Tara Brach on Attachment and Desire in Love Relationships

Tara Brach talks with Mark Matousek about how to navigate human needs that can damage love relationships. The Seekers Forum is an online community founded by author and teacher Mark Matousek, known for his Writing to Awaken method of self-inquiry as well as his two award-winning memoirs and other books. At The Seekers Forum, topics related to creativity, spiritual practice, and ethical well-being are explored through writing and discussion. Find out more at https://theseekersforum.com About 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.” Over the following years, Tara earned a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Fielding Institute, with a dissertation exploring meditation as a therapeutic modality in treating addiction. She went on to complete a five-year Buddhist teacher training program at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, under the guidance of Jack Kornfield. In 1998, Tara founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC (IMCW), which is now one of the largest and most dynamic non-residential meditation centers in the United States. She gives presentations, teaches classes, offers workshops, and leads silent meditation retreats at IMCW and at conferences and retreat centers in the United States and Europe. Tara’s podcast receives over 1.5 million downloads each month. Her themes reveal the possibility of emotional healing and spiritual awakening through mindful, loving awareness as well as the alleviation of suffering in the larger world by practicing compassion in action. She and Jack Kornfield lead the Awareness Training Institute (ATI) which offers online courses on mindfulness and compassion, as well as the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program (MMTCP). In addition to numerous articles, videos, and hundreds of recorded talks, Tara is the author of the books Radical Acceptance (Bantam, 2003), True Refuge: Finding Peace & Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart (Bantam, 2013) and Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of R.A.I.N. (Viking, 2019). She has a son, Narayan, and lives in Great Falls, VA, with her husband, Jonathan Foust and their dog, kd.