There is a most beautiful and sacred word in the spiritual lexicon. Many have not heard it: it is Tathata. Tathata translates as “acceptance” but it is far more than this because it must be interpreted beyond the mundane meaning of words. It has a spiritual connotation that must be felt and experienced to understand it.
When we say we accept something – a situation, a person, or a flaw – we typically do not mean we fully accept it; we usually mean that we tolerate it. And tolerance comes in many shapes and sizes.
When we use language we use words very loosely, like the word “love”. We may say “I love that shirt”, but do we really love it? We may say we love a person, but to what depth do we really love that person?
Love is a totality, it is not a partial phenomenon. Either you love fully or you do not love at all. With the word Tathata it is just like true love: total acceptance. Not partway, not semi, not pseudo acceptance but entire wholehearted acceptance.
But what is it that we are to accept? Life, as it is.
Life is joy. Life is tragedy. Life is pleasure. And life is pain. It is logical to accept the good, for who would reject the enjoyable things in life? But it seems very illogical to accept the bad, for who wants to accept tragedy, pain, and sorrow? However, this is what gives the word its spiritual potency.
True spiritual power comes from acceptance. If you think about it, what power is there in accepting only the good? None, because when the bad comes what will happen to your inner peace? It will crumble like a castle made of sand.
Life ebbs and flows, like the waves of the ocean, and sooner or later the tide will turn and wash away your inner peace if you are not spiritually prepared. Power, in a spiritual sense, arrives when you can whether the storms of life and never be defeated.
Tathata is mastery of self and mastery of consciousness. The spiritual potency of tathata says, “Oh, Divine Creator, you can bring me whatever challenges you like, but I will not be shaken. I shall remain steadfast in my love of You and my love of life itself. All that I experience are your generous gifts.”
The more we reject the more we suffer. The more we accept the more we are at peace.
It is a very difficult concept to digest, because to accept the negative sounds very apathetic and uncaring. There are famines, diseases, murders, wars, corruption. How can we possibly accept this?
First, imagine it is you who is experiencing the famine, for example. Can you accept it? Your un-acceptance will not change the fact that you are starving. Your un-acceptance will not bring you food. Your un-acceptance will not fill your belly.
If you are starving you have choices, choices that may not even change your physical suffering. One is un-acceptance; that you become negative: you get angry, resentful, and fearful. The other choice is acceptance, to enter the state of tathata and be at peace with the situation. Either way, your death may come, but in tathata you are at peace with that which you cannot change.
There is a Christian prayer from St Francis of Assisi that I love. It states:
“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Tathata is total acceptance, balanced with wisdom and guided by truth. Truth recognizes what is false. Wisdom is understanding how to transform the false to truth. And tathata is accepting that which is that cannot be changed, and that which is but can through your love be transformed.