Quote

Extend an act of kindness each day. No one has to know. It can be a smile, reassuring words, a small favor - without expecting something in return.

Tara Brach

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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Small
Reassuring
Words
Extend
Without
Expecting
Something
Favor
Favors
Smile
Kindness
Return

More quotes by Tara Brach

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If we're not open to losing, we're not open to loving.
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When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, Darling, I care about your suffering, a deep healing begins.
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That non-attachment gives us the freedom to be exactly who we are.
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We, like the Mother of the World, become the compassionate presence that can hold, with tenderness, the rising and passing waves of suffering.
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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.
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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
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The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.
Tara Brach
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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
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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
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Awakening self-compassion is often the greatest challenge people face on the spiritual path.
Tara Brach
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The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
Tara Brach
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Mindfulness is a pause - the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies.
Tara Brach
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Even going through the motions is a way of establishing a new relationship with our inner life that is caring and tender, versus one that is judging, distancing or ignoring. This is the beginning of being capable of intimacy with others.
Tara Brach
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Managing life from our mental control towers, we have separated ourselves from our bodies and hearts.
Tara Brach
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I speak a lot about what I call the trance of unworthiness which is really epidemic in our culture, this sense of I'm not enough, or something's wrong with me. Most of us have some level of it because our culture has all these standards (handed down through our families) of what it means to be okay.
Tara Brach
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If our hearts are ready for anything, we will spontaneously reach out when others are hurting. Living in an ethical way can attune us to the pain and needs of others, but when our hearts are open and awake, we care instinctively.
Tara Brach
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Unless we're completely awake, have a degree of that. We tense against love and hold on in a way that doesn't let it flow. When that's really strong, the key piece to freeing our hearts is self-compassion.
Tara Brach
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When desire for a certain person's attention becomes an I have to have kind of grasping, then identity gets organized around needing that and it becomes very solid and sticky. That causes suffering because we're not inhabiting the fullness of who we are, we're fixated and contracted on life being a certain way.
Tara Brach
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This is for anyone reading this who wants to explore it. Recognize the thought, Afraid of loving, then gently put your hand on your heart to send a message of kindness.
Tara Brach
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Stopping the endless pursuit of getting somewhere else is the perhaps most beautiful offering we can make to our spirit.
Tara Brach