New Books in Buddhist Studies Tara Brach, "Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha" (Random House, 2004)
Jan 17, 2024
Tara Brach, clinical psychologist and meditation teacher who blends Buddhist insight with psychotherapy. She revisits Radical Acceptance and its RAIN practice. She talks about the collective spiritual crisis of separation, the trance of unworthiness, and how acceptance opens the way to self-love, compassion, and wise action.
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Disease Of Separation Drives Collective Suffering
- The core cause of widespread suffering is a 'disease of separation' where we forget our belonging to each other and the earth.
- Tara Brach links this forgetting to fear-driven survival reactivity that cuts off empathy, learning, and executive functioning, worsening global crises.
Radical Accepting As An Active Unclenching
- Radical acceptance is an active letting-be that relaxes the unconscious clench of resisting reality.
- Brach uses the image of a waking awareness entering a clenched fist to show how awareness creates space, softening tension so love naturally arises.
Trance Of Unworthiness Blocks Full Living
- The 'trance of unworthiness' is a pervasive small-self identity that convinces us something is wrong with us and blocks intimacy and creativity.
- Radical acceptance is positioned as the necessary first step toward loving ourselves out of that trance and transcending the separate self.
