Dear Helcat:

The Four Noble Truths are the heart of all Buddhist traditions and the basis of the Buddhist framework. Much of the following is my understanding, my words: of the Four Noble Truths, the First points to the problem: suffering and dissatisfaction, the Second points to the cause: attachment and desire, the Third points to the solution: accepting everything that we experience inside our brain and body.

Radical Acceptance is a term in psychotherapy with a close connection to the Third Noble Truth. Radical Acceptance does not mean accepting harmful behavior, either from ourselves or from anyone else.

It is the practice of being aware of what we are experiencing in our minds (brains) and bodies, positive or negative, and welcoming it, embracing it, instead of resisting it, tensing up our muscles and pushing it away.

It means not shying away from sorrow or pain. It means recognizing our thoughts and feelings without negatively judging ourselves for them or feeling forced to act upon them. When noticing a thought/ feeling/ intent/ desire that we dislike, acknowledge the thought, feeling etc., compassionately (instead of judgmentally), while not indulging in a behavior that we would disapprove of. It is about honoring what we experience mentally and emotionally.

Attachment can take the form of the desire to have something, or the desire to be free of something that one has but does not want, e.g., pain and disability. You wrote: “I still have a habit of an excessive anxiety response to small issues” – according to the above, the solution to your suffering (excessive anxiety) is to stop wanting to be free of it. In other words, to radically accept it, one moment at a time, and again and again.

Radically accepting our distressful experiences will, in most cases, lessen the distress because it puts us in the natural state of flow, instead of in the unnatural state of being stuck (stuck in the distressful experience).

The Buddhist principle of no-self (annata) is helpful as well in lowering anxiety because it helps us to take ourselves and our inner experiences less seriously. Each person normally thinks of himself/ herself as a separate, solid, independent self: a separate body, male or female, of a certain age and looks with one own’s thoughts, feelings, problems, dreams and desires, etc., a special and unique entity. But reality is that the physical and mental phenomena that exist in my physical body also exist in every one of billions of people all over the world.

There is a universal sea of the rising and falling of physical and mental human experiences, and I am just a drop in that huge sea. I am not the sea; I am a drop in it. Away from the sea, a drop cannot exist (you cannot hold a drop in your hand) because it is not independent.

I do not have an identity that is separate from the sea.

I remember that I used to think, after feeling unusually calm and at peace, following gaining new insight into my childhood, that I will always feel calm, and then, when I got very anxious or depressed again, I thought that something went terribly wrong, as in… what did I do wrong, where have I failed, why did I not remain calm. It was faulty thinking based on the non-reality of a solid, separate, permanent self. All along I was a liquid drop in a liquid sea that is always in a state of change.

The Buddha taught that everything is in constant change, things coming into being and ceasing to be, nothing lasts. There is no solid, fixed nature to any experience. The way to as much peace as is possible to experience in any one time, is to radically accept this reality, repeatedly, every day.

I want to close with two of the eight guidelines of the Eightfold path laid out in the Fourth Noble Truth:

# 3 is Right Speech: refraining from pointless and harmful talk, speaking kindly and courteously to all.

#4 is Right Action: seeing to it that our deeds are peaceable, well-meaning, kind, compassionate and pure.

anita