“Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.”

-Anthony de Mello

This Week’s Discussion Topic
How has humility played a role in your practice?

“We don’t have to get rid of all our neurotic tendencies: what we do is begin to see how funny they are, and then they’re just part of the fun of life, the fun with living with other people. They’re all crazy. And so are we, of course.”

-Charlotte Joko Beck

This Week’s Discussion Topic
What are some of your most prominent “neurotic” thought lines, and how do you deal with them?

“With only a change in perspective, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. When we don’t know, we don’t judge. And when we don’t judge, we see things in a different light. That is the light of our awareness, unfiltered by intellectual understanding, rumination, or evaluation.”

-Katsuki Sekida

This Week’s Discussion Topic
Discuss the relationship between faith and doubt as it relates to your practice.

“If we indulge the human propensity to understate, exaggerate, and alter facts for whatever comfort or false security it might accord us, we forfeit our capacity to see reality clearly, and see only a world of our own invention.”

-Lin Jensen

This Week’s Discussion Topic
When sitting, what techniques do you use to relate to thoughts, so you don’t become overly engaged with or controlled by them?

“To use your mind in a natural way means to avoid trying to control it. The more you try to control your mind, the more stray thoughts will come up to bother you.”

-Master Sheng-Yen

This Week’s Discussion Topic
Discuss the relationship between “effortlessness” and “effort” as it relates to your practice.