Enlightenment Is an Accident: Ancient Wisdom and Simple Practices to Make You Accident Prone

And when it does, it feels like an experience that you fall into—a serendipitous accident. The moment you try to control, define, deepen, or extend it, you are returned, unceremoniously, to your small, chattering mind.

If we see this dissatisfaction in an attentive, nonjudgmental way, our slumping usually corrects itself.

If we can maintain our ability to just be with whatever happens—even as our mind becomes increasingly swampy, constantly pouring over the past and projecting into the future—at some point the pollution settles and an even deeper clarity than before arises.

Whatever your rock may be, see it, hang out with it a while with kind, gentle attention, give it all the space it needs to air its grievance, and then release it, allowing it to return to the stream of quietude and stillness that includes everything—even the rocks.

To hear sounds with the whole body and mind, to see forms with the whole body and mind, one understands them intimately. —Dogen

When intimacy is present, any notion of otherness vanishes.

It takes courage to experience our deepest hurts in a direct and undiluted way.

Fritz Perls captured the mood perfectly in his oft-repeated catchphrase, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.”

That heat he was experiencing actually helps us move beyond the small, complaining self from which our chatter arises.