"Yes-and-ness" Outshines "Radical Acceptance"

Eastern Wisdom Marries with Western Will

Tara Brach’s Buddhism-inspired practice of Radical Acceptance—resolutely accepting reality as it is, without wishing it were different, regardless of the situation—is a fantastic philosophy for about 95% of human experience, sure. But it’s a terrible heuristic when that other 5% shows up. 

Because yes, pain is inevitable and accepting pain has the potential to nix suffering caused by resistance or attachment. In a lecture, Brach quotes a Buddhist Nun who attempts, in every circumstance, to address the universe with: “Thank you for this experience, I have no complaints.” 

We know intuitively that those words can’t be rightly applied to every circumstance. 

That 5% or more of horrifying edge-cases calls for something else: it calls for “yes-and-ness.”

We can think of yes-and-ness as the single word that summarizes the Serenity Prayer. It’s the requisite serenity to accept what can’t be changed, and simultaneously, the courage to exert our will and agency to change that which is within our influence. 

The way it’s often presented, Eastern mysticism focuses on serenity, equanimity, surrender, acceptance, and the ego-death that is implied in the Ram Dass quote, “The Great Way is not difficult for he who holds no preference.” 

Opinions are mixed and it might actually run counter to the original intentions of the spiritual luminaries who delivered these teachings, but in the Western circles colonized by these Eastern ideas, an emphasis is placed on letting go of your desires. Instead, the focus is on serving structures greater than yourself. The way they talk about Eastern cultures being centered more on the collective rather than the individual. Centered on We rather than I.

Meanwhile, Western occultism can be characterized as the opposite. There’s an emphasis on exerting your Will on your surroundings. Creating sigils, working spells, binding servitors, banishing unwanted influences. Engaging in rituals to master your own mind, attract or manifest your desires, and generally bend reality. As Crowley said, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

In this massive oversimplification, the East represents Receptivity, Divine Feminine, Plural, We and in other words, the “yes” of yes-and-ness. Meanwhile the West covers Agency, Divine Masculine, Singular, I, and of course, the “and”. 

The “-ness” is a posture of liminal vacillation between the two, never becoming dogmatic about embodying one over the other. It’s a disposition to being open to spontaneously choosing to tilt focus more heavily on “yes” or “and” as each situation demands. 

And often, it means being flexible enough to bring both.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. A Japanese woodblock print that I hope can symbolize the balance between acceptance (the boat riding the massive wave) and agency (the determination to navigate through it).

A Possibly Flawed Translation of Eastern “Acceptance”

Radical Acceptance is tricky. Like many newcomers to the Buddhist slash New Age scenes, until I realized they were actually advocating for “yes-and-ness,” I balked at the assertion that every moment is perfect as is.

Perhaps because of cynical people intentionally misinterpreting New Ageism, flattening it into a one-dimensional parody, Western Buddhist advocates like podcaster, Duncan Trussell, feel the need to caveat Radical Acceptance for situations like rape and robbery. They ask, “Where do you draw the line?” Clearly you shouldn’t surrender to the situation if you’re stuck in a violent abusive relationship. What about a boss that yells at you? Or even simpler: what about a refused raise? 

I believe this is a misunderstanding. 

Ordinally, Radical Acceptance is closer to the “giving up” that “surrender” implies than is common in the ethos of macho patriarchal Western culture, where our heroes often stand up, sock the bad guy in the jaw, and save the day. 

Compared to that, Radical Acceptance is more feminine and receptive, but ultimately, it’s not supposed to be absolute: I doubt very much that Brach would say not to stand up to your abuser. 

Buddhists tend to be more comfortable with paradox: everything is perfect, and we need to fight to make it better. 

The maxim is meant to imply something more like “yes-and-ness” than newbies and critics realize, but the connotations of the choice in translation do lend themselves to confusion. Thus the pitch for a new term.

The confusion arises in what it means to "accept" something. The English connotation of "putting up with" a situation, is probably not intended to be ubiquitously attached to “acceptance.” 

It seems Brach and others are actually advising, in part, that we simply acknowledge a moment’s existence.

As RamDev Dale Borglum says in a different podcast with Trussell, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s assertion that “this is hopeless,” doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no hope that a situation might change or improve over time. It might not even mean that enlightenment is impossible or that Nirvana is unattainable. 

It just means that right here, right now, there is no hope for this moment to be any less painful.

Language shares some of the blame for this confusion. Radical acceptance is often mentioned in the same breath as "surrender" and to many, it connotes "consent." The US is a country that associates surrender with weakness. With throwing in the towel and giving up. 

(Which Rocky never did of course, regardless of how bloody and broken he got.)

Maybe thanks to software Terms and Conditions, “accept” feels almost interchangeable with “submit.” Tech giants covertly reinforce our submissive relationship to them with that word; it makes sense that we’d have difficulty with acceptance if we relate it to submitting to things that happen to us. 

Where is the agency? The control?

It might be a mistranslation. It might also be a willful reimagining of Buddha’s teachings that was intended to justify oppressive systems of class structure. It can be argued that Eastern philosophy is tainted by its historical use to urge acceptance of one’s place in society, no matter how low and degrading. Should the poor and oppressed really accept their fate and not strive for social change? Hard to argue in favor of passive acceptance of injustice and inequality.

Despite these criticisms, an appropriately nuanced understanding of Radical Acceptance has merit. 

Like any working model of how to act, it has limitations, but when it comes to accepting inclement weather or traffic, you’ll certainly reduce stress and boost resilience. Plus, accepting your emotions, thoughts, and feelings—as opposed to futilely attempting to suppress or control them—creates the conditions to express those aspects of your personality in a healthy, effective way. 

It tends to be that when we pretend something isn’t happening or when we bypass our difficult emotions with spiritual platitudes that our ability to act in accordance with our values and intentions is compromised. The same way that someone walking across a sidewalk covered in frogs is more likely to step on one if they are pretending the frogs don’t exist. Noisy, icky, potentially even deadly—at least for the frog.

Still, we could possibly benefit from a less loaded word to describe the concept of Radical Acceptance. One that indicates recognition of reality without either pretending that something isn't happening or wishing that it were different, but also without consenting to or "putting up with" the situation.

Flawed New Age Radical Responsibility

Swing too far in the other direction and you get in trouble too, though. There is a recurrent thread in New Age philosophy that consent is the ultimate arbiter of experience. It takes a real bastard to say that to someone grieving or in the midst of oppressive circumstances: “Remember, you are responsible for creating your reality!” or “Don’t focus on the negative of your cat dying, your mind manifests experience!” or “Whether you believe you can [escape wage slavery], or believe you can’t, you’re correct!”

There are certainly those who derive solace and empowerment in the theories of causative mental attitudes, the New Thought, the Law of Attraction, or The Secret. There are plenty who find some comfort in the idea they have signed “soul contracts” and agreed before they incarnated to go through specific traumas and deficiencies in order to tick off boxes burning karma for soul-level godhood-actualization.

Quintessential New Age medium and Liminal Trickster Mystic, Paul Selig channels Guides who propose a philosophy of consent as a fundamental aspect of reality and of human experience. According to the Guides, everything that happens in our lives is a result of our consent, whether conscious or unconscious. The Guides argue that when we give our consent to negative experiences or circumstances or even institutions like banks or war, we empower them and make them a part of our reality.

The Guides would say that “nothing operates without your consent” in their characteristically confident and unequivocal way. But to operate at that level of certainty, without any nuance at all, is a bit like madness. 

They use an example frequently: you consent to know a bank as a bank and so the bank exists. Granted, banks are a social construct. If enough people agreed to stop recognizing the authority of fiat currency, banks would just be buildings with people in them. But my solo mental rebellion is unlikely to change objective reality. 

This is a radical interpretation of mind causality—the theory that we create the universe with our thoughts. I wonder whether it might be another example of a misinterpretation of mysticism. 

We may not configure matter and drive events with our minds, but most psychologists will grant that we only interact with our projections:

• I don’t know fellow Node, jt; I know my idea of jt

• But that doesn't mean I create jt

• I just create my idea of jt

I think it's fun to play with how much you can get away with private definitions of publicly agreed on concepts. 

If I create an idea of student loan debt that involves never having to pay it back, at what point does consensus reality clash with and punish me for that delusion? If the winds continue to blow toward debt forgiveness, maybe never? That's the fun.

The Guides say, "The only power that anyone has over you is the power you give away." They suggest we can choose to allow agents and events to impact us and shape our reality, and that the key to creating a positive life is to be intentional and mindful about what we give our consent to.

Although it has the Western Hermetic slant of the power of Will, when the Guides assert our experience of reality is a direct reflection of our state of our mind, it is reminiscent of the arguments of Buddhists summarized above. There’s something familiar about the suggestion that the mind is the primary cause of our experiences and that our external circumstances can be reduced to external manifestations of our internal reality. 

In his Yoga Sutra’s, Patanjali says “Complete mastery over the modifications of the mind is called yoga.” Mental modifications, which might also be translated to “projections of the internal state onto external circumstances,” must be stilled for the bliss of samadhi.

Taken literally, however, Selig’s Guides’ promotion of the importance of consent is radical. Do we really want to believe, as Dean Spade critiques, that colonized peoples consented to their exploitation on a Soul level? Is anyone crazy enough to say that to a grieving mother? The sad answer is yes, people really are that callous. But even if it’s true and swallowing it is helpful, it’s violence to force that pill into the mouth of someone actively suffering.

Selig says you can change it. Brach is often interpreted as saying, "give up. It is what it is."

There's a marriage of these two ideas that is more moderate and it’s born simply by choosing a different phrase for "accept."

Yes-and-ness, a Middle Way

Grant me the courage to change the things I can.
The serenity to accept the things I can't.
And the wisdom to know the difference.

I think that's what we’re looking for: the single word that summarizes the serenity prayer. 

You may have gathered that my pitch is for “Yes-and-ness.” 

Made famous by improv, the phrase "yes, and" encourages performers to build off each other's ideas. When you stumble blindly onto the stage and your comic troop partner says, “Why did Godzilla have to attack on the day before I retire?” you don’t respond, “No no no, I’ve got a better idea: you’re my highschool classmate and we’re nervous about PE later today.” 

You can’t build something together when you start off fundamentally denying the reality you’ve just walked into. 

You’re better off saying, “Yeah, and that vacation is going to have to wait; he’s coming this way!” Yes, you’re retiring and yes, Godzilla is attacking, and he’s coming this way.

Actually, sometimes improv isn’t that straight forward. Confronted by the same scene you could also roll your eyes and say, “Yeah, Murphy, I’m sure a giant, irradiated lizard is the only thing stopping you from retiring at 65 with no savings and no pension in this economy.” You’ve still agreed to the fundamental reality, but you’re challenging an aspect of what your partner said in a way that might just leave room for humor. 

Similarly, "yes-and-ness", encourages action on the knowledge that we’re meant to work with our experiences, rather than against them, while also asserting agency in our own framing and reaction.

When faced with crappy situations that bum me out, rather than trying to suppress or ignore my challenging emotions, I’ve been leading with "yes, and.” 

Yes, it’s a grim fact of reality that the circumstances of this moment can’t be improved from inside it. I accept reality as it is without grasping or aversion.

Yes, it’s “hopeless” to try to willfully change my emotional reaction. I accept my feelings without judgment or recrimination.

Yes, I may even have pre-agreed to this experience in order to learn a vital lesson during this incarnation. This trauma may be the exact thing that allows my soul to matriculate from reincarnating into chrysalis after chrysalis of mere matter and take flight into the infinite oneness of pure being.

AND none of that fucking matters to me right now because I have to do something to improve my situation. I will fight with every fiber. I will claw reality’s eyes out. I will flip over a cop car. Something has to change. 

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.” (Emphasis mine.)

Chapter 2, Verse 47 – Bhagavad Gita 

As Krishna says to Arjuna, you may not end up influencing your situation, but you have a right and responsibility to try. Can you accept a moment can’t be any other way while simultaneously showing you know your worth, standing up for yourself, upholding healthy boundaries, and generally ensuring the base layers of your Maslow pyramid are adequately met?

What changes when you approach a challenge with “Yes-and-ness?”