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The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom: absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it…and then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.

When I look at the large green iron gate from my window, it takes on the air of a prison gate. An unjust feeling since I know I can leave the place whenever I want to, and since I know that human beings place upon an object, or a person, this responsibility of being the obstacle when the obstacle lies within one’s self.

When someone told a joke, even if it fell flat, he would favor him with his resounding laughter. He had an intense desire to prevent his own jokes from wounding anyone. … The party would not end until everyone present had stored up delightful and captivating memories.

A peaceful life isn’t drama free or pain free. A peaceful life refers to how you’re able to handle things when they do indeed fall apart.

How we stay in the middle between indulging and repressing is by acknowledging whatever arises without judgment, letting the thoughts simply dissolve, and then going back to the openness of this very moment. That’s what we’re actually doing in meditation.

After a while, that’s how we relate with hope and fear in our daily lives. Out of nowhere, we stop struggling and relax.

How we stay in the middle between indulging and repressing is by acknowledging whatever arises without judgment, letting the thoughts simply dissolve, and then going back to the openness of this very moment. That’s what we’re actually doing in meditation.

“All activities should be done with one intention”…Everything in our lives has the potential to wake us up or to put us to sleep. Allowing it to awaken us is up to us.

In any case, the point is not to try to get rid of thoughts, but rather to see their true nature. Thoughts will run us around in circles if we buy into them, but really they are like dream images. They are like an illusion—not really all that solid. They are, as we say, just thinking.

Because of mindfulness, we see our desires and our aggression, our jealousy, and our ignorance. We don’t act on them; we just see them. Without mindfulness, we don’t see them and they proliferate.

The third noble truth says that suffering ceases when we let go of trying to maintain the huge ME at any cost.

The second noble truth says that resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego, that resisting life causes suffering.

We also change like the weather. We ebb and flow like the tides, we wax and wane like the moon. We fail to see that like the weather, we are fluid, not solid. And so we suffer.

“Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

A warrior accepts that we can never know what will happen to us next. We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability, always hoping to be comfortable and safe. But the truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not-knowing is part of the adventure. It’s also what makes us afraid.

The root of suffering is resisting the certainty that no matter what the circumstances, uncertainty is all we truly have.

The work of personal growth consists of 3 parts; insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts, moral strength plays the predominant role.

If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others, a problem to be “solved”, then no change will occur. If we are deficient, encourage, no revision can occur.

When we discover that we have been living what constitutes a false self, that we have been enacting a provisional adulthood, driven by unrealistic expectations, then we open the possibility for the second adulthood, our true personhood.

Thus the middle passage represents a summons from within to move from the provisional life to true adulthood, from the false self authenticity.