Listen to Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brach Lead Guided Meditations During Covid-19

Sharon Salzberg (right) in India in 1972, sharonsalzberg.com.

Tricycle has been offering free hour-long meditation practice sessions that anyone can join using Zoom or by watching Tricycle Facebook Live. Each session includes a guided meditation, talk, and Q&A with Zoom viewers.

The first guest teacher, Sharon Salzberg, led the practice session on March 17. Today's (April 23) guest teacher was Tara Brach. I managed to join both teachers' practice sessions and found the practices supportive and healing. I am enjoying watching a variety of meditation and Dharma instruction livestreams and learning from different communities.

Tara Brach

Tara Brach teaches mindfulness and compassion using the meditation "RAIN of self-compassion." She taught RAIN in today's practice session and told a beautiful story about a student's experience practicing RAIN in the workplace with a coworker.

www.tarabrach.com

Tricycle Online Practice Session Recordings

Recordings of all of the past online practice sessions, including Sharon Salzberg's and Tara Brach's sessions, are available on the Tricycle "Introducing Free Online Practice Sessions" webpage and Tricycle's Facebook page.

The other Tricycle Free Online Practice Sessions guest teachers whose practice sessions are also available on the Tricycle website and Facebook are Joseph Goldstein, Kurt Spellmeyer, Jack Kornfield, Sebene Selassie, Rev. Marvin Harada, Roshi Joan Halifax, Marcela Clavijo, Megan Mook, Pema Chödrön, Lama Surya Das, Scott Tusa, Koshin Paley Ellison, and Mindy Newman.

There are two practice sessions remaining: Sylvia Boorstein on Tuesday, April 28, and Loch Kelly on Thursday, April 30. Register in advance on the Tricycle website if you plan to join the Zoom meetings.

Ven. Robina Courtin

Today I also watched the livestream of Ven. Robina Courtin's Fireside Chat at Jamyang Buddhist Centre in London on the Jamyang Buddhist Centre London YouTube channel. It was a wonderful talk, especially the Q&A with the students in the Zoom meeting and the Tara practice she led at the end of the Fireside Chat. Watch the Fireside Chat recording on YouTube.

Tara Brach

"Tara Brach’s teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world. The result is a distinctive voice in Western Buddhism, one that offers a wise and caring approach to freeing ourselves and society from suffering.

"As an undergraduate at Clark University, Tara pursued a double major in psychology and political science. During this time, while working as a grass roots organizer for tenants’ rights, she also began attending yoga classes and exploring Eastern approaches to inner transformation. After college, she lived for ten years in an ashram—a spiritual community—where she practiced and taught both yoga and concentrative meditation. When she left the ashram and attended her first Buddhist Insight Meditation retreat, led by Joseph Goldstein, she realized she was home. “I had found wisdom teachings and practices that train the heart and mind in unconditional and loving presence,” she explains. “I knew that this was a path of true freedom.”

Continue reading Tara's biography on her website. The website mentions her Tara Brach podcast and I see she is leading online meditations through the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC (IMCW).

Sharon Salzberg

"Born in New York City in 1952, Sharon Salzberg experienced a childhood involving considerable loss and turmoil. An early realization of the power of meditation to overcome personal suffering determined her life direction. Her teaching and writing now communicates that power to a worldwide audience of practitioners. She offers non-sectarian retreat and study opportunities for participants from widely diverse backgrounds.

"Sharon first encountered Buddhism in 1969, in an Asian philosophy course at the State University of New York, Buffalo. The course sparked an interest that, in 1970, took her to India, for an independent study program. Sharon traveled motivated by 'an intuition that the methods of meditation would bring me some clarity and peace.' In 1971, in Bodh Gaya, India, Sharon attended her first intensive meditation course. She spent the next years engaged in intensive study with highly respected meditation teachers. 

"She returned to America in 1974 and began teaching vipassana (insight) meditation. In 1976, she established, together with Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, which now ranks as one of the most prominent and active meditation centers in the Western world."

Continue reading Sharon's biography on her website. Sharon has a podcast, Metta Hour Podcast.

Tricycle

"Established in 1990 as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization, The Tricycle Foundation is dedicated to making Buddhist teachings and practices broadly available. In 1991 the Foundation launched Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the first magazine intended to present Buddhist perspectives to a Western readership."

Read more about and from Tricycle on the Tricycle website.