Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening

Buddhism could be described as “the culture of awakening.”

This meditation counters the deep psychosomatic feeling that there is something permanent at the core of ourself that is going to be around for a while yet.

Normally we are unaware of the extent to which we are distracted, for the simple reason that distraction is a state of unawareness. This kind of exercise can force us to recognize that for much of the time we fail to register what is happening here and now.

To understand a worry is to know it calmly and clearly for what it is: transient, contingent, and devoid of intrinsic identity. Whereas to misunderstand it is to freeze it into something fixed, separate, and independent.

Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is.

Awakening is the purpose that enfolds all purposes.

LIFE IS NEITHER meaningful nor meaningless. Meaning and its absence are given to life by language and imagination. We are linguistic beings who inhabit a reality in which it makes sense to make sense.

Whatever we do is meaningful to the extent that it leads to awakening, meaningless to the extent that it leads away from it.

a true friend is more than just someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone whom we can trust to refine our understanding of what it means to live, who can guide us when we’re lost and help us find the way along a path, who can assuage our anguish through the reassurance of his or her presen