Quotes from Tara Brach

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 are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst.

We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.

It may sound lovey-dovey, but there's research showing the positive effect of meditation on parts of the brain that control emotion.

Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present.

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.

Most of us grow up with a sense of "I'm not intelligent enough." It's such a sad thing that in the West we worship a certain kind of left-brain intelligence.

By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.

In a basic way, acceptance is seeing clearly what's happening and holding it with kindness. This is a radical antidote to the suffering of judging mind.

The two wings of mindfulness and kindness will begin to open the heart to more connection with our world.

This is for anyone reading this who wants to explore it. Recognize the thought, "Afraid of loving," then gently put your hand on your heart to send a message of kindness.

When you are in touch with your body and heart, it allows you to then be in the world and act with intention and clarity and kindness.

I would say both Western psychology and Eastern paths would recognize that we get caught up in feeling like a separate self and an unworthy self.

I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.

The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.

When we relax about imperfection, we no longer lose our life moments in the pursuit of being different and in the fear of what is wrong.

Nothing is wrong - whatever is happening is just "real life."

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.

My prayer became 'May I find peace... May I love this life no matter what.' I was seeking an inner refuge, an experience of presence and wholeness that could carry me through whatever losses might come.

Underneath the stress is fear, and the biggest is our own personal fear of failure.

Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.

This longing to express and celebrate life is innate and quite beautiful.

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.