I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.

I had been anxious and depressed for years and suddenly I was deeply at peace.

To love is to recognize yourself in another. The others "otherness" then stands revealed as an illusion pertaining to the purely human realm, the realm of form.

Some form of suffering often brings about a readiness. One can say it cracks open the shell of the egoic mind with which many people identify as "me." Life cracks open that shell, and once that crack is there, then we are reached more easily by spiritual teaching.

Don't think of yourself as having a past, don't think of yourself as having a future. What's left?

A built-in reminder is the simple understanding that whenever any kind of unhappiness arises, you know you've lost the now. That's a built-in alarm clock. The moment you realize you've lost the now, come back to the now.

Tragedy turns into comedy when you watch your own drama and realizing it as a mind-created fiction designed to create you a sense of identity.