Mistakes as Our Greatest Teachers
"Over time we see how often our worst mistakes and most ignominious failures have turned out to be our greatest teachers. Some of our greatest disasters turn out to have powerfully positive consequences for our lives, even though it can take a while for that to become clear. Given all this, we become less worried about making mistakes, although we are regretful when we make them, especially when others are hurt in the process. Zen Master Dogen famously referred to his long life of spiritual endeavor as 'one continuous mistake.' "
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Maturity through Loving Others
"Taking our places as mature individuals in this world is not work we can do alone. We need others to help us, and we need to help others. For true maturity can never exist self-contained; it is relational, for we are relational beings, co-created each moment with what we come in contact with. Because we change, because we are open to and affected by the world, maturity must involve our capacity to know and love others."
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Sympathetic Joy
"In classical Buddhism there is a wonderful practice for cultivating the nurturing heart called sympathetic joy: imagine that the success or benefit that someone else is enjoying is also your own success or benefit. When someone wins, even if they have defeated you in the process, rather than saying, 'What about me?' you train yourself to say, 'How wonderful; this joy is mine also.' Look for opportunities to replace your habitual way of thinking with the discipline of thinking in this new way."
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Gratefulness to Parents
"In the end our maturity demands that in accepting our parents we find a way to be grateful to them, no matter how terrible a job they may have done with us. To come to this acceptance and gratitude for our parents is to accept and be grateful for the lives we have lived."
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Radical Openness to Another
"Listening is basic and crucial because it is the soil out of which all the fruits of our human relationships grow. Listening takes radical openness to another, and radical openness requires surrender. This is why listening is frightening, although we don't usually think of it that way. It requires a kind of fearless self-confidence that most of us have never developed."
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
Listening as Fertile Ground for Growth
"The practice of listening will always raise more questions than it answers. In this it is the fertile soil for the development of true human maturity."
— Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up
The Quiet Power of Forgiveness
" 'All is forgiven, all is redeemed, the power of love is infinite.' Feel the quiet power of these phrases."
— Sailing Home: Using the Wisdom of Homer's Odyssey to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls
Self-Forgiveness
"To forgive yourself seems the hardest form of forgiveness. In Zen practice, simply allowing yourself to be yourself, just as you are, is considered the mark of awakening. Short of this, you are at best slightly embarrassed about who you are, and at worst, tortured by it."
— in Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism by Susan Moon
Keeping Faith in the Course
"In Zen you develop faith in the course of practicing — little by little it ripens in you."
— in Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks by Fenton Johnson
Imaginative Vision
"A fully developed imagination enables us to live in a world that's ennobling without dwelling in some fantasy land. For a Buddhist, enlightenment is the development of the faculty of the imaginative vision that enables us to see the world in a transfigured way. That's what the Catholic mass is about, right?"
— in Keeping Faith: A Skeptic's Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks by Fenton Johnson
