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“Body tension will always be present if our good feeing is just ordinary, self-centered happiness. Joy has no tension in it, because joy accepts whatever is as it is.”
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
“When we refuse to work with our disappointment, we break the Precepts: rather than experience the disappointment, we resort to anger, greed, gossip, criticism. Yet it's the moment of being that disappointment which is fruitful; and, if we are not willing to do that, at least we should notice that we are not willing. The moment of disappointment in life is an incomparable gift that we receive many times a day if we're alert. This gift is always present in anyone's life, that moment when 'It's not the way I want it!”
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“...we're constantly waking up to what we're about, what we're really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that's painful. But there's no possibility of freedom without this pain.”
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
“It's of no use to look back and say, "I should have been different." At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we're able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.”
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
― Nothing Special: A Zen Buddhist Guide to Awakening Through Daily Life's Feelings, Relationships, and Work
“Anxiety is always a gap between the way things are and the way we think they ought to be. Anxiety is something that stretches between the real and unreal. Our human desire is to avoid what's real and instead to be with our ideas about the world:
"I'm terrible." "You're terrible." "You're wonderful." The idea is separated from reality and anxiety is the gap between the idea and the reality that things are just as they are.
When we cease to believe in the object that we've created -- which is off to one side of reality, so to speak -- things snap back to the center. That's what being centered means. The anxiety then fades out.”
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"I'm terrible." "You're terrible." "You're wonderful." The idea is separated from reality and anxiety is the gap between the idea and the reality that things are just as they are.
When we cease to believe in the object that we've created -- which is off to one side of reality, so to speak -- things snap back to the center. That's what being centered means. The anxiety then fades out.”
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