Sublime

Working in this way loosens the knots in the mind, and it also introduces a space so that you can start moving between anxieties and distractions and not struggle with them so much. Just staying with the questions, life grows calmer

Rinzai Roku (a celebrated Zen text of the T’ang dynasty) and the teachings of Bankei, the seventeenth-century Japanese master who, for me, represents Zen at its best.

Traditional Zen training can, without a doubt, elicit and help resolve many personality conflicts that analytically-minded therapists would define and work with under very different conditions.

The spiritual practice described here is not about becoming a better person. It is not about increasing your skills, being more effective in your life, healing old wounds or being successful. It is about finding a way that leaves you at peace in your life and free to respond to others in whatever way is appropriate.

I had many teachers, but the most central were two of the wisest Theravada teachers of the past century: one in Thailand, Ajahn Chah, and one in Burma, Mahasi Sayadaw.

Whatever arises in experience is your own mind. Mind itself is free of any conceptual limitations. Know that and don’t entertain Subject-object fixations — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.