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

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.

Uncovering your real desires can be terrifying. It can also set you spectacularly free.

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

If things do not exist as fixed, independent entities, then how can they die? Our notion of death as the sudden expiration of that which was once so real starts to unwind. If things do not exist in their own right and are flickering rather than static, then we can no longer fear their ultimate demise. We may fear their instability, or their emptiness, but the looming threat of death starts to seem absurd. Things are constantly dying, we find. Or rather, they are constantly in flux, arising and passing away with each moment of consciousness.

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

Trauma never goes away completely, it changes perhaps, softens some with time, but never completely goes away.