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

You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

You know that for sure because Godzilla was killed by an ordinary missile. He spends most of that film dodging them but then the Army finally gets a bead on him and they shoot a missile at him and he blows up and dies, and that's not what Godzilla is. Godzilla is supposed to be a thing that you can't possibly kill, no matter how hard you try.

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.

I mean Godzilla is eternally pissed off at everything but of course he's gonna be because every time he pops out of the water for a look around somebody is firing a missile at him. Buddha would probably have to act as a mediator between the people and Godzilla.

I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not.