Quotes from Mark Epstein

We cannot find our enlightened minds while continuing to be estranged from our neurotic ones.

As Wilhelm Reich demonstrated in his groundbreaking work on the formation of character, the personality is built on these points of self-estrangement; the paradox is that what we take to be so real, our selves, is constructed out of a reaction against just what we do not wish to acknowledge.

When those aspects that have been unconsciously refused are returned, when they are made conscious, accepted, tolerated, or integrated, the self can then be at one, the need to maintain the self-conscious edifice disappears, and the force of compassion is automatically unleashed.

It's not what she is thinking that matters, it's how she relates to her thoughts that will make all the difference.

As the famous Zen master Dogen has said: To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be one with others.

The Second Noble Truth of the Buddha takes its cue from this experience. It is traditionally described as the truth of "the arising of dukkha," and its central tenet is that the cause of suffering is craving or thirst. The

It is a fundamental tenet of Buddhist thought that before emptiness of self can be realized, the self must be experienced fully, as it appears. It is the task of therapy, as well as of meditation, to return those split-off elements to a person's awareness—to make the person see that they are not, in fact, split-off elements at all, but essential aspects of his or her own being.

the sense that there is an accessible vitality, present from birth, underlying our accrued personalities.

In psychological terms, the Buddha's first truth, for instance, is really about the inevitability of our own humiliation. His insights challenge us to examine ourselves with a candor that we would prefer to avoid.

The transitional object—the teddy bear, stuffed animal, blanket, or favorite toy—makes possible the movement from a purely subjective experience to one in which other people are experienced as truly "other." Neither "me" nor "not-me," the transitional object enjoys a special in-between status that the parents instinctively respect. It is the raft by which the infant crosses over to the understanding of the other.

No matter what we do, he taught, we cannot sustain the illusion of our self-sufficiency. We are all subject to decay, old age, and death, to disappointment, loss, and disease.

Many others do not make this transition so seamlessly: they become enamored of the observing self that beginning meditation empowers and use that capacity for self-observation as a way to avoid personal responsibility. They observe their own pain, but not their contribution to its making.

Many qualities of the transitional object—its ability to survive intense love and hate, its resistance to change unless changed by the infant, its ability to provide refuge and warmth, and its gradual relinquishment—are all shared by bare attention. Like the transitional object for the infant, bare attention enjoys a special status for the meditator: it, too, is an in-between phenomenon.

We all want to be normal. Life, even normal life, is arduous, demanding, and ultimately threatening. We all have to deal with it, and none of us really knows how. We are all traumatized by life, by its unpredictability, its randomness, its lack of regard for our feelings and the losses it brings. Each in our own way, we suffer.

Thus, anger can be seen as one's inability or unwillingness to use aggression to overcome a frustrating obstacle, while anxiety can be understood as an inability or unwillingness to admit hunger or desire.

Implicit and explicit throughout the text is the understanding that meditative wisdom does not have to be isolated from daily life. Our need to expand awareness beyond our isolated egos is as necessary in relationships as it is in meditation.

More than the relaxation it evoked, this feeling in the dining hall hinted at who I might be if I wasn't who I thought I was.

The ego's instinctive favoring of itself is eroded by a sense of the infinite

Form is emptiness, the Buddhists teach, but form is also form. I would never be able to approach the emptiness of form if I continued to deny myself the experience of it.

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The Buddha was interested in teaching us not only how to find our own freedom, but in how to stay in affectionate relationship to other people.

impermanence is the inescapable flavor of worldly life.

Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection

If we can acknowledge the truth of our suffering, we will spontaneously reach out. We will lift a hand in the manner of a drowning person and create the possibility of receiving help. The bodhisattvas, like the cuckoo, are already there for the asking.