Namaste: Honoring the Light in All Beings

Tara Brach

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The ritual of Namaste – bowing to the sacred in ourselves and others – helps us live from the loving awareness that is our true nature. This talk looks at how we suffer because we forget this basic goodness, and explores the pathways of remembering that carry us home.

In this talk, Tara explores

• intentional practices to cultivate reverence, including mindful reflection, appreciation, and the embodied offering of Namaste as a path to awakening and collective healing.
• the sacred meaning of “Namaste” as a living practice—an invitation to see past the masks we wear and honor the light and goodness in all beings.
• how our “spacesuit self”—a conditioned identity shaped by fear and separation—can obscure our true nature, and how mindfulness can awaken us to our shared spirit.
• the pain of forgetting our basic goodness, and how suffering itself can be a portal—a chrysalis—guiding us back to presence, compassion, and spiritual belonging.
• powerful stories of transformation, revealing how turning toward love and seeing the sacred in one another—even amidst deep harm—can open the way for healing and connection.

“It was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts – the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor knowledge could reach the core of reality – the person that each one is in the eyes of the divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more need for war, for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

Thomas Merton

Photo Credit: Jonathan Foust

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