Sublime

self. But Zen practice (and perhaps a few other disciplines or therapies) can help us to move from an unhappy self to no-self, which is joy.

the general practice of Buddhism, which is to free the mind from its habitual confusion of words, ideas, and concepts with reality, and from all those emotional disturbances and entanglements which flow from this confusion. Thus the ego, time, the body, life, and death are all viewed as concepts having neither more nor less reality than abstract

To encounter this shunya, to encounter this void, creates fear. That fear is there. That is why we never do meditation. We talk about it, but we never do anything about it. That fear is there. You know deep down that there is a void, but you cannot escape this fear. Whatsoever you do, the fear will remain unless you encounter it. That is the only

The great spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti once said that true liberation is freedom from our own automatic responses.

For many years, I have appreciated the teaching of the Indian guru of non-dualism Sri Nisargadatta, who famously said, “The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.”