While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.

It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a sense of absence without turning that absence into some kind of presence

The central premise of this book is that the Western psychological notion of what it means to have a self is flawed.

To free desire from the tendency to cling, we have to be willing to stumble over ourselves.

Anger is sign that something needs to change.

Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.

We are looking for a way to feel more real, but we do not realize that to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unknown.