Joseph Burgess

The feeling that the past has already happened and is unchangeable, while the future has not yet happened and is open, may be an illusion

This quote from James L. Farmer is at the front of my journal: “Courage, after all, is not being unafraid, but doing what needs to be done in spite of fear.”

Living life in the spiritual dimension means letting go equally of past and future and being present for each moment as it arises. It serves no purpose to judge yourself or to wish to undo that which has been written in the sands of time.

Although we all understand this when we think about it, we seem not to be capable of really taking it in. Buddhism teaches that behind all our fears is our inability to actually appreciate, on a visceral level, this truth of impermanence. Unable to accept that we are fading away all the time, we are fearful about the future, as if somehow if... See more

Fear is the anticipation of whether and when a present threat will cause harm. Anxiety is the anticipation of an uncertain threat that is not present and may not occur

This power comes directly out of meditation. In zazen, each time you acknowledge a thought, let it go, and come back to the moment, you build joriki, the power of concentration.

Fear arises the moment you ask yourself, what is this all about? Inevitably, it has nothing to do with right now. It has to do with the future, but the future doesn’t exist. It hasn’t happened yet. The past doesn’t exist. It has already happened. The only thing you’ve got is what’s right here, right now. And coming home to the moment makes all the... See more

To be anti-elitist, however, is to stop caring about attention as a metric of quality, because those who already have it will always win. It requires caring about the people who aren’t on magazine covers and don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. It requires engaging in smaller-scale, more private, and more coherent efforts — the community... See more

The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience.