1. “Whatever you encounter, may that be part of the path.” – Tara Brach
2. “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.” – Tara Brach
3. “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.” – Tara Brach
4. “There is only one world, the world pressing against you at this minute. There is only one minute in which you are alive, this minute here and now. The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” – Tara Brach
5. “Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.” – Tara Brach
6. “I decided that instead of resisting everything, I would agree to everything. I began to greet whatever arose in my awareness with a silently whispered “yes”.” – Tara Brach
7. “Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.” – Tara Brach
8. “When we’re awake in our bodies and sense, the world comes alive. Wisdom, creativity, and love are discovered as we relax and awaken through our bodies.” – Tara Brach
9. “We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.” – Tara Brach
10. “Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity.” – Tara Brach
11. “If we’re not open to losing, we’re not open to loving.” – Tara Brach
12. “We are continually experiencing the conditioning to hold on, tighten, or resist.” – Tara Brach
13. “We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent space of awareness behind all our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. We find refuge whenever we connect with the innate clarity and intelligence of our true nature.” – Tara Brach
14. “People don’t behave in angry ways unless they are feeling stressed and conflicted too.” – Tara Brach
15. “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.” – Tara Brach
16. “Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you.” – Tara Brach
17. “We can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds-right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-momen t lives.” – Tara Brach
18. “Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.” – Tara Brach
19. “I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening.” – Tara Brach
20. “On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.” – Tara Brach
21. “Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.” – Tara Brach
22. “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.” – Tara Brach
23. “Everything within and around us is subject to change; the truth that if we try to hold on to or resist the stream of experience, we deepen the trance of fear.” – Tara Brach
24. “Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.” – Tara Brach
25. “Our kids go to school and they come out feeling not intelligent, not desirable, not attractive or appealing to others.” – Tara Brach
26. “It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.” – Tara Brach
27. “We move through the world with a kind of tunnel vision that prevents us from enjoying what is in front of us.” – Tara Brach
28. “Taking our hands off the controls and pausing is an opportunity to clearly see the wants and fears that are driving us…. Often the moment when we most need to pause is exactly when it feels most intolerable to do so.” – Tara Brach
29. “The instant we agree to feel fear or vulnerability, greed or agitation, we are holding our life with an unconditionally friendly heart.” – Tara Brach
30. “There are some things we can’t choose, but in being present we can choose how we want to relate to them.” – Tara Brach
31. “There are stories we take on from our culture, and there are stories based on our own personal history. Some of those stories lock us in limiting beliefs and lead to suffering, and there are others that can move us toward freedom.” – Tara Brach
32. “Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.” – Tara Brach
33. “Our issues are in our tissues.” – Tara Brach
34. “When we pause, we don’t know what will happen next. But by disrupting our habitual behaviors, we open to the possibility of new and creative ways of responding to our wants and fears.” – Tara Brach
35. “Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it.” – Tara Brach
36. “If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.” – Tara Brach
37. “There’s a mystic who says there’s only one really good question, which is, ‘What am I unwilling to feel?” – Tara Brach
38. “We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.” – Tara Brach
39. “Most of us need to be reminded that we are good, that we are lovable, that we belong. If we knew just how powerfully our thoughts, words, and actions affected the hearts of those around us, we’d reach out and join hands again and again. Our relationships have the potential to be a sacred refuge, a place of healing and awakening. With each person we meet, we can learn to look behind the mask and see the one who longs to love and be loved.” – Tara Brach
40. “Imperfection is not our personal problem – it is a natural part of existing.” – Tara Brach
41. “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.” – Tara Brach
42. “Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth. Like the tiger Mohini, I inhabited a self-made prison that stopped me from living fully.” – Tara Brach
43. “What would it be like if I could accept life – accept this moment – exactly as it is?” – Tara Brach
44. “Meditation helps us to get out of our thoughts about the future and really be in the present moment.” – Tara Brach
45. “When we put down ideas of what life should be like, we are free to wholeheartedly say yes to our life as it is.” – Tara Brach
46. “Mindfulness is the intentional process of paying attention, without judgment, to the unfolding of moment-by-moment experience.” – Tara Brach
47. “This means accepting our human existence and all of life as it is. Imperfection is not our personal problem—it is a natural part of existing.” – Tara Brach
48. “We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing — our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in.” – Tara Brach
49. “The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.” – Tara Brach
50. “Along with judging myself harshly, I’d also always seen the truth of goodness in me.” – Tara Brach
51. “This longing to express and celebrate life is innate and quite beautiful.” – Tara Brach
52. “The most powerful healing arises from the simple intention to love the life within you, unconditionally, with as much tenderness and presence as possible.” – Tara Brach
53. “Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.” – Tara Brach
54. “When I’m attached, I find that I don’t see the other person as clearly because I’m more caught up in what I’m wanting.” – Tara Brach
55. “When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, “Darling, I care about your suffering,” a deep healing begins.” – Tara Brach
56. “With the first out breath, you are releasing worries, plans, mental tensions. With the second out breath, you are releasing physical tightness and tension. With the third out breath, you are releasing difficult emotions.” – Tara Brach
57. “You have a unique body and mind, with a particular history and conditioning. No one can offer you a formula for navigating all situations and all states of mind. Only by listening inwardly in a fresh and open way will you discern at any given time what most serves your healing and freedom.” – Tara Brach
58. “When we open to love, we become love.” – Tara Brach
59. “Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.” – Tara Brach
60. “Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” – Tara Brach
61. “Even a few moments of offering lovingkindness can reconnect you with the purity of your loving heart.” – Tara Brach
62. “The two wings of mindfulness and kindness will begin to open the heart to more connection with our world.” – Tara Brach
63. “In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love. We need only pause, breathe, and open to the experience of aliveness within us. In that wakeful openness, we come home to the peace and freedom of our natural awareness.” – Tara Brach
64. “The color of an 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. We turn away from simple pleasures because our craving compels us to seek more intense stimulation or numbing relief.” – Tara Brach
65. “When we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves.” – Tara Brach
66. “Staying occupied is a socially sanctioned way of remaining distant from our pain.” – Tara Brach
67. “The emotion of fear often works overtime.” – Tara Brach
68. “There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.” – Tara Brach
69. “We can’t hold on to anything — a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self — because all things come and go.” – Tara Brach
70. “Just as a clear pond reflects the sky, mindfulness allows us to see the truth of our experience.” – Tara Brach
71. “Nothing is wrong – whatever is happening is just “real life.” – Tara Brach
72. “Relaxation is the doorway to both wisdom and compassion.” – Tara Brach
73. “Extend an act of kindness each day. No one has to know. It can be a smile, reassuring words, a small favor – without expecting something in return.” – Tara Brach
74. “If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.” – Tara Brach
75. “Just remember that everyone is struggling; everyone is living with fear and uncertainty and it doesn’t matter what their politics are.” – Tara Brach
76. “We can’t understand the nature of reality until we let go of controlling our experience.” – Tara Brach
77. “Feeling compassion for ourselves in no way releases us from responsibility for our actions. Rather, it releases us from the self-hatred that prevents us from responding to our life with clarity and balance.” – Tara Brach
78. “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.” – Tara Brach
79. “Mindfulness is a pause – the space between stimulus and response: that’s where choice lies.” – Tara Brach
80. “As a friend of mine put it, “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.” – Tara Brach
81. “We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.” – Tara Brach
82. “Through the simple practice of seeing our own goodness, we undo the deeply rooted habits of blame and self-hate that keep us feeling isolated and unworthy.” – Tara Brach
83. “But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.” – Tara Brach
84. “Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.” – Tara Brach
85. “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.” – Tara Brach
86. “Telling each other the truth and being who we are, and having space for the other person’s vulnerability in being who they are, allows us to move in a kind of dance together that’s very fluid and graceful.” – Tara Brach
87. “The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” – Tara Brach
88. “Attention is the most basic form of love. By paying attention we let ourselves be touched by life, and our hearts naturally become more open and engaged.” – Tara Brach
89. “Where desire ends up causing suffering is when it fixates.” – Tara Brach
90. “If I can forgive the attachment in myself and open to the vulnerability that’s underneath it, then rather than fixating on another person to satisfy my need, I’m actually going right to where the needs come from and able to bring a real healing.” – Tara Brach
91. “The main thing going on around intimacy is that we’ve developed a lot of strategies so we’ll be a desirable package.” – Tara Brach
92. “I found myself praying: “May I love and accept myself just as I am.” – Tara Brach
93. “When we see the secret beauty of anyone, including ourselves, we see past our judgment and fear into the core of who we truly are – not an entrapped self but the radiance of goodness.” – Tara Brach
94. “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.” – Tara Brach
95. “Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.” – Tara Brach
96. “Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.” – Tara Brach
97. “Stepping out of the busyness, stopping our endless pursuit of getting somewhere else, is perhaps the most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.” – Tara Brach
98. “By running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness.” – Tara Brach
99. “If we’re not open to losing, we’re not open to loving.” – Tara Brach