Disclaimer:
This review is partly personal,
therefore lengthy. It was added to show the importance of the book.
RADICAL
ACCEPTANCE
By ‘Tara Brach’
The subtitle of this book, Embracing Your Life With The Heart Of A Buddha,
helps explain the two core teachings of this book: ‘embracing oneself’ & ‘through
the teaching of the Buddha’. In ten chapters and many insightful and relating
stories of her students, Brach takes you on the ultimate journey of self-disclosure
and acceptance. Through this journey, you shall find the light that rests
within you, waiting to be awakened – be awakened.
It has become so easy for us to
despise others, complain about our lives, curse our fates and worst of all,
hate ourselves for everything. That’s because we mess things up so often and
repeatedly. When we can’t seem to find a way out of this whirl pool of miseries
and frustrations, we do what comes naturally to us: we hate, we deny, we
exclude. And in this painful process, we lose the love for ourselves, and in
turn, for everyone and everything that lies in our lives.
I certainly have been through
this painfully repetitive process. Ever since I became an adult (which is just ‘turning
18’) I had to, against my will or insecurities, magically turn into a fully
capable boy who would hardly make mistakes, while at once, trying everything new
in his life. I was but awfully bad at it. While the degrees and reasons for it
may vary from person to person, for me it was specifically challenging because
I was the youngest of my four brothers in a struggling family that was still
looking for a new member to continue the support for the family, and then, to make matters worse, I had
been a made-to-feel-guilty introvert all my 18 years. Making friends, having
‘fun’, having conversations, or attending any family or staff gatherings were
nightmares for me. And I against the continuous flow of these awkward
situations, I failed repeatedly and shamefully to show any character or
composure.
Cumulatively, by 18 I already had
plenty of scorns, defeating comments from my loved ones, painful exclusions
from buzz of life to fall into the miseries of this transition into adulthood.
Moreover, I had a lot of alone time where all of these painful experiences
multiplied ten times in my head and slowly became the lens through which I
started pre-judging myself. Being terribly judged on such extroverted and
unfair terms, I had begun seeing myself as deeply incompetent, cowardly shy,
and an unlovable boy who was good at nothing. This panic and self-doubt was
visible in my life as well: in my preference to be alone, sad, moody and unconsciously repulsive,
and in the ways people treated me. I was either mercifully pitied over, or
sided and ignored for not fitting in. I didn’t know that all these horrible
psychological attachments are still a living part of me, until I read this
book. I read this book and I consciously cried, for the first time, at my own
misfortune and pain.
This book is truly a wise, tender
and deeply enlightening book. It possesses the power to go to the darkest
chambers of your heart and there, in the screaming darkness, torch a light of
acceptance and love. It works like a true therapy where it searches and finds
the darkest truths about yourself, and then gives you the courage to face them,
accept them, and most liberatingly, love them. In its wisely sequential
approach, Brach creates a loving environment where judgement is left at bay,
and where acceptance is the norm. From there, the journey begins towards the
digging and seeking of our deepest and truest selves which we haven’t been, at
all, aware of so far. It is messy, it is dark, it is vulnerable, and even haunting, as
we come to know about how cruel we have been to the very person we are, by
trying to become everyone else that we are not.
In a sense, this book arrived at
a very seasoned time for me because recently I had start becoming aware of
myself and how I function: what I think, how I decide, what I desire, how I
love and how I hate. Although the bits of awareness were there, I did however
fail to make anything out of them. This book, more than once, repeated the very
same things I was experiencing in my daily life, and also provided that much
needed guidance. My initial idea when I heard about this book, (in Tim
Ferriss’s podcast with Krista Tippett) was that it would help me start
accepting others more often. As the title of the book suggests, I thought I would
find a way to avoid having myself at conflict with others as often as I did.
And while it certainly helped me in this regard, it did so through a process
that has now become an urgent advice and emphasis of mine for everyone – that
is, accepting yourself first.
However, self-acceptance is only
an option when there is self-awareness. And let me say this now: while we may
think we know a great deal about ourselves, such as our hobbies, likes and
dislikes, friends, thoughts etc., we are in truth far from it. And even if we
begin to search for our own selves and reach a certain point of awareness, we
wouldn’t know what to do with that knowledge, and might exploit that knowledge
in different and harmful ways. Therefore this book, while it proved to be
successfully preaching for me, I am positive it would be for all its readers as
well. The impact of this book is both deeply individualistic and vastly
universal.
Let’s now talk about the ways
Brach goes about achieving to teach self-awareness, acceptance and self-love.
While it has the Buddha teaching,
spiritual meditations and body consciousness at its core, Brach also takes aid from real-life stories of her students,
spiritual poetry, insightful quotations, religions, and all in all, from the
universe itself. It is just mesmerizing how universal and vast this book is
when it comes to awakening its readers. You would hardly feel any biasness or
resistance as you read the Buddha ways, the newly and refreshing attentiveness towards
the working of your body, or the poems of Rumi and Rilke, in this uplifting and
lovingly kind book.
While being modestly sized and
unstriking in its looks, this book is one of those rare treasures that truly has
the power to help you transform your inner world. Radical Acceptance provides that crucial, urgent and immensely
important insight of knowing and accepting oneself. Once you begin on this
unending journey of self-discovery and love, it slowly becomes impossible to
hate people and events in your life – for now, you can see past the appearances
and actions to see the desire for acceptance in people, and the meaning and
order in the chaos and uncertainty of situations.
An excerpt:
“When we become the
holder of our sorrows, our old roles as judge, adversary, or victim are no longer
being fueled. In their place, we find not a new role but a courageous openness
and the capacity for genuine tenderness not only for ourselves but for others
as well.”
I cried for the whole of chapter
ten (the gateway to a forgiving and loving heart), and particularly on this line, I was sobbing with all my heart: "Amy you are a good person. I hope YOU can
let yourself trust this." I now know, that like Amy, I have been too hard on
myself, and that it is okay to love me as I am, even though I had been forced
to believe the opposite all my life. Lastly, I'd say that it is pretty hard to convince someone,
especially me, that only one book can change your life - but if you’d ask me
for such a book right now, my instinctive answer would be: Radical Acceptance.
My praise for the book:
Therapeutic,
lovingly kind, and wholly enlightening,
If
you’re looking for a book that can change your life: let this be the one.
Ratings: 5/5
*****
A review by: Ejaz Hussain
December 9, 2019