Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. In Buddhism, the impenetrable, separate, and individuated self is more of the problem than the solution.

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.

Depressed people think they know themselves, but maybe they only know depression.

Anger is sign that something needs to change.

To be free, to come to terms with our lives, we have to have a direct experience of ourselves as we really are, warts and all.

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

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.