The Truth of This Life: Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is

The only way we can continue this practice is if we want to sit, maybe for no reason, and if we are interested in awakening to the deceptions and delusions of our ordinary mind, not because that is an enlightened thing to do, but because it is helpful for our lives: we get in trouble less; our relationships are more harmonious.

Emptiness also means complete. Because our true nature is not the particular form we take in each moment, we say our true nature is formless. We are both a particular form, and we are free from that form. Therefore, we exist as all possibilities, as the entire universe.

Noticing our thoughts, and understanding how they determine our actions and relationships, helps us understand that we cocreate the world we live in with everyone. We cocreate our lives with others.

ALL OF US LOOK OUT at the same world. And we all see a different version of it, depending on what’s already in our minds. Practice is to notice how the dust of our mind obscures the clear reflection of the world, how our values and preferences determine our interpretations.

When we are not paying attention, we live outside of time.

we grab onto things to find pleasure or frustration, something, anything, to engage our feelings and thoughts.

Put yourself into a situation and commit yourself to stay with it. The situation will bring forth everything—your resistance, your confusion, your joy, your gratitude.

Maybe the virtue of our practice is that it shows us the arrogance of our minds. We discover that we don’t see things as they are; we see things as our mind creates them.

The thing about reality is that there’s no later, there’s no next moment when one is going to be enlightened, when one is going to understand nonbeing, where there’s no outside, no second moment—only infinite first moments arising as now.