Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Radical Acceptance involves fully recognizing and embracing our experiences with compassion, countering feelings of unworthiness.
The quote by Tara Brach emphasizes the importance of Radical Acceptance, which is the practice of observing our inner experiences with openness, kindness, and love. By accepting all aspects of ourselves, instead of holding back or shutting down parts of our feelings, we can dismantle the fears and beliefs that keep us feeling separated and unworthy. Acceptance allows us to confront our inner experiences without judgment, fostering self-compassion and healing.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a therapy session, a counselor might use this quote to encourage clients to embrace their feelings.
More from Tara Brach
All quotes →Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.
We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.
There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that's here.
We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.
The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.
Similar quotes
There are times when you should listen to what people say about you, but also a lot of times you just don't need to listen so much. Don't worry so much and just go. Unless you're, like, in danger, and then don't. And then run, girl.
When someone is counting out gold for you, don't look at your hands, or the gold. Look at the giver.
Healing means accepting all parts of ourselves, not just the parts we like, but all of us.
A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food.
I have learned to look upon each little hindrance as a jest and each great one as a foreshadowing of victory.
Wisdom makes a slow defense against trouble, though a sure one in the end.