Unconditional Good Heart Toward Others Is Not

If It's Painful, You Become Willing Not Just To Endure It But Also To Let It Awaken Your Heart And Soften You. You Learn To Embrace It.

The Trick Is To Keep Exploring And Not Bail Out, Even When We Find Out That Something Is Not What We Thought. That's What We're Going To Discover Again And Again And Again. Nothing Is What We Thought. I Can Say That With Great Confidence. Emptiness Is Not What We Thought. Neither Is Mindfulness Or Fear. Compassion––not What We Thought. Love. Buddha Nature. Courage. These Are Code Words For Things We Don't Know In Our Minds, But Any Of Us Could Experience Them. These Are Words That Point To What Life Really Is When We Let Things Fall Apart And Let Ourselves Be Nailed To The Present Moment.

Some Of Us Can Accept Others Right Where They Are A Lot More Easily Than We Can Accept Ourselves. We Feel That Compassion Is Reserved For Someone Else, And It Never Occurs To Us To Feel It For Ourselves. My Experience Is That By Practicing Without 'shoulds,' We Gradually Discover Our Wakefulness And Our Confidence. Gradually, Without Any Agenda Except To Be Honest And Kind, We Assume Responsibility For Being Here In This Unpredictable World, In This Unique Moment, In This Precious Human Body.

My Experience With Forgiveness Is That It Sort Of Comes Spontaneously At A Certain Point And To Try To Force It It's Not Really Forgiveness. It's Buddhist Philosophy Or Something Spiritual Jargon That You're Trying To Live Up To But You're Just Using It Against Yourself As A Reason Why You're Not Okay.

Come Back To Square One, Just The Minimum Bare Bones. Relaxing With The Present Moment, Relaxing With Hopelessness, Relaxing With Death, Not Resisting The Fact That Things End, That Things Pass, That Things Have No Lasting Substance, That Everything Is Changing All The Time-that Is The Basic Message.