Our Zen training is designed to enable us to live comfortable lives. But the only people who live comfortably are those who learn not to dream their lives away, but to be with what’s right-here-now, no matter what it is: good, bad, nice, not nice, headache, being ill, being happy. It doesn’t make any difference.
This is no small investment but the payoff is extremely great. To learn to leave the suffering we create behind and recognize that we are making ourselves unhappy and it’s not the circumstances doing so requires that we retrain ourselves and that is where the devotion to practice comes in. It’s amazing but we can change our brains.
