how to train in lightening up and cheering up rather than becoming more guilt-ridden and miserable. Otherwise, all that happens is that we all cut everybody else down, and we also cut ourselves down. Nothing ever measures up. Nothing is ever good enough. Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning

So don’t take anything for granted, and don’t believe everything you’re told. Without being cynical or gullible, look for the living quality of the dharma. Recognize impermanence and suffering and egolessness at the kitchen-sink level, and be inquisitive about your reactions. Find out for yourself about peace and whether or not it’s true that our f

Another aspect of cool loneliness is not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts. The rug’s been pulled; the jig is up; there is no way to get out of this one! We don’t even seek the companionship of our own constant conversation with ourselves about how it is and how it isn’t, whether it is or whether it isn’t, whether it should or whether

Complete discipline is another component of cool loneliness. Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment. This is loneliness as complete discipline. We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone. We don’t particularly have to cultivate this kind of loneliness; we co

We start understanding that, just like us, other people also keep getting hooked by hope and fear. Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. It’s also pretty obvious that people need help and that there’s no way to benefit anybody unless we start with ourselves. Our motivation for practicing begins t

This letting things go is sometimes called nonattachment, but not with the cool, remote quality often associated with that word. This nonattachment has more kindness and more intimacy than that. It’s actually a desire to know, like the questions of a three-year-old. We want to know our pain so we can stop endlessly running.

When we become inquisitive about these things, look into them, see who we are and what we do, with the curiosity of a young child, what might seem like a problem becomes a source of wisdom.

Before we know it, we’ve composed a novel on why someone is so wrong, or why we are so right, or why we

Let’s take praise and blame. Someone walks up to us and says, “You are old.” If it just so happens that we want to be old, we feel really good. We feel as if we’ve just been praised. That gives us enormous pleasure and a sense of gain and fame. But suppose we have been obsessing all year about getting rid of wrinkles and firming up our jaw line. Wh