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

whatever had happened had left me knowing that death is not the end of life. There would be no finalities ever; only change and transformation.

If we do not let ourselves die, we cannot be reborn. I learned that dying is rebirth. Death is life.

the process of dying and regeneration underlies the truth of impermanence. This is the greatest encouragement for our liberation. Yet our dread of physical death makes us resist the very idea of dying every day.

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

night after night we actually undergo a mini-death. We get into bed each night with a solid sense of self. As our consciousness diminishes, the bonds that hold the conventional mind in place become unglued.

the more familiar we are with awareness as an innate quality of mind, the less effect the weather has on us.

unconditional love—for ourselves and all beings—arises once we allow for the natural flow of change, and then we can welcome the continual arising of new ideas, new thoughts, new invitations. If we do not block whatever comes our way, there is no boundary to our love and compassion.

When we commit ourselves to living consciously, we apply effort and diligence to diminishing our confusion. At the end of our lives, this same confusion dissolves without effort.

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.

I would burn up the coarse, outer social protections and strategies in order to be free—not of life but for life, for living every day with a newly born engagement with whatever would arise.