While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," … - Mark Epstein

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I held out a lead figurine of Hades—the little Mythomagic statue Nico had abandoned when he fled camp last winter. Nico hesitated. "I don’t play that game anymore. It’s for kids. " "It’s got four thousand attack power," I coaxed. "Five thousand," Nico corrected. "But only if your opponent attacks first. " I smiled. "Maybe it’s okay to still be a kid once in a while.

Mark Epstein

While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.

Buddhist, Capacity, Create, Disappointment, Moving, Work

Same Author Quotes

When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves-from other people, relationships, or material goods-or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion. But according to Buddhism, such a strategy is doomed. Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection.

Buddhism, Happiness, Letting Go, People, Perfection

I have come to see that our problem is that we don't know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It's the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning.

Anxiety, Come, Condemning, Feelings, Sadness

It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.

Give, Past, People, Talking

The willingness to face traumas - be they large, small, primitive or fresh - is the key to healing from them. They may never disappear in the way we think they should, but maybe they don’t need to. Trauma is an ineradicable aspect of life. We are human as a result of it, not in spite of it.

Healing, Keys, Result, Spite, Thinking, Way

Depressed people think they know themselves, but maybe they only know depression.

Abnormal Psychology, Depressed, Maybe, People, Thinking