Seriousness is not Calvinistic, it's not a renunciation, it's the very opposite of that.

You have to keep cracking yourself open or you become a parody of yourself.

At first first nothing will happen to us and later on it will happen to us again.

Your heart opens and of course you're completely panicked because you're used to guarding this organ with your life.

Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.

Just to get serious about this thing, you know. One has to be compassionate. It's true that people are up against things, economically and emotionally.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.