Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha

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Life changing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 24, 2022

This book helped me love myself in a way that I hadn't since I was a child, if ever before.

2 people found this helpful

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Mr. N. J. Horne

Good idea but a hard read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 24, 2022

The idea behind this book is compelling and I’d like to give it a go. However I found the book itself, and this may be more a reflection on the way my brain is wired than in this author, rather hard going. I should see if she has some videos to watch or podcasts to listen to as I may find them more approachable. A couple of the specific meditations are useful, though I still prefer those from the UCLA program.

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From the United States

Mr. N. J. Horne

Good idea but a hard read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 24, 2022

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One person found this helpful

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Alex O

Like a lot of folks

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 7, 2016

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To some degree, I think what you get out of this book depends on what issues you are dealing with and what brought you to the book. Like a lot of folks, I heard about Tara from Tim Ferris's podcast. I enjoyed her episode and picked up the book mostly out of curiosity. I've been meditating for about a year and have been curious about ways to try and practice greater mindfulness in my everyday life. Tara's book does offer some insight into those areas, but the primary focus of the book is more directly aimed at those suffering from some rather specific sets of emotional crises. Now, I'm not saying I'm perfect and don't have my own neuroses, but reading through the book, I rarely felt like the specific examples really applied to my life. In general, each chapter is based around a couple of extended stories about clients who Tara has worked with. I hate to sound too cynical, but after a while, they all start to blend into a very melodramatic, Freudian miasma of self-hate, childhood trauma, and parental resentment. In the end, almost every case involves Tara talking her client into a sort of hypnotic state and then the client realizing that st some point she was repressing some sort of horrible abuse fostered upon her by her parents when she was a child. Once Tara makes them realize that the abuse is not their fault, and they just need to accept the pain, they are magically cured. Never really having much in the way of self-hate, nor (to the best of my knowledge) ever having been abused by a family member as a child, all of the chapters seemed rather far from my own life. Furthermore, the way they all seemed to follow the same script seemed a bit too hard to believe. That said, if you do struggle with self-hatred due to repressed memories of child abuse, well, maybe this is the exact book you need. My other big qualm is that she never really fleshes out some of the philosophical difficulties with her idea of acceptance. It's all well and good to say that if the violent alcoholic who is forever remorseful about his alcoholism and violent behavior would just accept it and stop blaming himself then...well...what exactly? In Tara's world he'll magically stop being a violent alcoholic. But what if he simply makes peace with it and now behaves the same but without any guilt? For me, there were a few nuggets of wisdom in here, but as a whole, I found her basic notion underdeveloped and her examples to be a bit too perfectly tailored to support her central thesis to be believable.

128 people found this helpful

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nancyshopper

Repetitive

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 22, 2022

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The concept of body/mind in this is good. The meditations are helpful. However, about mid-book she starts to repeat herself. All I got from this was some ideas about body relaxation and some meditations.

One person found this helpful

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Cheryl Adams

Repetitive phrasing.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 26, 2022

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I enjoy using Tara Brach’s meditations on youtube and my sister recommended this book. But, I found she kept saying the same thing, just phrasing it differently. It was a good read but I was disappointed in the content.

One person found this helpful

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Heather Schwartz

A Great Book for Learning Meditation; Not So Good for Psychotherapy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 18, 2012

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Long-time mediation teacher and psychologist, Dr. Tara Brach writes with care and love about the practice and understanding of Vipassana meditation, a practice devoted to inquiring about and experiencing sensations in the body.

She writes beautifully of the meditation processes, but what is missing of her case studies and from her work as a psychologist is an acknowledgement of the interpersonal difficulties and the validation of appropriate reactions to emotional abuse.

Her style focuses exclusively on the within while ignoring the between. By between, I mean the connection between herself and others, including her clients and her clients and their often abusive family members. Rather, her focus is only on how the clients experience their external worlds from the inside. She leaves her clients alone with their experiences and instead encourages them to go within to find strength.

As a psychologist, myself, I feel this perspective is lacking, particularly given the recent neuroscience work showing that we are hardwired to connect with others and receive strength from our connections outside as well as inside. It is these connections outside of us, as well as how they are experienced inside that make us who we are. It is not enough, Dr. Brach, to simply acknowledge and work through issues on the inside. This is lovely, but it is not enough.

If you are looking for a book that is not a psychotherapy primer, but is instead an incredible journey into the how and why to meditate, I highly recommend Radical Acceptance.

38 people found this helpful

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Hector Orta

I am not new to Buddhism, that is why this book blew my away ... miserably and painfully ... ouch !!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 24, 2016

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This is just full of snobbish remarks, overly pretentious and just downright egocentric, to the extreme. With a totally misleading title, this book is not compassionate, full of love or kind in any way; chapter after chapter Mrs. Brach slips into her superhero tights as a psychologist and saves the world, Jesus !!! and forgive me for being so blasphemous, I just got so tired of the authors overblown ego that in order to try to make it through the book completely I had to put it down several times, and still have not been able to finish the darn thing. I just do not get Mrs. Brach attitude and exaggerated self-pompousness since she claims to be a seasoned Buddhist and experienced meditator. Well, back to the book; If there is some pinch of value on this one, it's to some degree on the meditations after each chapter, and not all of them - because she even managed to taint some of them, ... you should not try this without the guidance of a trained therapist ... what a load of ..., well.

Mrs. Brach, let me clear this out for you, western psychology can very well be compared to the wisdom that astrology and its horoscopes has to offer us, while the psychology contained implicitly within Buddhist teachings and practices can very well be compared to mighty astrophysics and hard cosmology. I used the "mighty" adjective to throw back at you some of the swank that you so openly filled your book with.

Everyone, if your looking for a truly compassionate book, a book that effortlessly adheres more firmly to the true teachings of Buddhism; a book that really takes you by the hand with care, love and depth, get your hands of Mary O'Malleys "What's in the way is the Way". Both books are supposed to be about the same principle, unfortunately Radical Acceptance is a clear example of a well conceived idea ruined by the authors attitude and clearly a very condescending editor.

42 people found this helpful

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Nitzan

I got a used book while I ordered a new one.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 3, 2022

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It’s very inconvenient because the book is massively marked. I’ll need to buy a new one unfortunately. (Of course, my review doesn’t refer to the actual content of the book).

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Amazon Customer

Triggering

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 13, 2015

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I am an individual suffering from GAD and heard of Dr. Brach through DBT. I was extremely excited to get this book. I enjoyed her perspective and outlook. I thought her concepts were amazing. Then I became extremely triggered by several things in this book particularly around the half way point. I had to put the book down and I will not be picking it up again. I understand confronting raw feelings as they are but for instance, the women in her session that confronted the memories of her childhood abuse... I am glad it worked for this woman however, trying to experience those feelings can be extremely traumatizing. (and they were). I kind of wish there was a warning on the book. I think this book might be great for a therapist but not a patient in the midst of their journey.

20 people found this helpful

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greatpenguini

Sadly Disappointed

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2015

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I really wanted to like this book. But it soon became painful to read for a couple of reasons. The first was that the entire book seems to be written in the "language", or perhaps lingo is a better word, of Buddhism. And that's fine if you are well schooled in Buddhism. But I was under the impression this was a book for people looking for a way into this way of thought. I had to read every second or third sentence several times to try and make sense of what it was the author was trying to tell me.

The other aspect of this book I struggled with is that it soon began to feel like just another self-help book written by some "guru" in their field. Ms Brach presented too many lessons she was trying to impart by describing a person who came to her, at some retreat she was conducting, with some terrible problem that she was able to completely eradicate for this person by imparting to them some bit of wisdom. She never claimed to be the author or originator of the wisdom she shared with these people. Nonetheless it began to feel very self congratulatory after about the 10th or 12th example she shared.

25 people found this helpful

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Fred ForbesTop Contributor: Photography

More my failing than the authors ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 27, 2013

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...led to this lower rating than most of the people reviewing this book. I have just finished an introduction to the topic of mindfulness and may have jumped into this one too soon. The book is well organized and contains some extremely detailed revelations related to the many forms of suffering that many endure. She stresses the "radical acceptance" of these sufferings as a means to deal with the problem. I began this book to appreciate the thoughts and feelings of friends who are feeling less than worthy. While it did increase my empathy for their suffering, it made me glad that I don't have to deal with those issues and certainly hope that I have never been responsible for unknowingly inflicting them. The mind is a far more fragile creation than many realize.

6 people found this helpful

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