None Of Us Would Choose To Be

There Is A Foundation For Our Lives, A Place In Which Our Life Rests. That Place Is Nothing But The Present Moment, As We See, Hear, Experience What Is. If We Do Not Return To That Place, We Live Our Lives Out Of Our Heads. We Blame Others; We Complain; We Feel Sorry For Ourselves. All Of These Symptoms Show That We're Stuck In Our Thoughts. We're Out Of Touch With The Open Space That Is Always Right Here.

Practice Can Be Stated Very Simply. It Is Moving From A Life Of Hurting Myself And Others To A Life Of Not Hurting Myself And Others. That Seems So Simple-except When We Substitute For Real Practice Some Idea That We Should Be Different Or Better Than We Are, Or That Our Lives Should Be Different From The Way They Are. When We Substitute Our Ideas About What Should Be (such Notions As "i Should Not Be Angry Or Confused Or Unwilling") For Our Life As It Truly Is, Then We're Off Base And Our Practice Is Barren.

Life Is A Second-by-second Miracle.

We Have To Face The Pain We Have Been Running From. In Fact, We Need To Learn To Rest In It And Let Its Searing Power Transform Us.

Practice Has To Be A Process Of Endless Disappointment. We Have To See That Everything We Demand (and Even Get) Eventually Disappoints Us. This Discovery Is Our Teacher.