The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

we ourselves are not something apart from our circumstances. What we are and where we are are one and the same.

I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I've forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together.

Since then, my approach to all things spiritual is rather cynical you could say. When somebody present something to me as spiritual, my first instinct is to be cynical and think, "oh yeah, one of those again." You see so much of it see in "spiritual culture" and people get very excited about it. It's all very "hoo haw."

Just know that your expectations are only thoughts in your head, and keep on doing what you do.

Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.

I think a lot of people trying to follow Buddhism these days are getting confused about sex and they don't understand what's going on. They've been exposed to a contemporary Christian idea that sex itself is evil and bad, which I'm not so sure was Jesus' idea. For me, the Buddhist approach isn't that sex itself is evil or bad but that sex is neutral. It's the way you do it that can problematic.