Book Notes: ‘Radical Acceptance’ by Tara Brach

Words all extracted from Brach’s book, found here, except where highlighted.

Photo by Susanne Schwarz on Unsplash

Chapter 1: The Trance of Unworthiness

Those who feel plagued by not being good enough are often drawn to the idealistic worldviews that offer the possibility of purifying and transcending a flawed nature. This question for perfection is based on the assumption that we must change ourselves to belong.

“Everybody has a Buddha nature” — Dalai Lama.

Western culture is a breeding ground for shame and self-hatred. We learn early in life that any affiliations require proving that we are worthy.

Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.

Tara’s herself felt that her value rested solely on how well she represented her parents and whether or not she made them proud. Our imperfect parents had imperfect parents of their own (ancestral trauma is passed down the generations).

Out culture, with its emphasis on self-reliance and independence — qualities deemed especially important for men — had reinforced the message of weakness.

The strategies we use to manage the pain of inadequacy:

1. We embark on one self-improvement project after another
2. We hold back and play it safe rather than risking failure
3. We withdraw from our experience of the present moment
4. We keep busy
5. We become our own worst critics
6. We focus on other people’s faults — blaming others temporarily relieves us from the weight of the failure.

When our efforts are driven by the fear that we are flawed, we deepen the trance of unworthiness.

Our enemy becomes the parent who never really respected us, the boss who is preventing us from being successful, a political group that is taking away our power or the nation that threatens our lives. The evil is “out there”.

Buddha taught that going to the root of our suffering and seeing it clearly was the beginning of freedom. Suffering or discontent is universal, and fully recognizing its existence is the first step on the path of awakening.

Our most habitual and compelling feelings and thoughts define the core of who we think we are.

Believing we are separate is not some malfunction of nature; it is an intrinsic part of our human experience — indeed of all life. Zen biologist David Darling points out even the earliest single-celled creatures “had established barriers, definite, sustainable boundaries between themselves and the outside world… Thus, the foundations for dualism — the belief in the separation of self and the rest of the world were laid.” One-celled entities push away what is threatening and go toward what will enhance them (this is in our biology).

When we become the core of our identity, we lose sight of the fullness of our being. We forget the pure awareness, the radiant wakefulness.

My interpretation here is not to deny or transcend our biology, but also not to be governed by it. Awareness brings about a choice — knowledge is power.

This means accepting our human existence and all of life as it is.

Our “greater needs” are met in relating lovingly with each other, relating with full presence to each moment, relating to the beauty and the pain that is within and around us.

Chapter 2: Awakening From The Trance: The Path of Radical Acceptance

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change

— Carl Rogers

Our trance deepens as we move through the day driven by “I am incomplete, I need more to be happy”. These “mantras” reinforce the trance-belief that our life should be different from what it is.

As we lean into the experience of the moment — releasing our stories and gently holding our pain or desire — Radical Acceptance begins to unfold. The two parts of genuine acceptance — seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion.

We embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child. We regard our grasping with gentleness and care.

Misunderstandings of Radical Acceptance:

1. Radical Acceptance is not resignation
2. Radical Acceptance does not mean defining ourselves by our limitations; it is not an excuse for withdrawal.
3. Radical Acceptance is not self-indulgence
4. Radical Acceptance does not make us passive
5. Radical Acceptance doesn’t mean accepting a “self”

Chapter 3: The Sacred Pause: Resting Under the Bodhi Tree

Enough. These words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life we have refused again and again until now.

Until now.

— David Whyte

Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us. Like the high-altitude pilots, letting go of the controls seems to run counter to our basic and instinctual ways of getting what we want. Pausing can feel like falling helplessly through space — we have no idea of what will happen. We fear we might be engulfed by the rawness of our rage or grief, or desire. Yet, without opening to the actual experience of the moment, Radical Acceptance is not possible.

… spiritual life is the capacity to “… return to that which we have spent a lifetime hiding from, to rest in the bodily experience of the present moment — even if it is a feeling of being humiliated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness” — Charlotte Joko Beck

Chapter 4: Unconditional Friendliness: The Spirit of Radical Acceptance

Your presence has been the deepest teaching — rather than pushing away experience and deepening agitation, have the courage and training to simply name what you are aware of and bow to your experience.

We pay attention in a way that enables us to recognise and touch any experience with care. Nothing is wrong — whatever is happening is just “real life”.

Clearly recognise the reality of craving and fear that lives in each human heart.

“We are learning to make friends with ourselves, our life, at the most profound level possible” — Pema Chödrön

Distracted by our judgements, we are not even able to recognise the raw pain of our emotions. In order to begin the process of waking up, we need to deepen our attention and touch our real experience.

We might ask, “What is happening?”, “What wants my attention right now?” or “What is asking for acceptance?”. It is important to approach the inquiry with a genuine attitude of unconditional friendliness.

The attitude of Radical Acceptance makes it safe for the frightened and vulnerable parts of our being to let themselves be known.

The practices of inquiry and noting are actually ways to wake us up to the face that we are suffering. Recognising that we are suffering is freeing — self-judgement falls away, and we can regard ourselves with kindness. As we figuratively sit beside ourselves and inquire, listen and name our experience, we open our hearts in tenderness for the suffering before us.

“So walk with your heaviness, saying yes. Yes to the sadness, yes to the whispered longing. Yes, to the fear. Love means setting aside walls, fences and unlocking doors and saying yes… one can be in paradise by simply saying yes to this moment” — Pat Rodegast

We can say yes to the experience of fear, anger or hurt that is arising inside us, even if we are not saying yes to acting on our harmful impulses. Yes is an inner practice of acceptance in which we willingly allow our thoughts and feelings to naturally arise and pass away.

Ways of sending the message of yes to our inner life: we can whisper “It’s okay”, or a welcoming “Hello”. We can visualise bowing to what has appeared or lightly placing your hand on your heart and sending a message of acceptance and care.

Chapter 5: Coming Home to Our Body: The Ground of Radical Acceptance

While fear of pain is a natural human reaction, it is particularly dominant in our culture, where we consider pain as bad or wrong. Mistrusting our bodies, we try to control in the same way that we try to manage the natural world. Pain is the messenger we try to kill, not something we allow and embrace.

If we accept pain (in our bodies) without the confusion of fear, we can listen to its message and respond with clarity.

Being alive includes feeling pain, sometimes intense pain.

When we are habitually immersed in our stories about pain, we prevent ourselves from experiencing it as the changing stream of sensations it is. Instead, our muscles contract around it and our stories identify it as the enemy; the pain solidifies into a self-perpetuating, immovable mass.

“Pain has a unique quality. The strong it is, the less aware you are of the rest of the world. If it is severe enough, in the end, there is only you and the pain locked in a delicate duel.”

When pain is traumatic, the trance can become full-blown and sustained. If the victim pulls away from the pain in the body connection between body and mind is severed. This is called dissociation.

Neuropsychology tells us that traumatic abuse causes lasting changes by affecting our physiology, nervous system and brain chemistry.

Unprocessed pain keeps our system of self-preservation on permanent alert. Some people do whatever they can to keep from feeling the raw sensations of fear and pain in their bodies. They might lash out or freeze in depression or confusion. They might use drugs or drink themselves senseless. Or lose themselves in mental obsessions. Yet, the pain and fear don’t go away. We either pay attention to it, or we suffer the consequences.

“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. But someday our body will present its bill, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth” — Alice Miller.

In both Buddhist psychology and Western experiential therapy, the process of experiencing and accepting the changing stream of sensations is central to the alchemy of transformation.

Rumi writes, “The cure for the pain is in the pain”.

Chapter 6: Radical Acceptance of Desire: Awakening To The Source of Longing

From the urgent way lovers want each other to the seeker’s search for truth, all moving is from the mover. Every pull draws us to the ocean

— Rumi

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was not referring to our natural inclinations as living beings to have wants and needs, but our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.

It doesn’t matter what is happening (on Tara’s Vipassana Romance — a trance of romantic obsession that can take over during a retreat). What matters is how we relate to our experience. I could accept whatever was going on, she reminded me, but without getting lost in it.

Desire becomes a problem only when it takes over our sense of who we are.

The same universal force of attraction that gathers atoms into molecules and holds solar systems spinning in galaxies also joins sperm with eggs and brings people together in communities.

The catch is that no matter how gratifying any experience may be, it is bound to change.

Existence is inherently dissatisfying.

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.

Our desires fixate on soothing, once and for all. We want others to be a certain way; we are driven by the feeling that something is missing or wrong. Our gnawing everyday ‘wants’ prevent us from relaxing and becoming aware of our deeper yearnings.

Aliveness and wakefulness are what we long for the most deeply.

Our efforts in pursuit of substitutes preoccupy and distract our attention enough to shield us for a time from raw sensations of feeling unloved or unworthy. Accomplishing things does temporarily stave off my feelings of inadequacy. Yet underneath, my wanting self urges me on, fearful that without being productive, I’ll lose everything. This strategy delivers the goods through money or power.

We are unable to give ourselves freely and joyfully if the wanting self is in charge. And yet, until we attend to the basic desires and fears that energise the wanting self, it will insinuate itself into our every activity and relationship.

To listen and respond to the longing of our hearts requires a committed and genuine presence. The more completely we’re caught in the surface world of pursuing substitutes, the harder it is to dive.

We move through the world with a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us from enjoying what is in front of us. The colour of autumn leaves or the passage of poetry merely amplifies the feeling that there is a gaping hole in our life.

While we often don’t like ourselves when caught in wanting, this dislike turns to full-blown aversion when wanting gets out of control and takes over our life. When we hate ourselves for wanting, it is because the wanting self has taken over our entire life.

Audre Lorde tells us, “We have been raised to fear… our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for… many facets of our own oppression.”

When we reject desire, we reject the very source of our love and aliveness.

My interpretation of this chapter is that desire, if allowed to lead us, leads to immense suffering. To also ignore the desire is not enlightenment, it is numbness. The middle way is to acknowledge that we desire, to tend to our desiring selves without overindulging, nor denial.

Something quite different happens when we inquire into our conditioning mindfully. We being to accept our wanting self with compassion. This frees us to move forward, to break out of old patterns. We discover that the wanting self dissolves into the awareness that is love loving itself.

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging. The more times we traverse this path — feeling the loneliness or craving, and inhabiting its immensity — the more the longing for love becomes a gateway into love itself.

Chapter 7: Opening Our Heart in the Face of Fear

Fear is the anticipation of future pain.

The basic function of fear is to assure survival. Life-forms as primitive as the reptile experience fear. Fear is the chain of physical reactions that occur in an unvarying sequence.

The biological response to experience is called “affect”.

As long as danger persists, the one-pointed focus on self-preservation is maintained. Only in mammals do cognition and memory interact with affect to create the emotion of fear.

The emotion of fear persists for as long as the affect continues.

My interpretation and based on previous scientific readings, effectively our brains are wired such that what we perceive can trigger old trauma or habitual conditionings from our past that can cause a present-moment fear response which we need to be aware of.

In each meditation sitting, Tara speaks about anticipating a loss — loss of something she thinks is essential to life and happiness. The ultimate loss — is the loss of life itself. The root of all our fear is our basic craving for existence and aversion to deterioration and death. We are always facing death in some form or other.

Life is fragile and loss is all around.

The emotion of fear often works overtime. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity.

We might tell ourselves that inevitably we’ll always ruin things for ourselves or others, or, trapped in the powerlessness of victimhood, that others will always ruin things for us.

Because we are responding to an accumulation of past pain, our reactions are out of proportion to what is happening in the moment.

As we begin to trust the reality of belonging, the stranglehold of fear loosens its grip.

Tara says, “I look toward the innate wakefulness of my being, the tender openness of my heart.”

Because dharma is the law of nature, communing with the natural world is also a way of taking refuge in the dharma. As we feel our belonging to the natural rhythms of life, the illusion of being separate and threatened begins to dissolve.

Taking refuge in the sangha reminds us that we are in good company. We belong with all those who long to awaken, with all those who seek the teachings and practices that lead to genuine peace.

Letting go into fear, accepting it, may seem counterintuitive. Yet because fear is an intrinsic part of being alive, resisting it means resisting life. The habit of avoidance seeps into every aspect of our life: It prevents us from loving well from cherishing beauty within and around us, from being present to the moment. This is why Radical Acceptance of fear is right at the centre of our spiritual awakening.

Facing fear is a lifelong training in letting go of all we cling to — it is training in how to die.

Rilke: “contain death, the whole of death… can hold it in one’s heart gentle, and not… refuse to go on living.”

Chapter 8: Awakening Compassion for Ourselves: Becoming the Holder and the Held

Buddhist texts describe compassion as the quivering of the heart, a visceral tenderness in the face of suffering.

Sometimes extending compassion to ourselves can feel downright embarrassing. It can trigger a sense of shame about being needy and undeserving, shame about being self-indulgent. This revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.

Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.

Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let is ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

-Hafiz

Another Sufi teaching writes:

Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up for the megnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you

Like the Mother of the World,

Who carries the pain of the worl in her heart,

Each one of us is part of her heart,

And therefore endowed

With a certain measure of cosmic pain

Chapter 9: Widening the Circles of Compassion: The Bodhisattva’s Paths

Whenever we wholeheartedly attend to the person we’re with; this living energy becomes an intimate part of who we are. Krishnamurti wrote, “to pay attention means we care, which means we really love.” Attention is the most basic form of love.

Living our lives with a wise and compassionate heart is the essence of the bodhisattva’s path. “May my life be of benefit to all beings.”

When we are caught in self-centred drama, everyone else becomes “other” to us, different and unreal. Involvement with our personal desires and concerns prevents us from paying close attention to anyone else; those around us — even family and friends — can become unreal.

Even if we don’t like someone, seeing their vulnerability allows us to open our heart to them.

When our hearts harden in defense, it does not mean we are failing as bodhisattvas. It just lets us know that we need to befriend what is happening inside us before compassion for others can naturally arise.

Sometimes the very people we are closest to become unreal to us. We might easily assume we know what life is like for them and forget that, like us, they are always changing, their experience is always new. We lose sight of how fully they too are living with hurts and fears, how hard life can be on the inside.

Chapter 10: Recognizing Our Basic Goodness: The Gateway to a Forgiving and Loving Heart

Another method that can lead us to the precious being outside personality and roles is to imagine that we are seeing someone for the last time, or even that they have already passed away. By letting go of our habitual ways of defining others, we can see the radiant awareness, the goodness of their true nature.

We forget that every person, including ourselves, is new every moment.

Chapter 12: Realizing Our True Nature

We may spend our lives seeking something that is actually right inside us.

As we spiritually mature, our yearning to see truth and live with an open heart becomes more compelling than our reflex to avoid pain and chase after pleasure.

We become increasingly aligned with our evolutionary destiny, which is to awaken into our natural wisdom and compassion.

We may at times have a sudden and profound insight into our true nature. However, making ourselves at home in this truth, trusting it in our day-to-day living, usually depends upon a gradual unfolding.

We can be tempted, sometimes in pursuit of nonattachment to distance ourselves from the messy wildness of our bodies and emotions, and from relationships with each other. This pulling away leaves us in a disembodied daydream that is not grounded in awareness of our living world. On the other hand, if we immerse ourselves in the mental dramas and changing emotions of our lives without remembering the empty, wakeful awareness that is our original nature, we get lost in the nightmare of identifying as a separate, suffering self.

Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness.

Our grief is the honest recognition that this cherished life is passing. No matter what we lose, we open to the ocean of grief because we are grieving all of this fleeting life.

This is the path — arriving over and over again in the moment with a kind awareness. All that matters on this path of awakening is taking one step at a time, being willing to show up for just this much, touching the ground just this moment.