Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.
In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our mi… - Mark Epstein
In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our mi…
- Mark Epstein
Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. … - Mark Epstein
Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. …
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 … - Mark Epstein
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 …
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, doub… - Mark Epstein
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, doub…
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. - Mark Epstein
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations. - Mark Epstein
Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.
Depressed people think they know themselves, but maybe they only know depression. - Mark Epstein
Depressed people think they know themselves, but maybe they only know depression.
There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original … - Mark Epstein
There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original …
It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a sense of absence without turning that absence into some kind of presence - Mark Epstein
It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a sense of absence without turning that absence into some kind of presence
Login to join the discussion
Login to join the discussion