Tara Brach Quotes

‘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, it’s our own true nature.’ – Tara Brach

‘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

‘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

‘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

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

‘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

‘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

‘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

‘There is so much division in this world. So what is really the path of healing? It can begin in this moment, by embracing the life that’s here.’ – Tara Brach

‘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