If you want to travel the Way of Buddhas and Zen masters, then expect nothing, seek nothing, and grasp nothing. ―Dōgen

Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.

― Dōgen

No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease. ―Dōgen

Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.

― Zen Master Dōgen 

If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? ― Dogen

To be in harmony with the wholeness of things is not to have anxiety over imperfections. ―Dōgen

 

“That sadness—the sadness of loss—is a different flavor than the sadness of reckoning. The sadness of reckoning feels visceral and angry and tinged with violence. It feels healable, somehow, with revenge or justice. 

But the sadness of a lost childhood feels like yearning, impossible desire. It feels like a hollow, insatiable hunger. 

I’d spent my life telling myself I didn’t need a mommy or a daddy. But now I was beginning to realize that this hunger isn’t childish—it is a universal, primal need. We all want to be taken care of, and that’s okay. The woman who appears to me when I meditate, in her soft, baggy clothes—she isn’t quite the same as a parent, and she never will be. But she takes me into her arms and whispers, “I want to love you.” I lean in and let her.”

― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma page 231

The drug dealers are back and they are attracting a parade of addicted misfits. Mother's Day was a demented circus, a steady stream of drug addled humans teetering in the parking lot, terrifying everyone. The neighbors have been complaining to me over the fence, There's a woman living in the car! She was nodding off at 5AM! Yesterday when we came out with the dogs at 4:45AM, my husband was looking up at the Mars and Saturn. The dealer hidden in his car thought we were looking at him and he jumped out to identify himself. It's creepy and unsettling. We are all rattled. Every day we don't know what we're going to see when we pull into the shared parking lot. The daily zombie apocalypse. As long as the landlords get their rent money, they do not care.

It's not a waste if you are learning

Stephanie Foo's Memoir: What My Bones Know

I learned two critical things that day. First: Just because the wound doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean it’s healed. If it looks good and it feels good, it should be all good, right? But over the years I’d smoothed perfect white layers of spackle over gaping structural holes. 

And the second thing I learned was: My parents didn’t love me. It's not as if I hadn't suspected this. There was that whole childhood abandonment thing, after all. But in my head, there were reasons and excuses for this. And now, for the first time, I saw the truth—the real reason they could not love me, had never loved me. I believe that they hated themselves too much to love me; their sadness made them to selfish to see me at all. The reason I hadn't been loved had nothing at all to do with me or my behavior It had everything to do with them.

There are people who love me. I will be cared for And I have my capable self. Everything is going to be fine. 

My parents didn't love me, and it's okay.

― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma page 111.

“You don’t know what people are going through,” he said. “You don’t know what private battles they’re waging, either inside their own body or at home or out in the world. And so at the very least, you can simply be kind.”

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/19/metro/former-student-kidney-donation/

I was given talent, and if you are given it, it is your obligation to use it. Dennis Potter

You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their young. Dennis Potter

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. ― Dennis Potter

Dennis Potter: “The nowness of everything is absolutely wonderful. [...] If you see the present tense, boy do you see it, and boy can you celebrate it.”

Nirvana is where you are, provided you don’t object to it. Alan Watts

George Bilgere Poem

A Nice Place to Live

This summer, as the missiles went back and forth
between the one sobbing angry country and the other,
I went from the shallow end to the deep end,
my evening laps at the public pool,

wondering if there was something wrong with me
for not hating anyone that much.

Not the guy in the Hummer
who cut me off at the exit yesterday,
then gave me the finger.

Not my father, even in my worst moments.
Not even my ex-wife.
I’m a hater from the bush leagues, a small-time hater,

although I have, it’s true, gotten myself
through some long patches of self-pity
more or less on hatred alone.

Then I forget. Lose interest.
It’s called being white
and well-off in America,
where it’s all just handed to you
by a nice brown server with no English,
or a white person with bad teeth
and no dental plan.

And the gravy train is just so smooth
that when the big ideas—the ones
you would have died for, or even killed for,
the ones that take root and flower
only in the harshest desert climes,

wither inside you and die and turn to little figs
at the edge of your plate,
and you don’t even like figs—

then it’s time for a stroll down to Murphy’s
and a couple of beers with Roger
under the evening news.

And tonight it’s a weeping bearded man
holding the tailfin of a rocket
that killed his son,

a rocket made by all of us
sitting here at the bar tonight,
waiting to turn it to the Indians game.

Nice people, basically.
We don’t even bother to hate him.

https://www.georgebilgere.com/a-nice-place-to-live

 Monkey Mind

by Steve Orlen

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life. For example, I looked at that girl over there In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep. Walking home, I asked her both questions And instead of answering she told her mother Who told the teacher who told my father. After all these years, I can almost feel his hand Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision, Then coming down so hard it took my breath away, And up again in that small arc To smack his open palm against my butt. I’m a slow learner And still sometimes I’m sitting here wondering what my father Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five, Plunged down into his easy chair half the night Listening to Bach cantatas. I know he knows At every minute of every hour that he’s going to die Because he told my mother and my mother told me. I didn’t cry or cry out or say I’m sorry. I lay across his lap and wondered what He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

__________

From The Elephant’s Child: New and Selected Poems, 1978–2005, Ausable Press, 2006, by STEVE ORLEN.

Gabriel Barsawme: True freedom is the quiet, radical act of slowing down —

We do not need to fix our brokenness. We need to hear it. 

https://gabrielbarsawme.substack.com/p/the-freedom-to-fall-apart 

Gabriel Barsawme is a Licensed Social Worker, researcher, and ordained minister working at the intersection of psychology, theology, and philosophy.  

Loved this book

Not My Father's Son: A Memoir Book by Alan Cumming Not My Father's Son is a memoir by actor Alan Cumming that explores his difficult childhood in Scotland, marked by an abusive father, and his journey to uncover family secrets, prompted by a genealogy show. The book intertwines his past with his present, revealing shocking truths about his father and his maternal grandfather, leading to a profound re-evaluation of his identity and family history. It's known for its honest, witty, and moving account of overcoming trauma and finding peace.