Quotes from Tara Brach

Chögyam Trungpa, a contemporary Tibetan Buddhist teacher, writes, "The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

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

The most important thing is remembering the most important thing.

I have just two instructions for you this week. One is to breathe, and one is to smile.

Poet Gary Lawless writes: When the animals come to us, Asking for our help, Will we know what they are saying? When the plants speak to us In their delicate, beautiful language, Will we be able to answer them? When the planet herself Sings to us in our dreams, Will we be able to wake ourselves, and act?

This is the suffering of fear. Fear is part of being alive. Other people experience this too . . . I am not alone. May I be kind to myself . . . may I give myself the compassion I need.

I am larger and better than I thought. I did not think I held so much goodness. Walt Whitman

Our reality is the thoughts and dramas we see in our mental movies. We

Whether we feel pleasure or pain, the wings of acceptance allow us to honor and cherish this ever-changing life, as it is.

The Tibetan practice of tonglen cultivates the all-embracing heart of compassion. Tonglen means "taking in and sending out.

Feeling that something is wrong with me is the invisible and toxic gas I am always breathing." When we experience our lives through this lens of personal insufficiency, we are imprisoned in what I call the trance of unworthiness. Trapped in this trance, we are unable to perceive the truth of who we really are.

Living in the future creates the illusion that we are managing our life and steels us against personal failure.

Our daily trance can feel ordinary and familiar,

the 'secret' of a 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 -- if even it is a feeling of being humilated, of failing, of abandonment, of unfairness.' Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience.

We have to face the pain we have been running from. In fact, we need to learn to rest in it and let its searing power transform us. Charlotte Joko Beck

When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience.

If we bring a steady attention to the immediate physical experience of an emotion, past sensations and stories linked to it that have been locked in our body and mind are "de-repressed.

She could find the cure through being with the pain.

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.

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.

Although the trance of feeling separate and unworthy is an inherent part of our conditioning as humans, so too is our capacity to awaken

I want to accept myself completely,

no matter how hard we try to control life, we have no sway over the bedrock realities of change, loss, and mortality.

Presence is not some exotic state that we need to search for or manufacture. In the simplest terms, it is the felt sense of wakefulness, openness, and tenderness that arises when we are fully here and now with our experience.