rid of your desires. I had a healthy kind of dollop of hedonism in my way of doing things.
1:04.9	It seemed like the very opposite of the life I'd be interested in. I share that because
1:14.6	I feel like it points to probably the two biggest misunderstandings about Buddhism, which
1:21.0	is one that there's a kind of thought that desire is the source of suffering and that
1:28.8	we have to eliminate desire. Desire isn't the problem. The challenge is when desire leads
1:37.2	us to grasping and addictions so that to be happy we have to have things a certain
1:42.9	way. We have to have our fix that suffering. The second thing, Buddhism is about suffering.
1:50.7	Actually, Buddhism is about our capacity for freedom, which includes a natural expresses
2:00.0	a great amount of joy and peace and love. The understanding is that in order to be free,
2:09.0	we need to open to reality. Reality includes the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. We just
2:15.3	open to the whole thing. Because we tend to avoid suffering, we need to include that. I
2:25.0	like to bring up the story because it's really critical to recognize that we have this
2:31.5	capacity for happiness and that it's integral to the path to recognize it and inhabit it,
2:40.5	realize it. In fact, Tiknothan says it's not enough to suffer. You need to touch peace
2:46.3	too and happiness. I like that because it feels true both individually in as societies.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tara Brach, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tara Brach and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.