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

by Tara Brach

Guided Reflection: “Not Doing” When We Feel Driven by Wanting While grasping on to what we desire is part of our conditioning, it blinds us to our deeper longings and keeps us trapped in craving. Freedom begins when we pause and pay close attention to our experience. Reflect on an area of your life where you feel compelled by wanting mind. It might be food, cigarettes, alcohol, sex, voicing critical remarks, computer games, work or buying things. For one week let your intention be to practice pausing when you feel the urge to enact that behavior. When you pause, become physically still and pay close attention to the nature of wanting. What does your body feel like when wanting is strong? Where do you experience the sensations of wanting most fully? Do you feel them as butterflies in the stomach? As agitation in the chest? As aching in the arms? Do you feel as if you are leaning forward, tumbling into the future? Is your mind tight and speedy? Or sluggish and dull? Notice if your experience changes during the minute or so of pausing. You might ask yourself, “What is missing right now?” and listen with your heart. If, following the pause, you move into the behavior, do so slowly and mindfully. Do you feel tension or excitement, self-judgment or fear? Notice with a clear and compassionate attention the sensations, emotions and thoughts that may arise. While we might still pursue what we want after the pause, at least we do so aware of some of the tension and suffering that li...