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

When we sit, we open our own treasure house. Rather than do this, however, most of us first seek to find the treasures another person can provide. We calculate their value to us. When we approach relationships in this manner, we are coming as beggars, seeing the other as a source of supply. When we can enter a relationship with our treasure house already open, there is no end to the wonders we can find, both within and between ourselves and another.

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

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.

We turn pain into suffering by adding on all kinds of beliefs, interpretations and judgments to it.

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