Reading Archive (Imperfection)
To Have Without Holding
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard...
Practice of Being Real
The practice of being real is something highly underrated. We have been taught to appear in certain ways to get the approval of others....
The Power Paradox
Life is made up of patterns. And one pattern kept appearing in scientific studies I've conducted over the past twenty years. It's...
Blessed Unrest
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all...
Ten Rules For Being Human
Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth. Rule Two:...
Going Beyond the Roles We Play
We seem so very real. But our bodies are really not our own and we have no control over either their coming or going. We have roles that...
Seeing Fully
We were poor monks who needed buildings. We couldn't afford to employ a builder — the materials were expensive enough. So I had...
Habits Of The Heart
“Habits of the heart” (a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville) are deeply ingrained ways of seeing, being, and responding...
Does Life Have A Purpose?
Questioner: Why do you maintain that Life has no purpose? If Life has no purpose, the individual life, even in pure being, can have no...
Beauty of the Mosaic
For as long as I recall having memory, I've found mosaic incredibly mesmerising. Alongside the increasing presence of grey hair on my...
Life May Itself Be A Koan
Consider the Zen practice of the koan, the question or problem proposed by Zen masters to each other or by masters to students. The koan...
Exhausting Quest For Perfection
The quest for perfection is exhausting and unrelenting, but as hard as we try, we can't turn off the tapes that fill our heads with...
The Gift of New Eyes
Many years ago, I had just given a talk on the messages, both positive and negative, that we convey to our patients without our...
Too Many Names
Monday is tangled up with Tuesday and the week with the year: time can’t be cut with your tired scissors, and all the names of...
Mighty in Contradiction: Love Powerfully
As we see more deeply into our inner drives and defenses, we discover that the choices we are faced with aren’t all black and...
The Only True Voyage
A garden is a place where growth is found. It has its own source of change. One does not bring change to a garden, but comes to a garden...
Reaching Underneath Our Protective Shell
There's a slogan in the Mahayana teachings that says, "Drive all blames onto oneself." The essence of this slogan is,...
Making a New Start
Making a new start isn’t starting ‘again.’ There’s no ‘again’ about it. New is new. But by now...
The Hole-y Bucket
A student approaches the teacher with the question, “Could you help me with a question I've been struggling with -- what is the...
Being Human
I wonder if the Sun debates dawn some mornings not wanting to rise out of bed from under the down-feather horizon if the sky grows...