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Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha QUOTES

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha QUOTES

1 " Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

2 " In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

3 " In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

4 " I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

5 " The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

6 " As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

7 " Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

8 " But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

9 " The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

10 " What would it be like if I could accept life--accept this moment--exactly as it is? "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

11 " On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

12 " Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

13 " Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

14 " Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

15 " We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

16 " Imperfection is not our personal problem - it is a natural part of existing. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

17 " When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

18 " The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

19 " The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being "without anxiety about imperfection. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

20 " Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is. "

― Tara Brach , Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha