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

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Summary: Suffering is Highly Over-rated!
Review: Tara Brach's book was invaluable in helping me become more accepting of myself. Ms. Brach shares many useful stories and helpful insights. Radical Self Acceptance provides skillful exercises for dealing with many inner shadows. Not only does she bring light to issues of shame and feelings of unworthiness, she provides practical advice on how to awaken from self-suffering. I personally have greatly benefited from her courageous inquiry into the facets of angst that we all experience. In these turbulent times, this book illustrates many practices to embrace our personal struggles so that we can become more compassionate and live a fuller life. When Tara addresses her own vulnerabilities it provides me fortitude to face my own. I consider this book a great resource for understanding our greatest struggle today: ourselves. In our world filled with consumption and materialism, we make up many deluded stories that further separates us from ourselves and our world. Tara goes to the root of how we reinforce our sense of unworthiness. Ms. Brach's wonderful Buddhist and other spiritual teachings provide vivid examples of how we can feel less disconnected. This book is a powerful guide for showing that our self-hatred and shame threatens the future of our world with continuing strife. This book is a wonderful collection of Tara's teachings that weave together our sense of belonging amidst the constant sense of alienation that we unconsciously perpetuate. Finally, this book allows me to free myself from my sense of deficiency to understand that my suffering can be ameliorated with the knowledge that I am a part of a larger, awakening community of like-minded souls who are recovering from their shame. Radical Self Acceptance inspires me to fully "show up", accept, embrace and cultivate greater kindness in all my relationships.

Rating:
Summary: A practical and gentle way to alleviate our suffering
Review: Tara Brach's new book, Radical Acceptance, is a gem. I recommend it for anyone, not just students of Buddhist meditation. There is something here for all of us who self-judge, who get so lost in fantasies, old hurts, worries and fabricated stories that we miss out on the peace, simplicity and happiness that can be found by just paying attention to this moment. And that is the key and what Tara so gracefully and gently points the reader to (through real-life examples and guided meditations and exercises) -- that we actually can, in our very mundane everyday lives, find the peace, simplicity and true happiness that our hearts really long for. Tara shows us how in practical and do-able ways.

Rating:
Summary: What an amazing book!
Review: Thank you, Tara Brach, for a beautiful book!! Her words are full of inspiration as she explains how we can wake up from the "trance of unworthiness" to embrace life. The concept of applying mindfulness plus compassion is so powerful. If only people could be as kind to themselves as they are to their friends, what a happier place the world would be. Just try it for a day and you will be amazed! The anecdotes, quotes and poems included are just perfect. A life-changing book...I want to recommend it to everyone I meet!!

Rating:
Summary: What an amazing book!
Review: Thank you, Tara Brach, for a beautiful book!! Her words are full of inspiration as she explains how we can wake up from the "trance of unworthiness" to embrace life. The concept of applying mindfulness plus compassion is so powerful. If only people could be as kind to themselves as they are to their friends, what a happier place the world would be. Just try it for a day and you will be amazed! The anecdotes, quotes and poems included are just perfect. A life-changing book...I want to recommend it to everyone I meet!!

Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: This book is a treasure. It contains exactly what we all need to hear, reminding us of all the things we are NOT but think we are, as we go through life in a "trance of unworthiness". It is a perfect synthesis of Buddhist teachings and stories and anecdotes about how these teachings actually APPLY to our everyday lives. I've read a lot of books about Buddhism and Zen, but this was one of the first that really made me stop and say (repeatedly).......... "OH.... THAT is what he (the Buddha) meant... and how it relates to ME!" As I mentioned, it is filled with stories and anecdotes from Tara's life, the lives of her students and various others (not to mention the Buddha). This sometimes gives it the flavor of a "Chicken Soup For the Buddhist Soul" book. But I mean that as a compliment! The stories she relates are so profound that in the few days since I've started reading it, I find myself wanting to send excerpts from this book via email to lots of my friends, as well as reading to them from the book over the phone. I don't remember ever doing that with a book before. This book is, in a way, "simplistic"..... you could find many many books that delve more deeply into Buddhist philosophy. But it's the simplicity that makes it so powerful. It's a wonderful "reminder"...... helping us come out of the trance of our minds, beliefs, emotions, etc. and back to the here and now.... to REAL LIFE. It covers much the same territory as the book The Power Of Now, just from a slightly different perspective, and would be a wonderful adjunct to that book. It somehow "shakes" you out of your world-view, belief systems, and everything you thought was "true" about your life, but does it GENTLY. It shows clearly that the Truth is the Truth and it doesn't matter if it comes from a Buddhist background, a Christian background, a certain teacher, tradition or book... it's all the same. It's all right here, right now.... it never went anywhere.......... WE did. This is a wonderful book that will be a blessing to many.

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Summary: Radical Acceptance as a Path
Review: This book offers the radical notion that we can fully accept the way we are in the present moment as a healing transformative act. In his book Art as Medicine, author Shaun McNiff, speaks of "the toxin as the antitoxin". His way is through art making. In Tara Brach's book we explore how, from the Buddhist perspective, being with the very thing we can hardly stand to look at, hear or feel is the very thing that can free us from its grip. The author lets you get to know her in a way that grounds the book in truth. I recommend it without hesitation.

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Summary: A non-Buddhist, non-spiritual seeker says:
Review: This type of book really isn't my sort of thing. But I loved the way Rumi is woven in and out as a recurrent poetic theme and, mostly, was fascinated by the journey of this woman who has developed a practical path out of the miseries into what could be a comfortable and self-accepting life. Other non-spiritual types will find themselves loving it, too!

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Summary: One life to live
Review: We only go through this life once. Tara Brach's book gives us the wisdom to make the most of what we have. In her writing, Tara discusses how to learn to live with whatever we have to face and to face it with acceptance, compassion and the full passion of life. The scope of her teaching admits to all the frailities of humankind while showing us how to bring love and compassion to ourselves. It is by starting with self acceptance that we can widen our acceptance to those we love and others.

The book presents concepts that are easy to grasp - some of them are "aha!" - and offers concrete things we can do to move us along the path of radical acceptance.

This book is a keeper. I can see going back to it many times for inspiration and guidance.