Realizing True Well-Being, Part 1

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

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Buddhist psychology and the Western oriented field of positive psychology agree: How we pay attention determines whether we live primarily in fear and judgment, or happiness and peace. This two part series explores the teachings, practices and attitudes that enable us to live a meaningful life with a heart that is “happy for no reason.”

In this talk, Tara explores:

the essential role of happiness in times of crisis—how choosing joy becomes a radical act of resilience and healing.
the trance of negativity and how mindfulness helps awaken our innate capacity for presence, gratitude, and inner freedom.
how positive psychology and Buddhist teachings together point us toward “happiness for no reason”—a deep sense of belonging and well-being.
the power of intention—how consciously choosing to flourish shifts us from survival mode into love, connection, and aliveness.
daily practices like gratitude and loving-kindness as pathways to true well-being and a heart ready for anything.

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. Thank you for being here.
0:31.6	I recently got an email from a young man. He wrote this. He said, these days, whenever I have a
0:39.4	feeling of happiness, I double take. It's like I can't fully let myself enjoy those moments.
0:44.8	With everything going on in the world, so much violence and insanity, it feels wrong to just
0:50.8	relax and feel good. So I share this because over the past couple months,
0:57.5	a number of people have just brought this up in a similar way, you know, with our world
1:03.0	unraveling with so much crisis, should we be enjoying life, especially those who aren't
1:09.3	so directly impacted.
1:11.6	And as you listen, you may have a part of you that relates to this.
1:15.6	Maybe some gelta-bound privilege or some feeling of not doing enough, or for many,
1:22.6	maybe your fears, distress for the world have overridden feelings of happiness, that you're more
1:30.6	locked into a kind of heaviness or grimness or a sense of defeat.
1:35.6	If so, this is in keeping with our negativity bias, our survival negativity bias, which is that
1:43.7	wiring to attend to what's wrong.
1:46.9	And it's really activated in current times.
1:51.0	We're in an intense societal crisis, also really a spiritual crisis.
1:58.0	And if you're plugged into the news news it's really natural that fear and
2:03.0	painful emotions are going to dominate but here's the thing the state of mind that's
2:10.4	generated by a negativity bias on hyperdrive it doesn't help us and it doesn't help our world. It's a kind of
2:20.6	negativity trance that blocks out a larger truth. We need to face the painful realities of our time
2:31.2	and we also need to stay open to what brings us happiness, that which
	...

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