This is a curated selection of Tara Brach quotes (primarily sourced from publicly available videos, and personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Tara Brach’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Trance & Suffering Quotes
- Thinking & Feeling Quotes
- Awareness & Acceptance Quotes
- Witness & Waking Up Quotes
25 Tara Brach Quotes on Trance, Awakening, & More
Tara Brach Quotes on Trance & Suffering
“The key delusions in all humans: this dream or trance that we’re a separate self, that something’s missing, that we’re not whole—and that the spiritual freedom we long for is down the road or in the future out there.” — Tara Brach
“We were all subjected to conditioning that created, to different degrees, self and trance—that made us feel like we were disconnected, we’re separate, apart from the rest of the living world, and to different degrees not okay.” — Tara Brach
“The undercurrent of this trance is feeling that something’s missing in our lives, that something’s wrong with how we’re living.” — Tara Brach
“Suffering is really awareness’ way of letting us know there is a blockage. That invitation to let go is an expression of love because letting go is freeing.” — Tara Brach
“Suffering, this feeling of ‘this doesn’t feel good’, is often what nudges us to let go. It’s like we realize it’s more painful to hold on than to go through the process of letting go.” — Tara Brach
“Suffering is when we’re exclusively identified with the waves and forget the ocean.” — Tara Brach
Tara Brach Quotes on Thinking & Feeling
“To the degree that we suffer, we are believing thoughts that are not true, and we are caught in some kind of reactive looping that is keeping us identified with something that is smaller than the truth of who we are.” — Tara Brach
“Recognize thinking, and when you’re caught in a thought, let go and open back into full presence … To catch the thought-patterns is often a powerful way to start de-conditioning the looping.” — Tara Brach
“We think we have our own views, but we’re not thinking our own thoughts. We’re thinking society’s thoughts.” — Tara Brach
“Please, don’t believe your thoughts. Please, just pause and come back into presence. Please, remember love.” — Tara Brach
“Rather than living inside thoughts, you are aware that they are happening. The point isn’t to get rid of thoughts; just know that they are there so that you don’t mistake them for reality.” — Tara Brach
“Jill Bolte Taylor described how emotions last for about 1.5 minutes. But if thoughts are there, if you’re lost in thoughts, then the emotions become a mood.” — Tara Brach
Tara Brach Quotes on Awareness & Acceptance
“It’s easy to think of our lives and the spiritual path as going somewhere, trying to get somewhere different, but the path is really learning to let go of whatever is keeping us from the presence that’s right here now.” — Tara Brach
“This is the real power and freedom of mindfulness: that we develop this capacity to recognize what’s happening and allow it, let it be.” — Tara Brach
“As Carl Rogers put it, ‘It wasn’t until I accepted myself just as I was that I was free to change.’ In other words, the prerequisite for true transformation and healing is this radical acceptance, this presence and kindness, with what’s right here.” — Tara Brach
“What we’re accepting is the life that’s right here … We’re embracing the lived experience. What happens as we do that is the sense of separate self actually dissolves. The freedom that we experience on the other end of truly accepting the life that’s here is we discover that we’re way beyond any story we had of ourselves.” — Tara Brach
“The path to realizing who we are and living from that freedom … is learning to bring radical acceptance and unconditional compassionate presence to the experience of the moment.” — Tara Brach
“No matter how right we think we are that something should be different, it’s an argument with the reality of the moment.” — Tara Brach
“Rather than being attached to the wave—trying to control the wave or being possessed by the wave—in a moment of mindfulness, we become the ocean relating to the wave.” — Tara Brach
Tara Brach Quotes on the Witness & Waking Up
“A very key inquiry on the spiritual path in most spiritual traditions is that question, ‘Who am I really?’” — Tara Brach
“The ‘backward step’ is shifting from focusing on the object—which includes focusing on our self-object—to sensing the awareness itself.” — Tara Brach
“The shift is that we actually move from the unworthy self to that kind of compassionate presence that is witnessing and with the unworthy self. That shift is the movement towards freedom.” — Tara Brach
“No matter what your level of experience, you can trust that you’ll take what most serves your awakening awareness.” — Tara Brach
“Sometimes I’ll imagine that I have no head—because that’s a common place to locate the self—and it’s just space that’s experiencing what’s happening.” — Tara Brach
“I’m aware of this sensation … Find the ‘I’ who’s aware of the sensation, that ‘I’ that’s witnessing the sensation.” — Tara Brach
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