“Writing, I feel my way on instinct—always trying to find the beating heart of things. It’s a delicate procedure, and often the flashing firefly I catch at dusk turns out to just be a dark bug in the light of morning. Logic, apparently, is not enough. I am learning to trust my senses and allow the dancing of time to teach me what I need to know.” WritingLife And LivingIntuitionZen Buddhism Book:This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons Source: This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons
“This dreaming is one way of presenting what Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama means when he says, “Everything you encounter is your life.” Each encounter is both meeting the eternal Other—what is always outside and unknown—and meeting ourselves in the particular form of the moment.” RelationshipLife PhilosophyZen Buddism Book:This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons Source: This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons
“This place of stuck—“I have to” and “I can’t”—feels familiar from my spiritual work. We’re told to simply “let go”—but when we try to do this, we often seem to get more deeply tangled in the willful web of resistance. In spite of injunctions to the contrary, “letting go” doesn’t appear to be something we have conscious control over. Why can’t we just let go into the loving arms of the universe? What is this holding back that seems so essential—so imperative?” MeditationLetting GoZen Buddhism Book:This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons Source: This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons
“Release seems to come only when we allow ourselves to be truly stuck—when we find ourselves all out of tricks and skillful means. As we allow ourselves to surrender to the prosaic and the holy in the particular form of this moment, we open ourselves to the grace of letting things be—the grace that functions effortlessly and is, indeed, the very fabric of our life.” GraceMeditationLetting GoZen Buddhism Book:This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons Source: This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons
“Once at a workshop, the instruction was to walk mindfully over to the lunchtime food across the room. In that short walk across the room, I noticed how automatically I get ahead of myself—how I lose track of these miraculous feet on the ground and miss the space in between. And I’m beginning to suspect that most of life is “in between.” MindfulnessZen BuddhismWalking Meditation Book:This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons Source: This Truth Never Fails: A Zen Memoir in Four Seasons