No matter what the work is, it should be done with effort and total attention to what’s in front of our nose.

When we’re lost in thought, when we’re dreaming, what have we lost? We’ve lost reality. Our life has escaped us.

“Emotion-thought is the root of delusion, a stubborn attachment to a one-sided point of view, formed by our own conditioned perceptions.”

be.” I’m talking about earning the integrity and wholeness of our lives by every act we do, every word we say. From the ordinary point of view, the price we must pay is enormous—though seen clearly, it is no price at all, but a privilege. As our practice grows we comprehend this privilege more and more.

We have all spent many years building up a conditioned view of life. There is “me” and there is this “thing” out there that is either hurting me or pleasing me.

When I am just my own suffering where is the authority? The attention, the experiencing is the authority, and it is also the clarification of the action to be done.

As long as we cling to our separateness—my ideas about what I am, what you are, and what I need and want from you—that very separateness means that we are not yet paying the price for the jewel.

what we do is begin to see how funny they are, and then they’re

We “rid ourselves of conceptual thought” when, by persistent observation, we recognize the unreality of our self-centered thoughts. Then we can remain dispassionate and fundamentally unaffected by them. That does not mean to be a cold person. Rather, it means not to be caught and dragged around by circumstances.