Tara Brach famous quotes

Mindfulness is a pause -- the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.
-- Tara Brach

#Lying #Space #Choices

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

#Heart #Mind #Moments

You can think of spiritual practice as a kind of spiritual re-parenting ... You're offering yourself the two qualities that make up good parenting: understanding - seeing yourself for who you truly are - and relating to what you see with unconditional love.
-- Tara Brach

#Spiritual #Unconditional Love #Thinking

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

#Order #Long #Waiting

Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.
-- Tara Brach

#Beautiful #Offering #Stopping

I recently read in the book My Stroke of Insight by brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous system and body—is only a minute and a half. After that we need thoughts to keep the emotion rolling. So if we wonder why we lock into painful emotional states like anxiety, depression, or rage, we need look no further than our own endless stream of inner dialogue.
-- Tara Brach

#Moving #Book #Emotional

Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There’s less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what’s happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.
-- Tara Brach

#Home #Emotional #Compassion

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

#Heart #Healing #Hands

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

#Compassion #Suffering #Action

The emotion of fear often works overtime. 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. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.
-- Tara Brach

#Focus #Survival #Mind

Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.
-- Tara Brach

#Inspirational #Longing #Belonging

The spiritual path is not a solo endeavor. In fact, the very notion of a self who is trying to free her/ himself is a delusion. We are in it together and the company of spiritual friends helps us realize our interconnectedness.
-- Tara Brach

#Spiritual #Self #Trying

Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...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

#Years #Voice #People

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

#Responsibility #Compassion #Self

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are.
-- Tara Brach

#Spiritual #Home #Loss

Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.
-- Tara Brach

#Suffering #Attention #Belief

The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.
-- Tara Brach

#Kindness #Heart #Healing

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

#Imperfection #Being Different #Relax

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. 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. 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

#Beautiful #Sweet #Sunset

The Buddha never intended to make desire itself the problem. When he said craving causes suffering, he was referring not to our natural inclination as living beings to have wants and needs, but to our habit of clinging to experience that must, by nature, pass away.
-- Tara Brach

#Suffering #Passing Away #Desire

Happiness lies not in finding what is missing, but in finding what is present.
-- Tara Brach

#Lying #Missing #Findings

The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being "without anxiety about imperfection.
-- Tara Brach

#Imperfection #Anxiety #Taught

Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.
-- Tara Brach

#Acceptance #Radical #Radical Acceptance

Sometimes the easiest way to appreciate ourselves is by looking through the eyes of someone who loves us.
-- Tara Brach

#Eye #Appreciate #Way

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.
-- Tara Brach

#Acceptance #Boundaries #Accepting

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

#Inspiring #Creativity #Journey

Imagine you are walking in the woods and you see a small dog sitting by a tree. As you approach it, it suddenly lunges at you, teeth bared. You are frightened and angry. But then you notice that one of its legs is caught in a trap. Immediately your mood shifts from anger to concern: You see that the dog's aggression is coming from a place of vulnerability and pain. This applies to all of us. When we behave in hurtful ways, it is because we are caught in some kind of trap. The more we look through the eyes of wisdom at ourselves and one another, the more we cultivate a compassionate heart.
-- Tara Brach

#Dog #Pain #Heart

Nothing is wrong—whatever is happening is just “real life.
-- Tara Brach

#Real #Real Life

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

#Dream #Years #Tragedy

Our attitude in the face of life's challenges determines our suffering or our freedom.
-- Tara Brach

#Attitude #Challenges #Suffering

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

#Mom #Mother #Suffering

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

#Home #Needs #Matter

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.
-- Tara Brach

#Acceptance #Perfection #Sacred

Paying attention is the most basic and profound expression of love.
-- Tara Brach

#Expression #Profound #Attention

Imperfection is not our personal problem - it is a natural part of existing.
-- Tara Brach

#Imperfection #Problem #Natural

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

#Life #Ideas #Should

The next time you find yourself in some way trying desperately to land safely, your compassion might be what finally gives you the courage you need to let go of the controls. In doing so, you might discover that each time you let go, it becomes easier and easier to re-enter the atmosphere of your own aliveness. Gradually you’ll come home to the flow of your own living presence, the warmth and space of your awakening heart.
-- Tara Brach

#Letting Go #Home #Heart

What would it be like if, right in the midst of this busyness, we were to consciously take our hands off the controls? What if we were to intentionally stop our mental computations and our rushing around and, for a minute or two, simply pause and notice our inner experience?
-- Tara Brach

#Hands #Two #Rushing

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

#Pain #Believe #Our World

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.
-- Tara Brach

#Pain #Grief #Healing

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

#Healing #Unique #Listening

There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.
-- Tara Brach

#Saying Yes #Imperfect #Messy

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

#Powerful #Healing #Simple

The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful and good and catches our attention - the sound of rain, the look of the night sky - the glow in a child's eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause... then totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.
-- Tara Brach

#Beautiful #Children #Kindness

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 ... The pause can occur in the midst of almost any activity and can last for an instant, for hours or for seasons of our life ... You might try it now: Stop reading and sit there, doing 'no thing,' and simply notice what you are experiencing.
-- Tara Brach

#Moving #Reading #Acceptance

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

#Kindness #Heart #Self

It is through realizing loving presence as our very essence, through being that presence, that we discover true freedom.
-- Tara Brach

#Essence #Realizing #True Freedom

We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena. While this isn't easy, as we cultivate the clear seeing and compassion of Radical Acceptance, we discover we can open fully to this natural force, and remain free in its midst.
-- Tara Brach

#Philosophy #Acceptance #Compassion

Feelings and stories of unworthiness and shame are perhaps the most binding element in the trance of fear. When we believe something is wrong with us, we are convinced we are in danger. Our shame fuels ongoing fear, and our fear fuels more shame. The very fact that we feel fear seems to prove that we are broken or incapable. When we are trapped in trance, being fearful and bad seem to define who we are. The anxiety in our body, the stories, the ways we make excuses, withdraw or lash out—these become to us the self that is most real.
-- Tara Brach

#Real #Believe #Self

By running from what we fear, we feed the inner darkness
-- Tara Brach

#Running #Fear #Darkness

We are waiting for the next moment to contain what this moment does not.
-- Tara Brach

#Waiting #Next #Doe

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. 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

#Heart #Acceptance #Feelings

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

#Exotic #Needs #Arise

When we open to love, we become love.
-- Tara Brach

To me, bringing mindfulness-bas ed practices to students, teachers and parents is some of the most important work we can be doing. If we can help the next generation become more self-aware, empathetic and emotionally resilient, they will bring their wisdom to healing the earth and creating a more peaceful world.
-- Tara Brach

#Teacher #Healing #Self

What would it be like if I could accept life--accept this moment--exactly as it is?
-- Tara Brach

#Moments #Accepting

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.
-- Tara Brach

#Lost Love #Heart #Love Life

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

#Relax #Safe #Messages

Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.
-- Tara Brach

#Wise #Running #Art

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.
-- Tara Brach

#Acting #Desire #Freedom To Choose

As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them.
-- Tara Brach

#Self #Feelings #Disappear

As long as we are alive, we feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of our makeup, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If we resist it or push it aside, we miss a powerful opportunity for awakening.
-- Tara Brach

#Inspirational #Powerful #Rip

But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.
-- Tara Brach

#Messages #Revolutionary #Lifetime

With an undefended heart, we can fall in love with life over and over every day. We can become children of wonder, grateful to be walking on earth, grateful to belong with each other and to all of creation. We can find our true refuge in every moment, in every breath.
-- Tara Brach

#Falling In Love #Children #Grateful

Relaxation is the doorway to both wisdom and compassion.
-- Tara Brach

#Compassion #Relaxation #Doorways

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

#Past #Self #Secret

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. 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

#Heart #Space #Mind

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.
-- Tara Brach

#Heart #Acceptance #Radical

My first book, 'Radical Acceptance', grew out of the suffering of feeling personally deficient and unworthy. Because most of us are so quick to turn against ourselves, the teachings and practices of radical acceptance continue as a strong current in 'True Refuge': nurturing a forgiving, understanding heart is a basic step on the path.
-- Tara Brach

#Strong #Book #Teaching

Even a few moments of offering lovingkindness can reconnect you with the purity of your loving heart.
-- Tara Brach

#Heart #Offering #Moments

Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.
-- Tara Brach

#Buddhist #Practice #Hey

In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador's perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.
-- Tara Brach

#Fighting #Long #Safety

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.
-- Tara Brach

#Heart #Our World #Mystery

As we free ourselves from the suffering of 'something is wrong with me, 'we trust and express the fullness of who we are.'
-- Tara Brach

#Suffering #Who We Are #Fullness

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

#Self #Years #Roots

My prayer became 'May I find peace... May I love this life no matter what.' I was seeking an inner refuge, an experience of presence and wholeness that could carry me through whatever losses might come.
-- Tara Brach

#Prayer #Loss #May

Whatever you encounter, may that be part of the path.
-- Tara Brach

#Path #Encounters #May

Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.
-- Tara Brach

#Heart #Body #Towers

Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.
-- Tara Brach

#Spiritual #Compassion #Self

I think the reason Buddhism and Western psychology are so compatible is that Western psychology helps to identify the stories and the patterns in our personal lives, but what Buddhist awareness training does is it actually allows the person to develop skills to stay in what's going on.
-- Tara Brach

#Buddhist #Buddhism #Thinking

I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.
-- Tara Brach

#Grief #Writing #Mobility

True refuge is that which allows us to be at home, at peace, to discover true happiness. The only thing that can give us true refuge is the awareness and love that is intrinsic to who we are. Ultimately, its our own true nature.
-- Tara Brach

#Home #Giving #Who We Are