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Quote by Michael Downing

“During the last three years, I've met a lot of people who have practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center. I asked each of them the same question: What led you there? No one said, I was so happy and fulfilled that I wanted to find a new way to express my joy and gratitude. Discontent, depression, sickness, bad luck, and loneliness had paved the way. Suffering shapes the place more than the sixties, or any particular cultural moment, or any one woman or man. Suffering is the recurring moment, reborn every time someone new turns up.”

Quote by Michael Downing

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Michael Downing

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“Take lightly what you hear about individuals. We need not distort trust for our paltry little political agendas. We tend to trust soulless, carried information more than we trust soulful human beings; but really most people aren't so bad once you sit down and have an honest, one-on-one conversation with them, once, with an open heart, you listen to their explanations as to why they act the way they act, or say what they say, or do what they do.”

“On my own, I would have drowned in darkness and despair. It's all because of Jesus Christ that I say or write one word of victory. My suffering would have overwhelmed me without my relationship with Jesus. The joy from that relationship is difficult to put into words. But it's real. It's powerful. I'm blessed by seeing others who suffer receive relief and comfort when they hear about Jesus and His love for them. It's a privilege to share my own struggles.”

“I heard once that we always have a choice. Always. I don't believe that anymore. We don't get to choose the bad things that find us. We don't get the choice of whether or not the darkness affects us, whether or not we break. When your feet get swept out from under you, you don't get to choose if you fall. You can only let your eyes adjust, gather your pieces, and drag yourself up.”

“[T]he contraction of self-referencing can be thought of as gravitational pull. Like the planets in our solar system, everything in our lives orbits a narrative center of gravity--*me*. As long as we have an ego, everything is self-centered. . . . The gravitational metaphor takes on more weight when the sun is replaced by a black hole, and orbital processes are replaced be phenomena that just suck. . . . [E]verything gets sucked in to feed one massive me, like a supermassive black hole.”