The Cow in the Parking Lot Quotes

“One of the things that you realize when you see the nature of the self is that what you do and what happens to you are the same thing. Realizing that you do not exist separately from everything else, you realize responsibility:”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“If we do not recognize our role in our misfortune, we are unable to change the conduct that led to it, which almost guarantees that it will happen again.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Speak from right attitude. Ask yourself, “What do I really need to communicate to this person?” and refrain from venting your feelings for other motives. Check for self-indulgence, ill will, potential harm in one’s own words and actions. Ask yourself not only what must I say, buthow must I say it.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“you revile us who do not revile in return, you scold us who do not scold in return, you abuse us who do not abuse in return. So we do not accept it from you and hence it remains with you, it belongs to you,”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Your most powerful tool in some situations may be what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “compassionate listening.” “Sit quietly and listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his suffering.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Change comes, not by struggling to change or by fighting or disciplining oneself, but by becoming aware of what we are feeling and how we habitually act.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“By being unwilling to disturb the habitual order of our lives or to endure emotional pain, we allow ourselves to stay stuck in a situation where our demands are not met on an ongoing basis.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“But in receiving graciously, in accepting wholeheartedly, we are also giving. We are allowing the giver to enter into relationship with us, acknowledging his good will, and sharing in our common humanity and interdependence.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Keeping score creates resentment, which is a way of feeding chronic low-level anger.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“As the Buddha says, We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“I have always relied on myself. I have tried to help others, but have done things alone and it has always worked, more or less. But here I could not rely on myself. I fell through the bottom, and hands reached out to catch me. Of all the events around my illness, that is the most shocking. That is what asks for the greatest change in how I see the world.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“I’m not okay; you’re not okay. It’s okay.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“The Case of the Impossible Person Never wrestle with a hog The hog gets dirty You get dirty But the hog enjoys it. —American Folk Saying”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“If we have a positive mental attitude, then even when surrounded by hostility, we shall not lack inner peace.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“The practice of patience means not returning threats, anger, attacks or insults. But this does not mean being purely passive. Instead we use the other person’s energy, as in judo. . . . Our response is self-defensive in the sense that we do not return such a person’s threat, and at the same time we prevent further aggression by allowing the other person’s own energy to undercut itself.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“to live is to embrace each moment as if it were the first, last, and all moments of time.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Most of us don’t know what it actually feels like to be alive. We know about our problems, our desires, our goals and accomplishments, but we don’t know much about our lives. It generally takes a huge event, the equivalent of a birth or a death, to wake up our sense of living this moment we are given—this moment that is just for the time being, because it passes even as it arrives.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Anger, like pollution, accumulates and has toxic consequences”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Anger is as good at solving problems as a fan is at stacking papers”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Criticism is often unwelcome for various reasons, but if we immediately go on the defensive, we can’t distinguish between valid, helpful criticism and unfair criticism. If you have an insecurity button that gets pushed when you are criticized, try to quell the automatic internal storm that erupts: “Who is she to criticize me?” “He thinks he knows better than I do.” “If I don’t respond strongly, she’ll think I’m admitting fault.” This reaction short-circuits the process of seeing whether the criticism has value and correcting the underlying problem.”
― Susan Edmiston, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“Using anger to solve a problem is like grabbing a red-hot coal to throw at the other person.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger