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

by Tara Brach

Our longing for sex and affection can become an anguished dependency on another human being to define and please us.

If we have been acutely frustrated or deprived, our fixated desire becomes desperate and unquenchable. We are possessed by craving, and our entire life is hijacked by the force of this energy. We feel like a wanting self in all situations, with all people, throughout the day. In India it is said that when a pickpocket sees a saint, he or she sees only the saint’s pockets. If we are taken over by craving, no matter who or what is before us, all we can see is how it might satisfy our needs. This kind of thirst contracts our body and mind into a profound trance. We move through the world with a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us from enjoying what is in front of us. The color of the autumn leaves or a passage of poetry merely amplifies the feeling that there is a gaping hole in our life. The smile of a child only reminds us that we are painfully childless.

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. We see how we ruin our bodies and our relationships by bingeing on food or alcohol. We see how we hurt our children when we are addicted to endless achieving. We watch ourselves sabotage...

As with Sarah, our agonizing shame of addiction takes over and prevents us from sensing “what the deepest self likes.” We remain out of touch with the longing for love that drives our addiction in the first place.

We experience this situation daily inside our own psyche. We are encouraged by our culture to keep ourselves comfortable, to be right, to possess things, to be better than others, to look good, to be admired. We are also told that we should feel ashamed of our selfishness, that we are flawed for being so self-centered, sinful when we are indulgent.

Most mainstream religions—Judeo-Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Confucian—teach that our wanting, passion and greed cause suffering. While this certainly can be true, their blanket teachings about the dangers of desire often deepen self-hatred. We are counseled to transcend, overcome or somehow manage the hungers of our physical and emotional being. We are

taught to mistrust the wildness and intensity of our natural passions, to fear being out of control. 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.” Equating spiritual purity with...

To some the monk’s response might seem virtuous. After all, he resisted temptation, he even seemed to have pulled desire out by the roots. Still the old woman considered him a fraud. Is his way of experiencing the young girl—“like a withering tree on a rock in winter”—the point of spiritual practice? Instead of appreciating the girl’s youth and loveliness, instead of noting the arising of a natural sexual response and its passing away without acting on it, the monk shut down. This is not enlightenment.

I’ve talked with some who have been practicing spiritual disciplines for years, yet have never let themselves acknowledge that they are lonely and long for intimacy. As the monk in the Zen tale shows, if we push away desire, we disconnect from our tenderness and we harden against life. We become like a “rock in winter.” When we reject desire, we reject the very source of our love and aliveness.

I asked Sarah to close her eyes and

sense into the worst part of what she was experiencing, what most wanted attention. She immediately said that, right in that moment, she wanted me to have a good impression of her. I encouraged her to bring presence to what that want was like, noticing it as a felt sense in her body. “There’s a jumpiness in my chest,” she reported. As we went on I suggested she remain open to any emotion, image or words that might naturally appear. When emotions surged up that felt too painful or consuming to be with, I reminded her to silently say to herself, “This too,” and with a gentle attention, focus on the sensations in her body.

Sarah had begun seeing how even the most acute cravings eventually subsided if she just sat still, named what was happening and, instead of wishing they’d go away, just said, “This too.”

“Suddenly it became clear that all my

desires and thoughts and feelings are an endless, changing parade,” she told me. And then, with a look of surprise she ...

For Sarah, this experience of an uncontrollable, ever-changing reality was a breakthrough that dramatically shifted how she related to herself. She wasn’t controlling what was going on inside her, and she never had. She had not asked to be filled with craving. She couldn’t stop the barrage of obsessive thoughts. She described how, during that meditation, she heard a voice whispering, “It’s not my fault. It’s never been my fault.” It wasn’t Sarah’s fault that she was so filled with fear, so obsessed, so ashamed. It wasn’t her fault that when her feelings got intolerable she would reach out for food. As she told me this Sarah started sobbing deeply, ...

She was living in a culture that promised satisfaction through consuming. And most fundamental, like all living beings she was biologically primed to grasp after pleasure and avoid pain.

In bringing a clear and comprehensive awareness to our situation, we begin to accept our wanting self with compassion.

Although she had to continue consciously forgiving and letting go when craving arose, when she stopped blaming herself, her ability to be present was no longer compromised by overwhelming shame.

When she was haunted by the fear that she would never change and get better, she said, “This too,” and felt the bands of tightness squeezing her chest and throat. When she doubted that anyone could ever love someone so wretched, she held the fear with “This too.” When the despairing feeling that “Something is wrong with me” seemed to take over her world, she let herself feel the grief, like a swelling balloon in her heart. When craving arose, impelling her toward the relief of food, she stayed still and responded to its urgent force with “This too.” As Sarah was discovering in meditation, she could experience even the most intense craving without pushing it away or acting on it. Instead of hating her experience or losing herself in a swirl of mental activity, Sarah was saying yes to the feelings of urgency and tension and fear. Instead of trying to satisfy her craving, she was simply letting it express itself and move through her.

When the impulse to stand up and get more food did arise, she would remain seated, mentally saying, “This too,” feeling fully the sharp edge of tension, the squeeze of excitement, anticipation, anxiety. Sometimes the impulse would pass. Other times it didn’t, and the compulsion to eat and numb her inner turmoil would keep building. If the voice of judgment arose, she would mentally whisper, “It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.” The reminder helped her become more gentle and open, more relaxed about the intensity of her craving. If Sarah did choose to get more food after pausing, she could accept that choice with compassion rather than condemn it or feel embarrassed, as if she had failed. By pausing and forgiving herself for the feeling of desire, Sarah had cleared the way to Radical

“If I can remember even one time out of ten to say ‘It’s not my fault,’ I’ll be a significantly happier and freer person.” She went on, “If I can just forgive myself and be present, I’ll be okay.”

message to herself: “Craving for food and obsessing about the job are not my fault.” As Sarah paid attention to the churning thoughts and feelings of anxiety, she realized that she not only wanted this professional success, she also deeply feared the feeling of failure that could swamp her if she wasn’t selected. The tightness and pressure in her chest were so overwhelming she could barely breathe. She wanted relief; she wanted food. But as Sarah continued to pay attention to the explosive restlessness of craving, the massive pressure began to release. She felt a dissolving and opening through her chest, a growing sense of space. Filling that space was a vibrating tenderness. Sarah could now feel how deeply she longed to be accepted, valued, loved.

We suffer when our experience of desire or craving defines and confines our experience of who we are.

If we meet the sensations, emotions and thoughts of wanting with Radical Acceptance, we begin to awaken from the identity of a wanting self and to reconnect with the fullness of our being.

Whether we are on a meditation retreat or in the midst of a busy life, the practice of bringing Radical Acceptance to desire is essentially the same. We pause and relinquish our physical or mental pursuit of satisfaction long enough to recognize how our identity has contracted into the feelings and thoughts of a wanting self. In this pause we let go of blaming ourselves for the presence of wanting and kindly allow it to exist, just as it is. We invite our wanting to tea, mindfully experiencing the sensations in our body, wakefully noting the emotions and thoughts that are arising in our mind. When we are present in this way—clear, compassionate, neither graspin...

inviting wanting to tea. how to accept the presence of wanting without letting it take over you.

The pressing ache in my chest opened into a deep grief—grief for all the lost moments of love, moments that I missed because I was too preoccupied or busy to stop and open to them. I moved back and forth between erotic passion and this profound grieving about how separate I felt from what I really longed for. When the sensations of craving or sorrow became particularly intense, I tended to become lost again, thinking about what was missing in my life, fantasizing about ways I might fulfill my longing for love. While I didn’t judge the fantasies as “bad,” I could see how they prevented me from being in touch with my actual experience. They kept me from tender presence—the gateway to what I most deeply longed for.

love.” This love is what we long for. When we bring Radical Acceptance to the enormity of desire, allowing it to be as it is, neither resisting it nor grasping after it, the light of our awareness dissolves the wanting self into its source.

A strange passion is moving in my head. My heart has become a bird Which searches in the sky. Every part of me goes in different directions.

Is it really so That the one I love is everywhere?

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. Our longings don’t disappear, nor does the need for others. But by opening into the well of desire—again and again—we come to trust the boundless love that is its source.

As agitation in the chest? As aching in the arms? Do you feel as if you are leaning forward, tumbling into the future?

dull? Notice if your experience changes during the minute or so of pausing. You might ask yourself, “What is missing right now?”

While desire naturally arises again, the wisdom of seeing that everything passes is liberating. Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

At any moment throughout the day, if you find yourself driven by wanting, the question, what does my heart really long for? will help you reconnect to the purity of spiritual yearning.