When we are able to receive life's challenges as koans rather than problems, they become interesting and exciting, rather than ponderous and depressing.

we learn the process of emptying out, cleaning house, both within and without.

Zen practice asks you not to worry about who you 'should' become. Find out who you are right now.

Unless we base our sense of identity upon the truth of who we are, it is impossible to attain true happiness.

What we pay attention to expands. What we pay attention to we become.

All the insight we will ever need to live well will come from fully being who and where we are.

Consider for a moment what you pay attention to all day long. What seems important to you, what do you take for granted and hardly attend to at all? Write it down. Do not judge your answers. Be honest and simple. As you keep track all week long, you'll be amazed at what claims your attention, what you give your precious life force to.

When we do not reject our suffering, or add anything to it, pain is simply pain. It is what we add to our pain that turns it into suffering.

Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now.

When we are in a truly loving relationship, we receive the gift of being known and accepted. We become more, not less, of who we are. We receive the space in which to bloom. This is how we know we are in a loving relationship. We are blooming, and the one we love is blooming as well.

Whatever we can't love or accept in another, is a mirror of something we can't love or accept in ourselves.

We create a mask to meet the masks of others. Then we wonder why we cannot love, and why we feel so alone.

In a relationship if you are giving and getting nothing back in return, stop giving so much, and spend time being. Give to yourself, be who you are.

When we are willing to accept our experience, just as it is, a strange thing happens: it changes into something else. When we avoid pain, struggle not to feel it, pain turns into suffering.

All conflict we experience in the world, is a conflict within our own selves.

What seems good turns bad, what seems bad turns good. It is an endless cycle.

Fear of the future and longing for the past are major factors which impede appropriate action.

In the Zen Way we focus upon each breath, each day, each moment and experience it totally. One complete breath brings the next.