- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account
Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
+ Free Shipping
+ $5.99 shipping


Follow the Author
OK
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha Paperback – November 23, 2004
Tara Brach
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author?
Learn about Author Central
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
Free with your Audible trial |
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$39.99 | $45.82 |

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Ask Alexa to read your book with Audible integration or text-to-speech.
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINPaperback
- Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINHardcover
- Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love That Heals Fear and ShamePaperback
- True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened HeartPaperback
- The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist PsychologyPaperback
- Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness WithinPaperback
Customers who bought this item also bought
- Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINPaperback
- True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened HeartPaperback
- The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist PsychologyPaperback
- Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINHardcover
- Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative HealingHardcover
- Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside OutPaperback
Special offers and product promotions
Editorial Reviews
Review
— Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
From the Inside Flap
--from Radical Acceptance
Radical Acceptance
Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering, says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. B
From the Back Cover
--"from Radical Acceptance
Radical Acceptance
"Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering," says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork--all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach's twenty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.
Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she leads us to trust our innate goodness, showing how we can develop the balance of clear-sightedness and compassion that is the essence of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance does not mean self-indulgence or passivity. Instead it empowers genuine change: healing fear and shame and helping to build loving, authentic relationships. When we stop being at war with ourselves, we are free to live fully every precious moment of our lives.
"From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
You will be walking some night . . .
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one . . .
Wendell Berry
For years I've had a recurring dream in which I am caught in a futile struggle to get somewhere. Sometimes I'm running up a hill; sometimes I am climbing over boulders or swimming against a current. Often a loved one is in trouble or something bad is about to happen. My mind is speeding frantically, but my body feels heavy and exhausted; I move as if through molasses. I know I should be able to handle the problem, but no matter how hard I try, I can't get where I need to go. Completely alone and shadowed by the fear of failure, I am trapped in my dilemma. Nothing else in the world exists but that.
This dream captures the essence of the trance of unworthiness. In our dreams we often seem to be the protagonist in a pre-scripted drama, fated to react to our circumstances in a given way. We seem unaware that choices and options might exist. When we are in the trance and caught up in our stories and fears about how we might fail, we are in much the same state. We are living in a waking dream that completely defines and delimits our experience of life. The rest of the world is merely a backdrop as we struggle to get somewhere, to be a better person, to accomplish, to avoid making mistakes. As in a dream, we take our stories to be the truth--a compelling reality--and they consume most of our attention. While we eat lunch or drive home from work, while we talk to our partners or read to our children at night, we continue to replay our worries and plans. Inherent in the trance is the belief that no matter how hard we try, we are always, in some way, falling short.
Feeling unworthy goes hand in hand with feeling separate from others, separate from life. If we are defective, how can we possibly belong? It's a vicious cycle: The more deficient we feel, the more separate and vulnerable we feel. Underneath our fear of being flawed is a more primal fear that something is wrong with life, that something bad is going to happen. Our reaction to this fear is to feel blame, even hatred, toward whatever we consider the source of the problem: ourselves, others, life itself. But even when we have directed our aversion outward, deep down we still feel vulnerable.
Our feelings of unworthiness and alienation from others give rise to various forms of suffering. For some, the most glaring expression is addiction. It may be to alcohol, food or drugs. Others feel addicted to a relationship, dependent on a particular person or people in order to feel they are complete and that life is worth living. Some try to feel important through long hours of grueling work--an addiction that our culture often applauds. Some create outer enemies and are always at war with the world.
The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved. Many of us live with an undercurrent of depression or hopelessness about ever feeling close to other people. We fear that if they realize we are boring or stupid, selfish or insecure, they'll reject us. If we're not attractive enough, we may never be loved in an intimate, romantic way. We yearn for an unquestioned experience of belonging, to feel at home with ourselves and others, at ease and fully accepted. But the trance of unworthiness keeps the sweetness of belonging out of reach.
The trance of unworthiness intensifies when our lives feel painful and out of control. We may assume that our physical sickness or emotional depression is our own fault--the result of our bad genes or our lack of discipline and willpower. We may feel that the loss of a job or a painful divorce is a reflection of our personal flaws. If we had only done better, if we were somehow different, things would have gone right. While we might place the blame on someone else, we still tacitly blame ourselves for getting into the situation in the first place.
Even if we ourselves are not suffering or in pain, if someone close to us--a partner or a child--is, we can take this as further proof of our inadequacy. One of my psychotherapy clients has a thirteen-year-old son who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. She has tried everything she can to help--doctors, diet, acupuncture, drugs, love. Yet still he suffers from academic setbacks and feels socially isolated. He is convinced that he is a "loser" and, out of pain and frustration, frequently lashes out in rage. Regardless of her loving efforts, she lives in anguish, feeling that she is failing her son and should be doing more.
The trance of unworthiness doesn't always show up as overt feelings of shame and deficiency. When I told a good friend that I was writing about unworthiness and how pervasive it is, she took issue. "My main challenge isn't shame, it's pride," she insisted. This woman, a successful writer and teacher, told me how easily she gets caught up in feeling superior to others. She finds many people mentally slow and boring. Because so many people admire her, she often rides surges of feeling special and important. "I'm embarrassed to admit it," she said, "and maybe this is where shame fits in. But I like having people look up to me . . . that's when I feel good about myself." My friend is playing out the flip side of the trance. She went on to acknowledge that during dry periods, times when she isn't feeling productive or useful or admired, she does slip into feeling unworthy. Rather than simply recognizing her talents and enjoying her strengths, she needs the reassurance of feeling special or superior.
Convinced that we are not good enough, we can never relax. We stay on guard, monitoring ourselves for shortcomings. When we inevitably find them, we feel even more insecure and undeserving. We have to try even harder. The irony of all of this is . . . where do we think we are going anyway? One meditation student told me that he felt as if he were steamrolling through his days, driven by the feeling that he needed to do more. In a wistful tone he added, "I'm skimming over life and racing to the finish line--death."
When I talk about the suffering of unworthiness in my meditation classes, I frequently notice students nodding their heads, some of them in tears. They may be realizing for the first time that the shame they feel is not their own personal burden, that it is felt by many. Afterward some of them stay to talk. They confide that feeling undeserving has made it impossible for them to ask for help or to let themselves feel held by another's love. Some recognize that their sense of unworthiness and insecurity has kept them from realizing their dreams. Often students tell me that their habit of feeling chronically deficient has made them continually doubt that they are meditating correctly and mistrust that they are growing spiritually.
A number of them have told me that, in their early days on the spiritual path, they assumed their feelings of inadequacy would be transcended through a dedicated practice of meditation. Yet even though meditation has helped them in important ways, they find that deep pockets of shame and insecurity have a stubborn way of persisting--sometimes despite decades of practice. Perhaps they have pursued a style of meditation that wasn't well suited for their emotional temperament, or perhaps they needed the additional support of psychotherapy to uncover and heal deep wounds. Whatever the reasons, the failure to relieve this suffering through spiritual practice can bring up a basic doubt about whether we can ever be truly happy and free.
Bringing an Unworthy Self into Spiritual Life
In their comments, I hear echoes of my own story. After graduating from college, I moved into an ashram, a spiritual community, and enthusiastically devoted myself to the lifestyle for almost twelve years. I felt I had found a path through which I could purify myself and transcend the imperfections of my ego--the self and its strategies. We were required to awaken every day at 3:30 a.m., take a cold shower, and then from four until six-thirty do a sadhana (spiritual discipline) of yoga, meditation, chanting and prayer. By breakfast time I often felt as if I were floating in a glowing, loving, blissful state. I was at one with the loving awareness I call the Beloved and experienced this to be my own deepest essence. I didn't feel bad or good about myself, I just felt good.
By the end of breakfast, or a bit later in the morning, my habitual thoughts and behaviors would start creeping in again. Just as they had in college, those ever-recurring feelings of insecurity and selfishness would let me know I was falling short. Unless I found the time for more yoga and meditation, I would often find myself feeling once again like my familiar small-minded, not-okay self. Then I'd go to bed, wake up and start over again.
While I touched genuine peace and openheartedness, my inner critic continued to assess my level of purity. I mistrusted myself for the ways I would pretend to be positive when underneath I felt lonely or afraid. While I loved the yoga and meditation practices, I was embarrassed by my need to impress others with the strength of my practice. I wanted others to see me as a deep meditator and devoted yogi, a person who served her world with care and generosity. Meanwhile, I judged other people for being slack in their discipline, and judged myself for being so judgmental. Even in the midst of community, I often felt lonely and alone.
I had the idea that if I really applied myself, it would take eight to ten years to release all my self-absorption and be wise and free. Periodically I would consult teachers I admired from various other spiritual traditions: "So, how am I doing? What else can I do?" Invariably, they would respond, "Just relax." I wasn't exactly sure what they meant, but I certainly didn't think it could be "just relax." How could they mean that? I wasn't "there" yet.
Chögyam Trungpa, a contemporary Tibetan Buddhist teacher, writes, "The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality." What I brought to my spiritual path included all my needs to be admired, all my insecurities about not being good enough, all my tendencies to judge my inner and outer world. The playing field was larger than my earlier pursuits, but the game was still the same: striving to be a different and better person.
In retrospect, it is no surprise that my self-doubts were transferred intact into my spiritual life. Those who feel plagued by not being good enough are often drawn to idealistic worldviews that offer the possibility of purifying and transcending a flawed nature. This quest for perfection is based in the assumption that we must change ourselves to belong. We may listen longingly to the message that wholeness and goodness have always been our essence, yet still feel like outsiders, uninvited guests at the feast of life.
A Culture That Breeds Separation and Shame
Several years ago a small group of Buddhist teachers and psychologists from the United States and Europe invited the Dalai Lama to join them in a dialogue about emotions and health. During one of their sessions, an American vipassana teacher asked him to talk about the suffering of self-hatred. A look of confusion came over the Dalai Lama's face. "What is self-hatred?" he asked. As the therapists and teachers in the room tried to explain, he looked increasingly bewildered. Was this mental state a nervous disorder? he asked them. When those gathered confirmed that self-hatred was not unusual but rather a common experience for their students and clients, the Dalai Lama was astonished. How could they feel that way about themselves, he wondered, when "everybody has Buddha nature."
While all humans feel ashamed of weakness and afraid of rejection, our Western culture is a breeding ground for the kind of shame and self-hatred the Dalai Lama couldn't comprehend. Because so many of us grew up without a cohesive and nourishing sense of family, neighborhood, community or "tribe," it is not surprising that we feel like outsiders, on our own and disconnected. We learn early in life that any affiliation--with family and friends, at school or in the workplace--requires proving that we are worthy. We are under pressure to compete with each other, to get ahead, to stand out as intelligent, attractive, capable, powerful, wealthy. Someone is always keeping score.
After a lifetime of working with the poor and the sick, Mother Teresa's surprising insight was: "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging." In our own society, this disease has reached epidemic proportions. We long to belong and feel as if we don't deserve to.
Buddhism offers a basic challenge to this cultural worldview. The Buddha taught that this human birth is a precious gift because it gives us the opportunity to realize the love and awareness that are our true nature. As the Dalai Lama pointed out so poignantly, we all have Buddha nature. Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.
In stark contrast to this trust in our inherent worth, our culture's guiding myth is the story of Adam and Eve's exile from the Garden of Eden. We may forget its power because it seems so worn and familiar, but this story shapes and reflects the deep psyche of the West. The message of "original sin" is unequivocal: Because of our basically flawed nature, we do not deserve to be happy, loved by others, at ease with life. We are outcasts, and if we are to reenter the garden, we must redeem our sinful selves. We must overcome our flaws by controlling our bodies, controlling our emotions, controlling our natural surroundings, controlling other people. And we must strive tirelessly--working, acquiring, consuming, achieving, e-mailing, overcommitting and rushing--in a never-ending quest to prove ourselves once and for all.
Growing up Unworthy
In their book Stories of the Spirit, Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman tell this story: A family went out to a restaurant for dinner. When the waitress arrived, the parents gave their orders. Immediately, their five-year-old daughter piped up with her own: "I'll have a hot dog, french fries and a Coke." "Oh no you won't," interjected the dad, and turning to the waitress he said, "She'll have meat loaf, mashed potatoes, milk." Looking at the child with a smile, the waitress said, "So, hon, what do you want on that hot dog?" When she left, the family sat stunned and silent. A few moments later the little girl, eyes shining, said, "She thinks I'm real."
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; Reprint edition (November 23, 2004)
- Language: : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553380990
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553380996
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.44 x 0.76 x 8.15 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#2,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Popular Psychology Psychotherapy
- #14 in Buddhism (Books)
- #38 in Self-Esteem (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
I’ve been a very emotional person ever since I was a child. I easily got upset and was constantly sent messages like “Don’t take things so personally” and “Get over it.” Over the years, I learned to suppress my emotions and deny them. I learned maladaptive behaviors like the compulsive eating or lashing out at people after pent up feelings. This book taught me a totally new way to relate to my emotions. I’ve learned to feel them in my body, explore the messages they hold, offer them kindness, and ultimately move past them. Ironically, I never really knew how to “not take things personally” until I read this book. Unlike anything else I have ever encountered, this book gave me the tools I needed to get through life’s hardships and my emotional turbulence.
The writing is also beautiful. Tara Brach artfully shifts between stories about herself and her patients, Buddhist wisdom, excerpts from poems/fables, and advice for her readers. Since I had already been practicing Buddhist meditation for a while, I was already sold on all the Buddhist teachings in the book. I could imagine that a person new to Buddhism might relate to the book differently.
In summary, this book was everything I needed and changed my life. I highly recommend it. I know I will turn back to it for years to come. Thank you Tara for your wisdom.
Often Tara uses the stories and experiences of the people she has met and helped along her path to aid or illustrate a point, which makes it more enjoyable to read than a book in which the author is always speaking to the reader in the abstract. It really helps to humanize her ideas and bring them home. The narrative is very well done.
The book begins by characterizing the commonplace anxieties of modern life, including insecurities around being good enough and the search for satisfaction and purpose. She invites the reader to share her own journey and relate to her experiences. She gives an explanation of what 'Radical Acceptance' is and goes on in the subsequent chapter to share the stories of her friends & clients, using them to illustrate how her teachings have helped liberate them from their experiences.
One of the things Tara does remarkably well is incorporate wisdom, poetry, and stories from various spiritual sources, in a way that really melds into what she is trying to teach. It's clear that she has much more to offer than her personal wisdom, but also the wisdom of teachers past. My favorite quote from the book (regrettably I do not have the source's name) is from a Zen philosopher: "true happiness is learning to live with imperfection". This comes to mind regularly when I am worried about myself or upset that something isn't as I want it to be.
What I like the most about this book is that it really stands apart to me as a Buddhist teaching text. I've embarked on Zen reading before, but this is the first one to actually inspire me to begin my own meditation practice. In fact, I've begun watching her YouTube videos also, and really feel that she is an adept spiritual teacher. That said, I don't think one has to adopt the Buddhist philosophy to get something out of this book, but I guarantee that a read through it will impress upon the reader some of the wisest lessons it has to offer, which I find are much more humanistic than typical religious dogma, and can fit into any belief system.
However, if you have suffered significant abuse or trauma, you should not attempt the visualisations and meditation in Chapter 9, tonglen, regarding those issues. This book is most helpful for those who are managing more typical sufferings; stress; being self-critical or judgmental of others; experiencing general anxiety; struggling with self-image or forgiveness of others, etc. You will find peace, hope, and happiness through the practices artfully conveyed in this book. Thank you, Tara.
I liked it so much, I purchased five more to give away.
I don't think everyone needs this book. Although I am sure it would benefit everyone. But, for those of you who are like me, this book can be described as being 'needed'! I am a perfectionist, always striving, never accepting myself the way I am, always harsh with myself, etc. etc. I think I will read this book at least once a year for the rest of my life. I wasn't raised Buddhist and would not describe myself as Buddhist now, but that did not detract in any way from my ability to absorb the truths in this book.
Top reviews from other countries





What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?
- Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAINPaperback
- Radical Acceptance: Awakening the Love That Heals Fear and ShamePaperback
- True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened HeartPaperback
- The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist PsychologyPaperback
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad OnesHardcover
- The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of TraumaBessel van der Kolk M.D.Paperback
There's a problem loading this menu right now.