Introduction to Mindfulness: The Power of Heart Presence – Part 1

Tara Brach

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4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NOTE - Tara offers a meditation you can use as a practice during this introduction series: Mindfulness Meditation—Intimacy with our Inner Life.

Whether you are new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, the foundational teachings of mindfulness—heart presence—offer a timeless medicine for navigating these challenging times. This fresh introductory series invites you to bring alive ancient practices in ways that are directly relevant to the emotions and reactivity arising in today’s world. You’ll be guided to discover an inner refuge—a way to meet your personal life and our collective world with greater presence and wisdom, courage and love.

In this first session, we explore what makes mindfulness truly transformational: the flow of effective training, the power of aspiration, how to use the breath as a home base, and the attitudes that support a steady, strong, and liberating practice. As poet W. S. Merwin writes, “Little breath, breathe me gently, row me gently, for I am a river I am learning to cross.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.
0:06.0	To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome, friends.
0:30.6	So this is a five-week journey through the basics of practicing mindfulness,
0:36.7	and the title of this is called
0:39.4	The Power of Heart Presence. And I want to have a particular welcome here for those new to this.
0:47.6	You have the blessings of what in the Zen tradition is called beginner's mind, which is that
0:53.5	freshness and openness without
0:56.0	the preconceptions of what all of this is about, without that been there, done that attitude.
1:03.5	It said that the mind of an expert can be like a closed fist, not open to new information
1:10.6	and learning. And of course, I open to new information and learning.
1:13.1	And of course I want to invite all those who are familiar to start fresh.
1:18.5	Let this be an opportunity to reboot and deepen practice to embrace beginner's mind. There are two main currents that carry us towards meditating,
1:32.3	and one of them is suffering. And by that I mean we come because we feel in some way
1:38.7	stuck in emotional pain, stress, physical ailments, relational struggles, so we're seeking help.
1:46.0	The other current is really the love of truth, the love of finding out what is reality,
1:55.0	the love of love. It's an intuition of greater dimensions or potential in living and this kind of draw to evolve
2:05.9	our heart and mind.
2:08.0	And throughout history, there's been a preoccupation to find that which heals and inspires
2:14.6	and opens us to the timeless.
2:17.7	It's often been described as the sacred journey,
2:21.2	and it's the path of the sage and the saint and the shaman
2:24.4	and holy beings and all truth seekers.
	...

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