In practice, we return over and over again to perception, to just sitting. Practice is just hearing, just seeing, just feeling.

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;...

We enter a discipline like Zen practice so that we can learn to live in a sane way.

Isn’t it wonderful, that I can take care of everything?,” then that would be sufficient.

…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.

Awareness is our true self; it’s what we are. So we don’t have to try to develop awareness; we simply need to notice how we block awareness, with our thoughts, our fantasies, our opinions, and...

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.

103When we try to be something that we are not, we become the slave of a rigid, fixed mind, following a rule about how things have to be. The violence and the anger in us...

When I watch my mind and stay with my body, out of that comes some course of action.

Who knows how we should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over.

Who knows how you should be? We simply do our best, over and over and over.

When we seek from Zen (or from any spiritual path) the fulfillment of our fantasies, we separate from the earth and sky, from our loved ones, from our aching backs and hearts, from the very...