Sublime

These three kinds of meditation—focused attention, open awareness, abiding as awareness—form a natural sequence.

In my own life, Zen and psychoanalysis have been practiced in tandem now for thirty years. Each continues to challenge, inform, and enrich the perspective of the other.

This one practice alone is worth a lifetime of practice. I call it “ahhh-riving.”

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who has been called the “world’s calmest man,” has spent a lifetime exploring how to live in kairos, albeit by a different name. He has taught it as mindfulness or maintaining “beginner’s mind.” He has written: “Mindfulness helps you go home to the present. And every time you go there and recognize

A lot of meditation is just showing up for what we have, and there is joy in that. It’s diferent from the kind of happi- ness that comes from getting what you wanted. It’s a joy that doesn’t have a good reason. It’s a joy that allows you to be sad or upset, because you’re alive in the midst of it.