Radical Compassion by Tara Brach: A book review

by Dr Helen Correia

It’s interesting to read a book on a topic I have been referring to in practice for some time. So, in picking up Radical Compassion by Tara Brach, it was helpful to bring a beginner’s mind to the reading, to step back from a practice I thought I knew and open up to the wisdom behind the practice. Tara Brach is an internationally renowned meditation teacher, author, and clinical psychologist who for decades has been supporting the integration of meditation-based practices in psychotherapy. She also founded the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC in 1998, and together with Jack Kornfield runs courses internationally in mindfulness and compassion, including a Meditation Teacher Certification Program. 

In Radical Compassion, Tara Brach leads us through some steppingstones to compassion through her version of RAIN
Recognise what is happening
Allow life to be just as it is
Investigate with a gentle curious attention
Nurture with loving presence

I have always found this a very accessible practice - for clients and myself in moments of suffering when emotions are high. The easy to remember RAIN practice is a step-by-step guide that lays out a path towards compassion, where we can apply the wisdom of our experience in a way that helps the moment of difficult experiences to flow and ease. 

I have found it most comforting in my darkest moments of grief. I Recognise the heartache, turning towards it with courage to notice how I experience it in mind and body. I breathe into the experience of the present moment, letting go of the struggle and Allow the tears to flow in their own rhythm. I tune in and listen with wisdom and understanding, gently Investigating as my heart tells me how my grief defines what I value and what I need. I respond to my experience with warmth, Nurturing with gratitude what I have gained as much as grieve what I have lost. 

In those moments, RAIN brings together the history of compassion that my mind and body have learned. 

Radical Compassion is divided into three parts. Part 1 of the book walks us through the practice, acknowledging the traps and resistances we can get caught in as we bring awareness to our moments of struggle. Self-reflective questions are weaved throughout the book, to support insight, understanding, wisdom, trust, and providing comforting responses to questions that perhaps many of us have asked ourselves at some point (such as “How do I know if I’m deluding myself about my wise or future self?”).

Part 2 steers us towards our difficult emotions and experiences, recognising that “the beginning of freedom is to bring healing attention to our shame” and awakening us from the grip of fear. Here there are familiar practices of nurturing the seeds of feeling safe through body and breath, compassionate words, and imagery practices. Radical Compassion is not structured as a manual or workbook, the style is more an experiential narrative of Tara Brach’s use of RAIN, with regular invitations to apply and engage in different practices. I appreciated the personal, student, and client accounts that brought these practices to life, as I explored the many ways I could use RAIN. 

Part 3 invites us to extend the RAIN practice to our relationships, and this was where the chapters resonated most.  The book was first released just before the pandemic became global and the themes are salient in a world that seems increasingly defined by division. The RAIN practice is explored through navigating trickier relational issues such as healthy anger versus the trance of blame, and how our mind in threat can dehumanise and turn people into “Unreal Others”. It explores implicit biases and racial divides and how they can limit our compassion. The RAIN practice helps to bring an understanding as to why we hold tightly to blame and makes salient the gift of forgiveness and the steps towards it. It invites us to recognise the humanity in others and through compassion allow another to become “real” to us. One chapter in Part 3 tunes our practice to seeing the basic goodness in others and in ourselves, to transcend bias. I feel we need to remember this now more than ever. 

If you are new to the RAIN practice, or to compassion, the book is a simple yet powerful entry into how to be with ourselves in times of pain, difficulty, struggle and how to learn from what we notice and tend to ourselves in those moments. If you are a seasoned mindfulness and compassion practitioner, some parts will feel familiar. Yet there are still opportunities to extend our RAIN practice, to step out of our busy lives and cravings to discover our deepest longings, to investigate “What matters most in this life?”. 

Tara Brach’s website has a range of resources including a sample of the book (Chapter One) and you can request a study guide to help explore the practice. You can listen to a brief RAIN practice (12 min) or explore further practices at https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/

This article originally appeared in the CMA newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.