Let me give you a wonderful Zen practice. Wake up in the morning...look in the mirror, and laugh at yourself.

Sometimes you come to a fall and sometimes you come to white water. Your rowing has to adapt to the situation. You can't do the same stroke coming down a small stream as you would coming down Niagara Falls. Even if you're only rowing down a stream, different things happen: maybe the wind changes, maybe the current, and suddenly everything's different. So gently is really important. Don't power yourself or blast through; rock with the way things are.

In every area, working with what you habitually reject is one of the best ways to facilitate growth and transformation.

It's very rare to be in a state where there's nothing in, where you have no attachment to any idea or concept about yourself. In that state you've immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.

The basic problem, actually, is how to get rid of the idea that we're going to get rid of our problems. Only then can we relate directly with the real issues of our life.

Our tendency in life is to avoid things that frighten us. But in order to become whole, we need to go deeper and deeper into ourselves by reaching further and further into the things we fear.

We're creating a little niche for ourselves instead of working the whole canvas.