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

by Tara Brach

Through Buddhist awareness practices, we free ourselves from the suffering of the trance by learning to recognize what is true in the present moment, and by embracing whatever we see with an open heart. This cultivation of mindfulness and compassion is what I call Radical Acceptance.

But even in less extreme situations, most of us learn that our desires, fears and views don’t carry much weight, and that we need to be different and better if we are to belong.

We keep busy. Staying occupied is a socially sanctioned way of remaining distant from our pain.

Staying on top of what is wrong with us gives us the sense that we are controlling our impulses, disguising our weaknesses and possibly improving our character.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t compete in a healthy way, put wholehearted effort into work or acknowledge and take pleasure in our own competence. But when our efforts are driven by the fear that we are flawed, we deepen the trance of unworthiness.

Directing anger at an enemy temporarily reduces our feelings of fear and vulnerability.

His amazing insight was that all suffering or dissatisfaction arises from a mistaken understanding that we are a separate and distinct self. This perception of “selfness” imprisons us in endless rounds of craving and aversion.

What we experience as the “self” is an aggregate of familiar thoughts, emotions and patterns of behavior. The mind binds these together, creating a story about a personal, individual entity that has continuity through time. Everything we experience is subsumed into this story of self and becomes my experience. I am afraid. This is my desire. The contemporary Thai Buddhist meditation master and writer Ajahn Buddhadasa refers to this habit of attaching a sense of self to our experience as “I-ing” and “my-ing.” We interpret everything we think and feel, and everything that happens to us, as in some way belonging to or caused by a self.

As the trance of unworthiness becomes conscious, it begins to lose its power over our lives.

As we lean into the experience of the moment—releasing our stories and gently holding our pain or desire—Radical Acceptance begins to unfold. The two parts of genuine acceptance—seeing clearly and holding our experience with compassion—are as interdependent as the two wings of a great bird. Together, they enable us to fly and be free.

We lay the foundations of Radical Acceptance by recognizing when we are caught in the habit of judging, resisting and grasping, and how we constantly try to control our levels of pain and pleasure.

However, as psychologist Carl Rogers’s seminal insight proclaims: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Our deepest nature is to awaken and flower.

Radical Acceptance acknowledges our own experience in this moment as the first step in wise action. Before acting or reacting, we allow ourselves to feel and accept our grief for how the earth has been polluted, our anger about the destruction of wildlife, our shame about how we have been mistreated, our fear about what others may think about us, our guilt about our own insensitivity. No matter what the situation, our immediate personal experience is the fundamental domain of Radical Acceptance. This is where we cultivate the genuine wakefulness and kindness that underlie effective action.

Doesn’t the very idea of self-acceptance affirm a mistaken notion of self? As the Buddha taught, our habitual perception of self is a mental construct—the idea of an entity who causes things to happen, who is victimized, who controls the show. When we say, “I accept myself as I am,” we are not accepting a story about a good or bad self. Rather, we are accepting the immediate mental and sensory experiences we interpret as self. We are seeing the familiar wants and fears, the judging and planning thoughts as a part of the flow of life. Accepting them in this way actually enables us to recognize that experience is impersonal and frees us from the trap of identifying ourselves as a deficient and limited self.

We are all capable of learning Radical Acceptance—the two wings of clear recognition and compassionate presence are expressions of who we intrinsically are.

Learning to pause is the first step in the practice of Radical Acceptance. A pause is a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal.

Ajahn Buddhadasa calls these interludes of natural or purposeful pausing temporary nirvana. We touch the freedom that is possible in any moment when we are not grasping after our experience or resisting it. He writes that without such moments of pausing, “living things would either die or become insane. Instead, we survive because there are natural periods of coolness, of wholeness and ease. In fact, they last longer than the fires of our grasping and fear. It is this that sustains us.”

You can pause while sitting, standing or lying down. Even in motion—going for a walk or driving—you can pause internally, eyes open and senses awake. Whenever you find you are stuck or disconnected, you can begin your life fresh in that moment by pausing, relaxing and paying attention to your immediate experience.

Remember that labeling always remains in the background (5 percent), with the great majority of your awareness (95 percent) attending to your actual experience. When done softly and lightly, noting can create a mood that is gentle and receptive.

With practice, you will find that the smile is a simple and powerful way to reawaken the heart at any moment of the day. Rather than a full “smile-down” as described above, you can also explore simply assuming the half smile of the Buddha whenever you remember.

The Buddha makes clear that being mindful of sensations does not mean standing apart and observing like a distant witness. Rather we’re directly experiencing what is happening in our body. Instead of seeing our hand as an external object, for instance, we carefully feel into the energy that is our hand in any given moment. We train to experience the body from the inside out.

This same process unfolds when our pain is emotional—we resist the unpleasant sensations of loneliness, sorrow and anger. Whether physical or emotional, when we react to pain with fear, we pull away from an embodied presence and go into the suffering of a trance.

As you continue the scan, be careful not to use your eyes to direct your attention. (This will only create tension.) Rather, connect directly with sensations by feeling the body from within the body.

Now open your attention to include your body in a comprehensive way. Be aware of the body as a field of changing sensations. Can you sense the subtle energy field that vitalizes and gives life to every cell, every organ in your body? Is there anything in your experience that is solid, unmoving? Is there any center or boundary to the field of sensation? Is there any solid self you can locate that possesses these sensations? What or who is aware of experience?

Merely recognizing, as she had in OA, that she was clinging to food as a substitute had not been enough to break the pattern. Forgiving and accepting the presence of the wanting self was the giant step in Sarah’s transformation. 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.

The sensations of anxiety and wanting may be unpleasant, but as we saw with pain, the suffering can be optional. 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.

Through his years of intensive training, Milarepa learns that suffering only comes from being seduced by the demons or from trying to fight them. To discover freedom in their presence, he has to experience them directly and wakefully, as they are.

The “one I love” was everywhere, including within me. When we don’t fixate on a single, limited object of love, we discover that the wanting self dissolves into the awareness that is love loving itself.

The Buddha taught that by being aware of desire, we free ourselves from identifying with it. With Radical Acceptance, we begin to shed the layers of shame and aversion we have built around our “deficient, wanting self.” We see through the stories we have created—stories about a self who is a victim of desire, about a self who is fighting desire, about a self who tumbles into unhealthy desires, about a self who has to have something more, something different from what is right here, right now.

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.

You might ask yourself, “What is missing right now?” and listen with your heart.