The Truth of This Life: Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is

how completely Suzuki Roshi worked at things, how much care he took with the details. He took care of details I didn’t even notice. He put vastly more energy into things than I ever would have. He did not cut corners. He did not decide he didn’t have time.

ALL OF US LOOK OUT at the same world. And we all see a different version of it, depending on what’s already in our minds. Practice is to notice how the dust of our mind obscures the clear reflection of the world, how our values and preferences determine our interpretations.

Maybe the virtue of our practice is that it shows us the arrogance of our minds. We discover that we don’t see things as they are; we see things as our mind creates them.

Readiness takes time—that is, readiness to be wholeheartedly and undividedly here.

Moving in accord with circumstances, we do not act on things, but with circumstances.

We are trying to be our rigid self in the middle of just being a relational being interwoven with everything else.

The thing about reality is that there’s no later, there’s no next moment when one is going to be enlightened, when one is going to understand nonbeing, where there’s no outside, no second moment—only infinite first moments arising as now.

See if you can do that, if your present activity, your present breath, is compelling enough to draw you out of your planning mind, out of your past mind.

We resist seeing or hearing things we are opposed to or are afraid of. When we try, we find it harder than we imagined to settle the mind enough to let in what we resist or feel threatened by.

we grab onto things to find pleasure or frustration, something, anything, to engage our feelings and thoughts.