You Cannot Avoid Paradise. You Can Only

We Learn In Our Guts, Not Just In Our Brain, That A Life Of Joy Is Not In Seeking Happiness, But In Experiencing And Simply Being The Circumstances Of Our Life As They Are; Not In Fulfilling Personal Wants, But In Fulfilling The Needs Of Life.

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.

Caught In The Self-centered Dream, Only Suffering; Holding To Self-centered Thoughts, Exactly The Dream; Each Moment, Life As It Is, The Only Teacher; Being Just This Moment, Compassion's Way.

There Are Many People In The World Who Feel That If Only They Had A Bigger Car, A Nicer House, Better Vacations, A More Understanding Boss, Or A More Interesting Partner, Then Their Life Would Work. We All Go Through That One. Slowly We Wear Out Most Of Our 'if Onlies.

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.