"Relinquishment is letting go of everything that is not authentic and natural. It is returning to zero by peeling back the onion of pretentiousness, layer after layer. When we begin, we do not know the difference between an authentic life and the one we are living. We discover the difference through persistent self-observation and by challenging our conditioning. As our conditioning and the accompanying commentary of our life reveal themselves to be untrue, we learn to relinquish what is unreal and abide in what is real. As we move toward that realization, we see how much of our life is lived in excess of our needs and how much of our thinking obstructs our natural presence. An organic simplicity results from that awareness.

"One aspect of authenticity is a reduction in sensory allurement, because the world no longer entices us as it once did. Relinquishment sometimes carries the tone of denial or forced abstinence, but the definition of 'relinquishment' that I am using is not a willful withdrawal or ascetic training; it is a natural by-product of seeing emptiness. Paradoxically, beauty, appreciation, and intimacy increase in proportion to the decrease in sensory desire. An authentic person is not cold or disengaged, but alive, vibrant, fully embodied, and intimately available in and through her life.

"The Buddha speaks about this in the following passage: 'For some people, contact, the point where sense and object meet, is enthralling. And so they are washed by the tides of being, drifting along an empty, pointless road. . . . But others come to understand their sense activity, and because they understand it, the stillness fills them with delight. They see just what contact does, and so their craving ends; they realize total calm.'

"As we relinquish, we come to terms with emptiness. We become driven by the primary question, 'What is left when everything unessential is abandoned?' That question comes from the heart that longs to end the burden of self. We see the senseless, self-induced struggle of our life, and we stop. That is relinquishment. It is not complex, detailed, or stressful; it is completely simple and utterly obvious."