April 2, 2025 • 30 mins
Strategies to accept your suffering & heal yourself with compassion.
'Radical Acceptance' by Tara Brach is a guide of various meditation & framing practices to recognise the root cause of emotional distress. These are derived from Buddhist principles and serve to help accept the current pain & suffering. There are 13 chapters that begin with a story followed by an explanation of the intent before a final guided meditation.
If you got value from the podcast please provide support back in any way you best see fit!
Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:35) Themes/Questions
(00:15:33) Author & Extras
(00:24:26) Summary
(00:27:20) Value 4 Value
(00:28:40) Join Live!
Connect with Mere Mortals:
Website: https://www.meremortalspodcasts.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/jjfq9eGReU
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/meremortalspods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meremortalspodcasts/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meremortalspodcasts
Value 4 Value Support:
Boostagram: https://www.meremortalspodcasts.com/support
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/meremortalspodcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
Strategies to accept your suffering and heal yourself with compassion.
Welcome,
everyone, to another episode of the Mere Mortals
book reviews. I am your host here, Kyrin, live on the 04/03/2025.
(00:21):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I achieve
transcendence.
Okay. No. Not gonna be doing any of that today, but we might find some ways to help achieve that in this book that we have here, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame.
So this book was published originally in 02/2003,
(00:44):
but I have the, I guess, 2023
updated version because it does mention some things like COVID in it, for example. So it certainly has been updated.
So just a word of warning that I will be talking to that. It's 450
pages about in length, and I'd say it took me probably about seven hours of reading to get through, because it is pretty dense. There's no pictures or anything in it. And the words, the writing in here actually is relatively,
(01:10):
strong. So it's a guide of various meditation and framing practices to recognize the root cause of emotional distress or suffering, if you will.
These are derived from Buddhist principles, these being the meditative practices,
and help to serve accept the current pain and suffering. It's not so much about
(01:32):
doing and implementing actions to overcome it. It's more about acceptance of of what is at the moment, hence the book, Radical Acceptance,
and really doing that fully and completely as possible. Now there are certain 13 chapters in total. I will list some of these off here. And each chapter typically begins,
(01:52):
with a story of a,
of either herself or someone that she knows
and then goes into more
of the Buddhist practices, what exactly you can find within how that Buddha Buddhist practice or meditation will help, followed by right at the end, usually a single page or two of a actual meditative practice of a guided meditation, how you can do this. So some of the chapters,
(02:17):
the sacred pause resting under the Bodhi tree, coming home to our body, the ground of radical acceptance,
opening our heart in the face of fear, the reign of compassion and applied meditation for healing and freedom,
recognizing our basic goodness, the gateway to a forgiving and loving heart, etcetera, etcetera. There is 13 of those in total. So let's jump into some of the themes and questions here. What is the reason to meditate, and what can Buddhism practices in particular
(02:43):
do to stop, alter, heal my suffering?
Now, as mentioned, Tyre's emphasis is really on the acceptance part
of understanding your problems
and of yourself and how you are helping to contribute to those problems. And then also how those problems are
are not even part of you and that the concept of yourself is kind of illusory. So it's quite a few things to to go into here. Now typical examples from the book,
(03:12):
what she starts off with, and I've found this really helpful because it is
real day to day sort of stuff. So
some examples are people who have,
have have a partner who is cheating on them or has cheated on them, and they're trying to,
you know, get their family gets back together or or to
understand what they're to do in the next situation
(03:35):
of people who are absent as a parent and their child got abused by their,
partner
partly in due to their own alcoholism and absenteeism,
if you if you wanna call it that way.
A lady who has an eating disorder that is a way of covering
up many of the insecurities that she feels in her life. And then because of her eating disorder,
(03:58):
in particular, she was overeating,
you know, she now has more insecurities about her body because of this.
We have people who have,
dying parents, for example,
combined with stressful work, combined with, you know, other things going on in their life, mon monetary problems,
and even Tara's own story about her miscarriage and betrayal by her,
(04:23):
teacher at the time. So they're all very much
instances that you're likely to find at some point in your life a suffering or a problem that you've had in your life.
And,
what can you do to help alleviate some of the emotional suffering and and,
the things that go on?
And look, in particular, the the book is about people who are looking for help
(04:48):
because of these problems that they're having. And,
you know, at many times they have talked about how they've suffered in silence
for many, many years.
And in they're looking for ways of using Buddhism and meditative practices to help
help them. And what help exactly means in this case is kind of unknown. All that's known is that they're really just suffering.
(05:12):
And it's probably more
the emotional
distress,
that's causing them the main problems.
But then that emotional distress
results in them lashing out at people,
turning inwards and, you know, suffering in silence and even physical manifestations
of of the pain,
(05:32):
such as we've seen with the, girl who overeats, for example. So
what is radical acceptance? And it's radical acceptance
is about clearly seeing the thoughts,
the emotions,
and body sensations of the moment
and
accepting them for what they are, not trying to fight them, not trying to hide them away,
sitting with them.
(05:54):
For example, some of the things that you'll hear within in within this book or that you're likely to hear are sitting with fear, labeling grief, acknowledging anger, allowing heartbreak,
recognizing guilt, breathing through shame. It's very
much letting these emotions and feelings that are within your body
and not trying to fight them, but just understanding and
(06:17):
having compassion with yourself for
what what is
in essence. And
many of the times,
it
can be rather interesting seeing these people and their thought process of what they're feeling. And typically, they'll break it down whether, you know, I'm so angry at my partner, but it's like, why are you angry at my partner?
I'm angry because he said something that made me feel insecure,
(06:41):
and that the anger is not the real issue. It's the insecurity that's the real issue. And the insecurity is rooted something deep in the past
or something like this. So,
she calls on you to find this compassion and mindfulness
to tap into radical acceptance
and
not pretend, not hide away, not
(07:02):
try and squeeze or weasel your way out of what actually is and what you're feeling, and do not add on additional guilt and burden and suffering
for what you're feeling.
And this is rather interesting because at times you can have contradictory emotions to what what you should feel or what society should feel or thinks you should feel. And
(07:24):
most of the cases works out for negative instances that she talks about in the book.
But there were a couple where she was also mentioning how
she, you know, was in a, I guess, a good period of her life. And
she was kind of smitten with a guy and was feeling these these feelings of love. And this was actually
causing her,
(07:45):
I'm not gonna say suffering, but certainly distractedness in her mind where she was fantasizing about this guy and the life that they could leave or the lust or sexual things.
And this was actually causing her some sort of emotional disturbances as well. So even things that are kind of good,
can also fall under the umbrella of using this radical acceptance to find out what it is you're feeling. Now linking this to Buddhism,
(08:11):
there are many strategies in this book that she talks about. The 13 chapters,
they're kind of roughly split into
a meditative practice that you can use.
So, for example, some of the concepts
that are in Buddhism and that
how a meditative practice are things like love and kindness,
of pausing, of using a body scan,
(08:33):
of the person,
meditation, of even prayer.
The most prominent that she talks about is RAIN, this
mindfulness skill, which is stands for
recognize,
allow, investigate, and nurture
with, I guess, the step after that being acceptance and,
integration perhaps.
(08:53):
So,
you know, there's some things here. Pause and notice how you're thinking and feeling is the recognizing.
Tell yourself it's okay to think and feel and act however you are right now. This is the allowing part. Notice how your body feels as you're experiencing the moment. Ask yourself, why do I feel this way? It's investigating and nurture. Tell yourself a compassionate affirmation, words of reassurance, kindness or love, nurturing what you're feeling as well. So,
(09:17):
what I liked about is that within this book, she talked about
what happens if you're too compassionate,
if you are too mindful in a way, and where
if you're
allowing these thoughts and feelings to come up, you can also turn this into a self pity of a sort,
which, was rather interesting because I haven't found that many Buddhism
(09:40):
books in general. Typically, it'll tell you, you know, here's how you meditate, here's how you do the skill, but it doesn't talk about what happens when you take it too far because humans have a really good way of
taking things too far and
causing
their own problems by diving too deep into something. And I'll talk more about that when we get on to the author herself.
(10:01):
So I liked that she was
going over skills and techniques and concepts, but not only showcasing them, but also, hey, here's a pitfall. There's what happens if you take it too far. Now,
in terms of taking it too far,
I would label this book
in the kind of spiritual slash self improvement category.
(10:23):
And when it comes to self improvement and self healing,
it's hard to know when is enough.
Am I in healing now? Or am I in denial? Am I
ruminating on something that I should just let go, or do I need to ruminate on it more and think about it more? You know, Tara, for example, talks
about this instance where, she was trying to have a baby. She was,
(10:46):
in this,
I guess, phase of her life where she was,
she'd kind of joined a cult or a cult like group, and it's this sick meditation thing. You know, the classic cult sort of things has a teacher,
has certain areas,
where they congregate,
you know, bad mouthing or talking back to the teacher is not allowed, etcetera, etcetera.
(11:08):
And, essentially, she had this miscarriage and was was feeling that part part of this could be due to her
spending long hours meditating without water in, like, a hot desert environment.
Okay. That's probably some common sense there. And she got publicly chastised by this teacher of hers, blaming actually not
(11:28):
the physical reasons for it, but
because she was working too hard or she had too much ego or something like this. And
now it turns out, you know,
if you she would have said
at that time that she was on the right path. So certainly before that happened,
This is the right path. I'm, you know, meditating.
I'm part of this group. I've got a community.
(11:51):
I'm
following, and I'm, you know, using radical acceptance, for example.
Perhaps she might not have said that because
this wasn't a concept for her at the time,
but she would have certainly said, like, I'm doing the right things.
Now it turns out that she actually wasn't because she
had a teacher who was causing more suffering for her and her,
(12:15):
you know, attempts to alleviate the problems was actually causing more problems in her life. Yet it was through those extra problems that she was able to find radical acceptance.
And, you know, you can have this sort of
continual thing where it's like, okay, if I keep investigating this,
how far down do I go? You know, is my fear rooted in grief? Is my grief rooted in shame? Is my shame rooted in,
(12:42):
you know,
whatever,
anger?
You could see how
it could be a continual chase
to a never ending bottom of your own suffering and pain.
And
I certainly have met some people in my life who would say, you know, they've probably gone off the deep end a bit and are spending too much time
(13:03):
investigating their traumas, reliving them,
dwelling in them, ruminating on them
in a method that is not particularly healing. So, you know,
how do how do I solve this? How how can I fix this? And I actually don't know what to say with regards to that.
How Buddhism
(13:24):
can help and how this book I think is useful.
I'd say it's undoubtedly
helpful.
And this is because of the various practices of meditation,
which don't necessarily need to encompass the other claims
that
religions
and Buddhism
makes. So for example,
(13:44):
for me, I think it's rather unlikely that there is a
metaphysical omnipotent
force that exists to solve your prayers
and that reaching out to them is going to
cause them to
solve your prayers.
I don't think that that happens
in any
(14:05):
form
of atoms physically moving in the universe sort of thing.
That being said,
can reaching out to a force like that through prayer
help change things in your body, in your mind
that will then
allow you to
take different actions in the future that can help alleviate suffering or
(14:27):
even to change your own actions, which will help alleviate suffering? I think that's possible. So I don't think you need to necessarily
believe
for many of these practices to work,
for example. So, you know, the unconditional friendliness of Buddha accepting Mara,
Do you need to believe that physically happened in the universe or is a
(14:49):
metaphor
sufficient? I think the metaphor personally is sufficient,
and it's more the act of meditation
and reality
and calming your mind and accepting things that is going to help bring benefits
rather than
having to necessarily believe in x y z claim or to join a cult.
(15:11):
So,
you know, in terms of going too far,
I don't think the book really talks about that. But this is a nice step for many people who,
especially if you're of a Western context,
have yet to try meditation
or experience it
to get a taste for what it is and how it might be beneficial. So let's jump on to the author and some extra details here. Tara Brach was born in 1953,
(15:38):
American author and meditation
teacher. As I mentioned, she,
was a,
I guess, plagued by thoughts, probably the the classic, like, overthinker, if I had to describe her.
And so found that meditation was very useful, joined
a group that wasn't helpful, and then eventually founded her own center, which is
(16:02):
much more focusing on this radical acceptance and
teaching about Buddhism
and meditation. And she does this at various places,
with various other people. And we'll talk some more about them at the end as well. You know, the reason there were so many stories in this book was that these were taken from her students, I'm guessing, with names altered. So they weren't actually calling out real people.
(16:27):
And,
this is why she has gotten such a extensive look at a lot of suffering of other people as well. And this is where you could go like
over the she has many stories of herself
of struggling and suffering with her son,
and his propensity to play video games and,
(16:47):
to not to not study, for example,
and then over her partner and then over herself. You can certainly see that she's,
I guess, needed a lot of these meditative practices, but you could also wonder, like, man, maybe she has taken it too far. She's absolutely immersed in this world.
What would it be like if she just took a month off without any meditation and without diving into
(17:10):
thinking about the suffering and experiencing the suffering of other people? You know, once again, you can't take these things too far.
I connected with quite a few stories in this book.
Probably the most prominent one was this guy called Jacob,
probably not his real name, who had Alzheimer's and was a meditative
(17:31):
teacher, a public speaker himself.
And,
you know, he was meant to give this talk all about Buddhism. He was really excited about it and then had a a mind blank and suddenly found himself just, like, on a stage in front of a bunch of people with no idea how he got there, who he was, what he was doing. And so we just listed off the things that were in his mind, you know, fear. I'm shame a lot of people are looking at me.
(17:55):
And I, you know, I guess that just connects with me because of what my mother experienced. And,
there's certain stories in this book where
you can see
yourself in those people and go, Oh, yeah,
that's something that I could feel and I could,
understand.
Another one was of Eric, who was dealing with a mother who just had a stroke, had a depressed
(18:21):
wife. You could see how this stacking on of misfortunes in your own life could really lead to people having breakdowns
and
depression and even, you know, leading up to
self harm and, and things like that. So
the gripping strength of fear of health or change or wealth of others, the unknown, a lot of that just just really resonated with me.
(18:44):
Now, will I personally accept radical acceptance? Will I become divine?
I don't know. Honestly, the
the one concept, I guess, on the book that I've struggled with the most was
in all of these cases when she had these people coming to her,
this is certainly there were over, you know, a couple of week long periods, but many of the instances she was talking about, okay, this person comes in, they're dealing with this problem,
(19:09):
and she's helping guide them through a meditative practice or getting them towards radical acceptance.
Why are you feeling this? Okay. Let's just accept what is coming in.
The accept these feelings, these emotions.
What do you feel within you? What does the inner voice say to this?
What would someone who is outside of yourself recognize in these feelings? Things like that.
(19:33):
And these people would kind of all have these breakthroughs of, like,
my inner child says this. It's okay to sit with this. It's okay to do this.
And I guess the thing was that many of them seem to just
understand and solve their problems really easily by radical acceptance
and not sorry, not solve them, but to understand their problems and understand their actions
(19:56):
that they are taking in the real world because of what is happening.
And for me, that doesn't resonate with how I've managed to understand and interpret emotions over time. For me, it typically takes a much longer time
and that it's usually
months, if not years into the future where I go, Oh, okay, I can understand why
(20:19):
I was behaving in this way. It was due to
this,
you know, emotional thing that was happening in my life.
And that would sometimes be,
feeling lost
because of a lack of meaning. Sometimes this would be because of a breakup,
at times, but it'd be because of the passing of a loved one or what is happening to a loved one.
(20:42):
And so,
you know, for example, the healing
that I guess I've been doing since my mother passed away less than a year ago or almost a year ago
has been slow, gradual. And
it's not like I can look at it and pinpoint a specific thing and say, this is exactly what I was feeling. It typically takes me a lot longer time.
(21:03):
And so her style of listening out emotions, being able to figure things out, the radical acceptance
also contains
radical understanding, if you want to call it that way. And for me, the radical understanding portion,
is certainly takes a much longer time.
Nevertheless,
this is good for raising questions and perhaps
(21:25):
things that you're avoiding. So I did, you know, try out many of these meditative practices and look inside and see like, okay, what perhaps are some things I fear or I'm not confronting or that I'm pushing to the side.
If I had to pinpoint something at the moment
in this current phase of my life, it would be the,
I guess, greatest fear would be lack of finding a partner of connecting romantically with someone.
(21:50):
You know,
over the last couple of years, I've certainly felt things like, Am I unlovable?
Am I broken? You know, Am I old or ugly or a loser? Or all of these various thoughts
that have come with various intensity and stickiness, if you will.
Some periods are strong, other periods they're weak.
(22:10):
Some days you feel things, other days they don't. You know, two weeks ago, I had a bit of a rough period
due to
many kind of simultaneous things going on, including the weather, for example, where I didn't see the sun for multiple days, didn't exercise for multiple days.
Got got a little bit sick. You know, all these sorts of things can add up. And I do think that perspective
(22:34):
meditation and Buddhist understanding
helps,
with all of these things.
The funny thing, of course, is like, say I solve this problem, say I found a partner to connect with
this very instance or in the next week,
the
suffering and problems in my life would still continue on. I know this for a fact because it's happened before.
(22:55):
And instead of ruminating on that, it would be more okay, You know, now I
have a partner and there's emotional stress in my life. And then it would be
okay. You know, now there's an extra vulnerability
if I had kids because if they get sick, I would feel really bad and be stressed out about that. Much like my brother's dog at the moment has kennel cough. And, you know, it's distressing for me to see him,
(23:21):
in that in that,
in that way, in in sick and, you know, coughing up his guts and things like this. So
you're screwed,
I guess, is my my ultimate
answer to many of these things. Radical acceptance is helpful.
And I guess radical acceptance is a good strategy because you're always going to be screwed.
(23:42):
Having a half smile,
viewing life with a bit of equanimity,
pausing,
finding some calm, I guess, is all useful
techniques and tactics because
you're going to continually need them. And the thing is, they're never going to solve your problems.
Tara has meditated more than most people in their in their lives,
(24:03):
and this has not solved her problems. I bet you if you were to find her right now and ask her like, how are you going? She was probably stressed out by something. She is probably angry at someone. She is probably, you know, moody for whatever x y z reason. And
none of these are permanent solutions to finding the ever talked about Nirvana
enlightenment.
(24:26):
So let's jump onto the the final summary before getting some of the the live things here. Buddhist meditation, I think, is powerful,
and this book does a great job of highlighting examples of how you can use it and why not necessarily why it works, but how it works and who it can work for.
Many of these books have similar advice, and it is more about the
(24:48):
examples,
the framings, the stories of
small words here and there,
a way of putting something that can resonate with you and
make you see, okay, this could potentially work for me as well. This is what I have thought. This is what I have felt. Maybe this if I do this, it will help.
(25:10):
This book, I'd say, is better than most because it was specific of specifically written as a book and not just as
a discourse taken from a talk of hers and then translate into book form. No. She actually wrote this book, which is really nice.
So I found her stories compelling, realistic,
and her style to not go too deep into the wackier parts of Buddhism.
(25:32):
Great. That being said, you know, it's
wasn't particularly
relevant for me because I have read many of these books before. I have meditated before. I have done many of these things before. So overall, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. I'm giving a pretty solid six and a half out of 10 too. I'd I'd say it's worth a try out if you're interested in many of these things. Now
(25:53):
I've done book reviews on similar books on this channel before.
Bringing Home the Dharma by Jack Kornfield,
Meditations of Living and Dying. I think that was assorted
authors.
The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching by Thich Nhat Hahn. Thich Nhat, the best name in Buddhism.
So you can try out many of those.
(26:16):
I feel more calm and treat myself with other people generally better
after reading things like this,
which also leads to better decision making. So
unfortunately, as I mentioned, the effects are temporary
And the forays I've made into more sustained practices such as
yoga,
meditating every day,
(26:37):
consuming podcasts,
sometimes going to in real life places or events, Buddhist temples,
they just don't seem to hold me.
And I typically will then feel resentful that I'm spending time on something that's
boring or not useful to me. And so then I fall away from it. So I think this method of sporadic samplings,
(26:59):
of diving into Buddhism and meditation
is is helpful. And I should probably I probably do it, like, once a year. Maybe I should do it a little bit more often, once every six months, three to six months, something like that. So expect that to to pop up, I guess, a bit more into these book review channels as well, or perhaps I'll do it in other various ways in my life.
(27:19):
Now this is a value for value podcast.
I do this available, make it available any anywhere, anytime for anyone.
And,
this is both on the audio and video form as well.
And all that I this is going to be free. No sponsorships, no
book companies banging down my my doors, no authors asking me to highlight their books favorably. These are all just things that I find in my everyday life and want to help highlight and, give to you. I believe I found this book through a Tim Ferriss recommendation, actually.
(27:53):
I believe that was how this somehow made its way onto my list.
So with all of that, I just ask that you return,
some value in return for what you're getting. Time, talent, and treasure, sharing this with a friend
of hitting the like, the comment, subscribing, all those sorts of things, joining us on any of our social media platforms so you get updated at Discord as well. We talk about books in there. I'd love to hear your recommendations
(28:17):
through some talent. What do you think I would enjoy? What have you enjoyed in the past? What's your favorite book? Reach out to me and let me know. And then finally, some treasure if you want to. There is a PayPal link down below. And if you go to meand mortals podcast Com / support, it's also their website might be changing soon. So just keep keep aware of that as well. Links links down below.
(28:38):
And
finally,
this is live. I am doing this slightly later. So apologies for that. I'm a day late.
I got sick
and was doing family stuff, so I had to push it back. We do have Cole McCormick in the chat, and he said he's here to heal. When healing from trauma or grief, you need to come terms with the lessons learned and have continued peace even if the topic comes up. Finding peace after the pain is key, I think. So he's kind of agreeing with that radical acceptance portion, which
(29:07):
is true. You you accept what is and then the next part to follow is to, okay, how can I help alleviate this suffering as well? Not fighting it, but accepting it. And then then you can take the next step. So it's a daily thing for me. Cole says my meditations post dad dying has helped tremendously. I focus on feeling love, peace and gratitude around my physical heart. I sometimes do this twice a day and it helps. Beautiful, man. I love to hear that. And it's
(29:35):
certainly a very traumatic experience to go through a loved one passing away.
And it's beautiful that you're able to help
integrate that into part of your life and not fight against it.
And, you know,
doing portions of healing.
I was chatting with
a friend's mother once, and she was talking about her own mother passing, which was,
(30:00):
I think, like thirty years ago,
certainly decades ago.
And,
you know, she she was able to
talk about it without crying. But you could still see that the
the the pain was there, and sometimes these things never heal. And so accepting that is is also part of it as well. So,
thank you very much, Cole, for joining in. Thank you very much, everyone else. I will be doing these live for the next month,
(30:24):
eleven AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
When I go traveling,
it's gonna be a bit up in the air. I certainly won't be live at a consistent time because I will be in very different time zones all the time.
And how much book reviews I can actually do as well, we'll we'll see with that as well. It's gonna be pretty hectic. So,
thanks very, very much for joining in. I hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world chat for now. Kyron out. Bye.
Strategies to accept your suffering and heal yourself with compassion.
Welcome,
everyone, to another episode of the Mere Mortals
book reviews. I am your host here, Kyrin, live on the 04/03/2025.
(00:21):
And as you might surmise, this is the podcast where I achieve
transcendence.
Okay. No. Not gonna be doing any of that today, but we might find some ways to help achieve that in this book that we have here, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, Awakening the Love that Heals Fear and Shame.
So this book was published originally in 02/2003,
(00:44):
but I have the, I guess, 2023
updated version because it does mention some things like COVID in it, for example. So it certainly has been updated.
So just a word of warning that I will be talking to that. It's 450
pages about in length, and I'd say it took me probably about seven hours of reading to get through, because it is pretty dense. There's no pictures or anything in it. And the words, the writing in here actually is relatively,
(01:10):
strong. So it's a guide of various meditation and framing practices to recognize the root cause of emotional distress or suffering, if you will.
These are derived from Buddhist principles, these being the meditative practices,
and help to serve accept the current pain and suffering. It's not so much about
(01:32):
doing and implementing actions to overcome it. It's more about acceptance of of what is at the moment, hence the book, Radical Acceptance,
and really doing that fully and completely as possible. Now there are certain 13 chapters in total. I will list some of these off here. And each chapter typically begins,
(01:52):
with a story of a,
of either herself or someone that she knows
and then goes into more
of the Buddhist practices, what exactly you can find within how that Buddha Buddhist practice or meditation will help, followed by right at the end, usually a single page or two of a actual meditative practice of a guided meditation, how you can do this. So some of the chapters,
(02:17):
the sacred pause resting under the Bodhi tree, coming home to our body, the ground of radical acceptance,
opening our heart in the face of fear, the reign of compassion and applied meditation for healing and freedom,
recognizing our basic goodness, the gateway to a forgiving and loving heart, etcetera, etcetera. There is 13 of those in total. So let's jump into some of the themes and questions here. What is the reason to meditate, and what can Buddhism practices in particular
(02:43):
do to stop, alter, heal my suffering?
Now, as mentioned, Tyre's emphasis is really on the acceptance part
of understanding your problems
and of yourself and how you are helping to contribute to those problems. And then also how those problems are
are not even part of you and that the concept of yourself is kind of illusory. So it's quite a few things to to go into here. Now typical examples from the book,
(03:12):
what she starts off with, and I've found this really helpful because it is
real day to day sort of stuff. So
some examples are people who have,
have have a partner who is cheating on them or has cheated on them, and they're trying to,
you know, get their family gets back together or or to
understand what they're to do in the next situation
(03:35):
of people who are absent as a parent and their child got abused by their,
partner
partly in due to their own alcoholism and absenteeism,
if you if you wanna call it that way.
A lady who has an eating disorder that is a way of covering
up many of the insecurities that she feels in her life. And then because of her eating disorder,
(03:58):
in particular, she was overeating,
you know, she now has more insecurities about her body because of this.
We have people who have,
dying parents, for example,
combined with stressful work, combined with, you know, other things going on in their life, mon monetary problems,
and even Tara's own story about her miscarriage and betrayal by her,
(04:23):
teacher at the time. So they're all very much
instances that you're likely to find at some point in your life a suffering or a problem that you've had in your life.
And,
what can you do to help alleviate some of the emotional suffering and and,
the things that go on?
And look, in particular, the the book is about people who are looking for help
(04:48):
because of these problems that they're having. And,
you know, at many times they have talked about how they've suffered in silence
for many, many years.
And in they're looking for ways of using Buddhism and meditative practices to help
help them. And what help exactly means in this case is kind of unknown. All that's known is that they're really just suffering.
(05:12):
And it's probably more
the emotional
distress,
that's causing them the main problems.
But then that emotional distress
results in them lashing out at people,
turning inwards and, you know, suffering in silence and even physical manifestations
of of the pain,
(05:32):
such as we've seen with the, girl who overeats, for example. So
what is radical acceptance? And it's radical acceptance
is about clearly seeing the thoughts,
the emotions,
and body sensations of the moment
and
accepting them for what they are, not trying to fight them, not trying to hide them away,
sitting with them.
(05:54):
For example, some of the things that you'll hear within in within this book or that you're likely to hear are sitting with fear, labeling grief, acknowledging anger, allowing heartbreak,
recognizing guilt, breathing through shame. It's very
much letting these emotions and feelings that are within your body
and not trying to fight them, but just understanding and
(06:17):
having compassion with yourself for
what what is
in essence. And
many of the times,
it
can be rather interesting seeing these people and their thought process of what they're feeling. And typically, they'll break it down whether, you know, I'm so angry at my partner, but it's like, why are you angry at my partner?
I'm angry because he said something that made me feel insecure,
(06:41):
and that the anger is not the real issue. It's the insecurity that's the real issue. And the insecurity is rooted something deep in the past
or something like this. So,
she calls on you to find this compassion and mindfulness
to tap into radical acceptance
and
not pretend, not hide away, not
(07:02):
try and squeeze or weasel your way out of what actually is and what you're feeling, and do not add on additional guilt and burden and suffering
for what you're feeling.
And this is rather interesting because at times you can have contradictory emotions to what what you should feel or what society should feel or thinks you should feel. And
(07:24):
most of the cases works out for negative instances that she talks about in the book.
But there were a couple where she was also mentioning how
she, you know, was in a, I guess, a good period of her life. And
she was kind of smitten with a guy and was feeling these these feelings of love. And this was actually
causing her,
(07:45):
I'm not gonna say suffering, but certainly distractedness in her mind where she was fantasizing about this guy and the life that they could leave or the lust or sexual things.
And this was actually causing her some sort of emotional disturbances as well. So even things that are kind of good,
can also fall under the umbrella of using this radical acceptance to find out what it is you're feeling. Now linking this to Buddhism,
(08:11):
there are many strategies in this book that she talks about. The 13 chapters,
they're kind of roughly split into
a meditative practice that you can use.
So, for example, some of the concepts
that are in Buddhism and that
how a meditative practice are things like love and kindness,
of pausing, of using a body scan,
(08:33):
of the person,
meditation, of even prayer.
The most prominent that she talks about is RAIN, this
mindfulness skill, which is stands for
recognize,
allow, investigate, and nurture
with, I guess, the step after that being acceptance and,
integration perhaps.
(08:53):
So,
you know, there's some things here. Pause and notice how you're thinking and feeling is the recognizing.
Tell yourself it's okay to think and feel and act however you are right now. This is the allowing part. Notice how your body feels as you're experiencing the moment. Ask yourself, why do I feel this way? It's investigating and nurture. Tell yourself a compassionate affirmation, words of reassurance, kindness or love, nurturing what you're feeling as well. So,
(09:17):
what I liked about is that within this book, she talked about
what happens if you're too compassionate,
if you are too mindful in a way, and where
if you're
allowing these thoughts and feelings to come up, you can also turn this into a self pity of a sort,
which, was rather interesting because I haven't found that many Buddhism
(09:40):
books in general. Typically, it'll tell you, you know, here's how you meditate, here's how you do the skill, but it doesn't talk about what happens when you take it too far because humans have a really good way of
taking things too far and
causing
their own problems by diving too deep into something. And I'll talk more about that when we get on to the author herself.
(10:01):
So I liked that she was
going over skills and techniques and concepts, but not only showcasing them, but also, hey, here's a pitfall. There's what happens if you take it too far. Now,
in terms of taking it too far,
I would label this book
in the kind of spiritual slash self improvement category.
(10:23):
And when it comes to self improvement and self healing,
it's hard to know when is enough.
Am I in healing now? Or am I in denial? Am I
ruminating on something that I should just let go, or do I need to ruminate on it more and think about it more? You know, Tara, for example, talks
about this instance where, she was trying to have a baby. She was,
(10:46):
in this,
I guess, phase of her life where she was,
she'd kind of joined a cult or a cult like group, and it's this sick meditation thing. You know, the classic cult sort of things has a teacher,
has certain areas,
where they congregate,
you know, bad mouthing or talking back to the teacher is not allowed, etcetera, etcetera.
(11:08):
And, essentially, she had this miscarriage and was was feeling that part part of this could be due to her
spending long hours meditating without water in, like, a hot desert environment.
Okay. That's probably some common sense there. And she got publicly chastised by this teacher of hers, blaming actually not
(11:28):
the physical reasons for it, but
because she was working too hard or she had too much ego or something like this. And
now it turns out, you know,
if you she would have said
at that time that she was on the right path. So certainly before that happened,
This is the right path. I'm, you know, meditating.
I'm part of this group. I've got a community.
(11:51):
I'm
following, and I'm, you know, using radical acceptance, for example.
Perhaps she might not have said that because
this wasn't a concept for her at the time,
but she would have certainly said, like, I'm doing the right things.
Now it turns out that she actually wasn't because she
had a teacher who was causing more suffering for her and her,
(12:15):
you know, attempts to alleviate the problems was actually causing more problems in her life. Yet it was through those extra problems that she was able to find radical acceptance.
And, you know, you can have this sort of
continual thing where it's like, okay, if I keep investigating this,
how far down do I go? You know, is my fear rooted in grief? Is my grief rooted in shame? Is my shame rooted in,
(12:42):
you know,
whatever,
anger?
You could see how
it could be a continual chase
to a never ending bottom of your own suffering and pain.
And
I certainly have met some people in my life who would say, you know, they've probably gone off the deep end a bit and are spending too much time
(13:03):
investigating their traumas, reliving them,
dwelling in them, ruminating on them
in a method that is not particularly healing. So, you know,
how do how do I solve this? How how can I fix this? And I actually don't know what to say with regards to that.
How Buddhism
(13:24):
can help and how this book I think is useful.
I'd say it's undoubtedly
helpful.
And this is because of the various practices of meditation,
which don't necessarily need to encompass the other claims
that
religions
and Buddhism
makes. So for example,
(13:44):
for me, I think it's rather unlikely that there is a
metaphysical omnipotent
force that exists to solve your prayers
and that reaching out to them is going to
cause them to
solve your prayers.
I don't think that that happens
in any
(14:05):
form
of atoms physically moving in the universe sort of thing.
That being said,
can reaching out to a force like that through prayer
help change things in your body, in your mind
that will then
allow you to
take different actions in the future that can help alleviate suffering or
(14:27):
even to change your own actions, which will help alleviate suffering? I think that's possible. So I don't think you need to necessarily
believe
for many of these practices to work,
for example. So, you know, the unconditional friendliness of Buddha accepting Mara,
Do you need to believe that physically happened in the universe or is a
(14:49):
metaphor
sufficient? I think the metaphor personally is sufficient,
and it's more the act of meditation
and reality
and calming your mind and accepting things that is going to help bring benefits
rather than
having to necessarily believe in x y z claim or to join a cult.
(15:11):
So,
you know, in terms of going too far,
I don't think the book really talks about that. But this is a nice step for many people who,
especially if you're of a Western context,
have yet to try meditation
or experience it
to get a taste for what it is and how it might be beneficial. So let's jump on to the author and some extra details here. Tara Brach was born in 1953,
(15:38):
American author and meditation
teacher. As I mentioned, she,
was a,
I guess, plagued by thoughts, probably the the classic, like, overthinker, if I had to describe her.
And so found that meditation was very useful, joined
a group that wasn't helpful, and then eventually founded her own center, which is
(16:02):
much more focusing on this radical acceptance and
teaching about Buddhism
and meditation. And she does this at various places,
with various other people. And we'll talk some more about them at the end as well. You know, the reason there were so many stories in this book was that these were taken from her students, I'm guessing, with names altered. So they weren't actually calling out real people.
(16:27):
And,
this is why she has gotten such a extensive look at a lot of suffering of other people as well. And this is where you could go like
over the she has many stories of herself
of struggling and suffering with her son,
and his propensity to play video games and,
(16:47):
to not to not study, for example,
and then over her partner and then over herself. You can certainly see that she's,
I guess, needed a lot of these meditative practices, but you could also wonder, like, man, maybe she has taken it too far. She's absolutely immersed in this world.
What would it be like if she just took a month off without any meditation and without diving into
(17:10):
thinking about the suffering and experiencing the suffering of other people? You know, once again, you can't take these things too far.
I connected with quite a few stories in this book.
Probably the most prominent one was this guy called Jacob,
probably not his real name, who had Alzheimer's and was a meditative
(17:31):
teacher, a public speaker himself.
And,
you know, he was meant to give this talk all about Buddhism. He was really excited about it and then had a a mind blank and suddenly found himself just, like, on a stage in front of a bunch of people with no idea how he got there, who he was, what he was doing. And so we just listed off the things that were in his mind, you know, fear. I'm shame a lot of people are looking at me.
(17:55):
And I, you know, I guess that just connects with me because of what my mother experienced. And,
there's certain stories in this book where
you can see
yourself in those people and go, Oh, yeah,
that's something that I could feel and I could,
understand.
Another one was of Eric, who was dealing with a mother who just had a stroke, had a depressed
(18:21):
wife. You could see how this stacking on of misfortunes in your own life could really lead to people having breakdowns
and
depression and even, you know, leading up to
self harm and, and things like that. So
the gripping strength of fear of health or change or wealth of others, the unknown, a lot of that just just really resonated with me.
(18:44):
Now, will I personally accept radical acceptance? Will I become divine?
I don't know. Honestly, the
the one concept, I guess, on the book that I've struggled with the most was
in all of these cases when she had these people coming to her,
this is certainly there were over, you know, a couple of week long periods, but many of the instances she was talking about, okay, this person comes in, they're dealing with this problem,
(19:09):
and she's helping guide them through a meditative practice or getting them towards radical acceptance.
Why are you feeling this? Okay. Let's just accept what is coming in.
The accept these feelings, these emotions.
What do you feel within you? What does the inner voice say to this?
What would someone who is outside of yourself recognize in these feelings? Things like that.
(19:33):
And these people would kind of all have these breakthroughs of, like,
my inner child says this. It's okay to sit with this. It's okay to do this.
And I guess the thing was that many of them seem to just
understand and solve their problems really easily by radical acceptance
and not sorry, not solve them, but to understand their problems and understand their actions
(19:56):
that they are taking in the real world because of what is happening.
And for me, that doesn't resonate with how I've managed to understand and interpret emotions over time. For me, it typically takes a much longer time
and that it's usually
months, if not years into the future where I go, Oh, okay, I can understand why
(20:19):
I was behaving in this way. It was due to
this,
you know, emotional thing that was happening in my life.
And that would sometimes be,
feeling lost
because of a lack of meaning. Sometimes this would be because of a breakup,
at times, but it'd be because of the passing of a loved one or what is happening to a loved one.
(20:42):
And so,
you know, for example, the healing
that I guess I've been doing since my mother passed away less than a year ago or almost a year ago
has been slow, gradual. And
it's not like I can look at it and pinpoint a specific thing and say, this is exactly what I was feeling. It typically takes me a lot longer time.
(21:03):
And so her style of listening out emotions, being able to figure things out, the radical acceptance
also contains
radical understanding, if you want to call it that way. And for me, the radical understanding portion,
is certainly takes a much longer time.
Nevertheless,
this is good for raising questions and perhaps
(21:25):
things that you're avoiding. So I did, you know, try out many of these meditative practices and look inside and see like, okay, what perhaps are some things I fear or I'm not confronting or that I'm pushing to the side.
If I had to pinpoint something at the moment
in this current phase of my life, it would be the,
I guess, greatest fear would be lack of finding a partner of connecting romantically with someone.
(21:50):
You know,
over the last couple of years, I've certainly felt things like, Am I unlovable?
Am I broken? You know, Am I old or ugly or a loser? Or all of these various thoughts
that have come with various intensity and stickiness, if you will.
Some periods are strong, other periods they're weak.
(22:10):
Some days you feel things, other days they don't. You know, two weeks ago, I had a bit of a rough period
due to
many kind of simultaneous things going on, including the weather, for example, where I didn't see the sun for multiple days, didn't exercise for multiple days.
Got got a little bit sick. You know, all these sorts of things can add up. And I do think that perspective
(22:34):
meditation and Buddhist understanding
helps,
with all of these things.
The funny thing, of course, is like, say I solve this problem, say I found a partner to connect with
this very instance or in the next week,
the
suffering and problems in my life would still continue on. I know this for a fact because it's happened before.
(22:55):
And instead of ruminating on that, it would be more okay, You know, now I
have a partner and there's emotional stress in my life. And then it would be
okay. You know, now there's an extra vulnerability
if I had kids because if they get sick, I would feel really bad and be stressed out about that. Much like my brother's dog at the moment has kennel cough. And, you know, it's distressing for me to see him,
(23:21):
in that in that,
in that way, in in sick and, you know, coughing up his guts and things like this. So
you're screwed,
I guess, is my my ultimate
answer to many of these things. Radical acceptance is helpful.
And I guess radical acceptance is a good strategy because you're always going to be screwed.
(23:42):
Having a half smile,
viewing life with a bit of equanimity,
pausing,
finding some calm, I guess, is all useful
techniques and tactics because
you're going to continually need them. And the thing is, they're never going to solve your problems.
Tara has meditated more than most people in their in their lives,
(24:03):
and this has not solved her problems. I bet you if you were to find her right now and ask her like, how are you going? She was probably stressed out by something. She is probably angry at someone. She is probably, you know, moody for whatever x y z reason. And
none of these are permanent solutions to finding the ever talked about Nirvana
enlightenment.
(24:26):
So let's jump onto the the final summary before getting some of the the live things here. Buddhist meditation, I think, is powerful,
and this book does a great job of highlighting examples of how you can use it and why not necessarily why it works, but how it works and who it can work for.
Many of these books have similar advice, and it is more about the
(24:48):
examples,
the framings, the stories of
small words here and there,
a way of putting something that can resonate with you and
make you see, okay, this could potentially work for me as well. This is what I have thought. This is what I have felt. Maybe this if I do this, it will help.
(25:10):
This book, I'd say, is better than most because it was specific of specifically written as a book and not just as
a discourse taken from a talk of hers and then translate into book form. No. She actually wrote this book, which is really nice.
So I found her stories compelling, realistic,
and her style to not go too deep into the wackier parts of Buddhism.
(25:32):
Great. That being said, you know, it's
wasn't particularly
relevant for me because I have read many of these books before. I have meditated before. I have done many of these things before. So overall, Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. I'm giving a pretty solid six and a half out of 10 too. I'd I'd say it's worth a try out if you're interested in many of these things. Now
(25:53):
I've done book reviews on similar books on this channel before.
Bringing Home the Dharma by Jack Kornfield,
Meditations of Living and Dying. I think that was assorted
authors.
The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching by Thich Nhat Hahn. Thich Nhat, the best name in Buddhism.
So you can try out many of those.
(26:16):
I feel more calm and treat myself with other people generally better
after reading things like this,
which also leads to better decision making. So
unfortunately, as I mentioned, the effects are temporary
And the forays I've made into more sustained practices such as
yoga,
meditating every day,
(26:37):
consuming podcasts,
sometimes going to in real life places or events, Buddhist temples,
they just don't seem to hold me.
And I typically will then feel resentful that I'm spending time on something that's
boring or not useful to me. And so then I fall away from it. So I think this method of sporadic samplings,
(26:59):
of diving into Buddhism and meditation
is is helpful. And I should probably I probably do it, like, once a year. Maybe I should do it a little bit more often, once every six months, three to six months, something like that. So expect that to to pop up, I guess, a bit more into these book review channels as well, or perhaps I'll do it in other various ways in my life.
(27:19):
Now this is a value for value podcast.
I do this available, make it available any anywhere, anytime for anyone.
And,
this is both on the audio and video form as well.
And all that I this is going to be free. No sponsorships, no
book companies banging down my my doors, no authors asking me to highlight their books favorably. These are all just things that I find in my everyday life and want to help highlight and, give to you. I believe I found this book through a Tim Ferriss recommendation, actually.
(27:53):
I believe that was how this somehow made its way onto my list.
So with all of that, I just ask that you return,
some value in return for what you're getting. Time, talent, and treasure, sharing this with a friend
of hitting the like, the comment, subscribing, all those sorts of things, joining us on any of our social media platforms so you get updated at Discord as well. We talk about books in there. I'd love to hear your recommendations
(28:17):
through some talent. What do you think I would enjoy? What have you enjoyed in the past? What's your favorite book? Reach out to me and let me know. And then finally, some treasure if you want to. There is a PayPal link down below. And if you go to meand mortals podcast Com / support, it's also their website might be changing soon. So just keep keep aware of that as well. Links links down below.
(28:38):
And
finally,
this is live. I am doing this slightly later. So apologies for that. I'm a day late.
I got sick
and was doing family stuff, so I had to push it back. We do have Cole McCormick in the chat, and he said he's here to heal. When healing from trauma or grief, you need to come terms with the lessons learned and have continued peace even if the topic comes up. Finding peace after the pain is key, I think. So he's kind of agreeing with that radical acceptance portion, which
(29:07):
is true. You you accept what is and then the next part to follow is to, okay, how can I help alleviate this suffering as well? Not fighting it, but accepting it. And then then you can take the next step. So it's a daily thing for me. Cole says my meditations post dad dying has helped tremendously. I focus on feeling love, peace and gratitude around my physical heart. I sometimes do this twice a day and it helps. Beautiful, man. I love to hear that. And it's
(29:35):
certainly a very traumatic experience to go through a loved one passing away.
And it's beautiful that you're able to help
integrate that into part of your life and not fight against it.
And, you know,
doing portions of healing.
I was chatting with
a friend's mother once, and she was talking about her own mother passing, which was,
(30:00):
I think, like thirty years ago,
certainly decades ago.
And,
you know, she she was able to
talk about it without crying. But you could still see that the
the the pain was there, and sometimes these things never heal. And so accepting that is is also part of it as well. So,
thank you very much, Cole, for joining in. Thank you very much, everyone else. I will be doing these live for the next month,
(30:24):
eleven AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
When I go traveling,
it's gonna be a bit up in the air. I certainly won't be live at a consistent time because I will be in very different time zones all the time.
And how much book reviews I can actually do as well, we'll we'll see with that as well. It's gonna be pretty hectic. So,
thanks very, very much for joining in. I hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world chat for now. Kyron out. Bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com