“We are so caught in our excitement, our depression, our hopes, and our fears that we cannot see that our function is not to live forever, but to live this moment. We try in vain to protect ourselves with our worried thinking: we plot how we can make it nicer for ourselves, how we can be more secure, how we can perpetuate forever our separate self. Our body has its own wisdom; it’s the misuse of our brain that screws up our lives.”

“The game when well played is for the most part a good game. It includes sorrow and joy and disappointment and problems. But it’s always real and rich, and it’s not unsatisfying or without meaning.”

—Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen