Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself

by Mark Epstein

The point of meditation was to bring its lessons to everyday life: to be able to live more fully in the moment, to stop undermining myself, to be less afraid of myself and others, to be less at the mercy of my impulses, and to give more generously in the midst of a busy and demanding day.

“You want to know about the dharma? The dharma means living the life fully.”

Compassion without wisdom is sometimes called “idiot compassion” and manifests as someone giving too much and destroying himself or herself along with whomever they are trying to save. It is common in abusive relationships where the afflicted partner keeps on forgiving the abusive spouse, or in situations where a person is addicted to something and another person—a parent, spouse, or child—enables their loved one’s addiction by being overly forgiving.

Therapy works when the discussion one has with one’s therapist changes the conversation one has with oneself.

people are subject to inchoate feelings that push them around, it is more important to know the emotions accurately. Naming the feeling helps make it intelligible. It robs the emotion of some of its power and gives a person some space from it.

mindfulness encourages a dispassionate knowing of thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions, and physical sensations as they come and go in the mind and body.

The original word in the language of the Buddha’s time was sati. Sati means remembering. Right Mindfulness—or Right Sati—means remembering to keep an eye on oneself. Its opposite is forgetting—or absentmindedness—the kind of forgetting that happens all of the time when one is lost in thought. The distinctive quality of mindfulness is that it remembers.

Concentration is a channel into something we do not have exact words for. The unconscious? Mystery? The imagination? Love and light? It is tempting to turn whatever it is into something more concrete than we can actually apprehend.