In Love with the World: A Monk's Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying

Its main job is to convince us that deep in the jumble of this glued-together fabrication lies the real me, the essential true self that cannot change,

Short moments, many times.

We inherently have free will, yet this only arises from an examined mind. Our future is influenced, but not determined or destined, by past conditioning. Until we learn how to examine our minds and direct our behavior, our karmic tendencies will compel habits to reseed themselves.

Ultimately the waking form is no firmer than the dream form, no more lasting, no more real.

the problems that beset modern people at the peak of their family and work lives closely parallel issues that arise for people everywhere at the end of life: an inability to accept impermanence, grasping at what is not available, and not being able to let go.

You are here and you are not here. Both.

could not wait to be of more help to transitory dream people who suffer because they do not know that they are in a dream, and do not know that liberation is waking up to the dream as a dream.

We begin to rely on another aspect of mind that exists beneath our reactivity. We call this “no-self.” It’s the unconditioned awareness that reveals itself with the dissolution of the chattering mind that talks to itself throughout the day. Another way of saying this is that we switch mental gears from normal awareness to meditative awareness.

If you really aspire to cut your attachments, you can do it no matter what the circumstances—but there will always be something pulling you back in the other direction. It

I mistook adding wood to the fire for an event, instead of understanding it as a process. Somewhere in my imaginings, adding one skinny stick of kindling at a time got mixed up with igniting a bonfire.