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

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

The sense that my world is stable and stationary, that change will never come and that all will go on continuously as it is, is the nature of all delusion.

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

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.

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.

We are what we think about. When we stay fixed on one person, thought or situation, we get caught in the grip of self-centered thoughts. The more we give attention to that which is upsetting, the more strength it has to rule our lives.