“It is familiarity, rather than knowledge, that takes away their strangeness.”

In the end, the only thing that really matters for me as a meditator is how well or badly I respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the situation at hand. If my contemplative practice fails to contribute to my flourishing as a person in my relationships with others, then I have to question the purpose of spending months and years

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be for yourself.

I find myself utterly incapable of putting what it is I’m experiencing right now into words. I do not know what on earth is going on here. The practice of “What is this?” confronts you with what philosophers call the sheer “facticity” of your existence. This is the inescapable reality of what it’s like to be me, which seems impossible to articulate

The practice of Zen is about coming to terms with the question of who and what you are. Allow yourself to be a mystery for yourself rather than a set of more or less interesting facts.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to

There is something banal and everyday about solitude. Even in company we spend much of our time alone, absorbed in our innermost thoughts and feelings, quietly talking to ourselves. Whether we live in Manhattan or the middle of nowhere, this is our condition.

Being unable to control events, I control myself: I adjust myself to them if they do not adjust themselves to me.

There is more to solitude than just being alone. True solitude is a way of being that needs to be cultivated. You cannot switch it on or off at will. Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it. When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.