Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness

by Mark Epstein

a child needs to develop the capacity to be alone: a faith or trust in the relationship with the parent such that it is possible to explore the world outside of it.

This freedom to explore while held within the safety net of the parent’s benign presence develops into the capacity to be alone.

it is possible to have a relationship to transience that is not adversarial, in which the ability to embrace the moment

a new way of being with the mind, one in which its observing functions take precedence over its reactive ones.

Substituting a more benign caretaker, a watcher or observer, for the split-off mental functioning of the obsessively thinking mind, meditation tricks the self

“inner disarmament,”

Delusion is the mind’s tendency to seek premature closure about something.

the clear light nature of mind shines through whenever we let go of identification with the mind’s content,