Steve Hagen

The only way we can be free in each moment is to become what each moment is.

[A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. _ [T]his can never match Reality, _ because the world isn't frozen.

[W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.

Whatever the world dishes up, we take it on--not on our own terms, but on the world's.

[F]ocus not on ourselves as a force in charge of the manipulation of others, but on how our lives interpenetrate those of others _ and _ all creatures of a dynamic universe.

Truth is not _ something to believe or disbelieve. The things we believe are always less than Truth[.]

The buddha-dharma _ is about directly seeing Truth, prior to forming any ideas about it. It is about responding to each particular situation as it comes _ , not according to some _ program of dos and don'ts.

The impossibility of arriving at Truth by giving up your own authority and following the lights of others. Such a path will only lead to an opinion.

[T]here is really nothing 'out there' to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.

This will never come again

[I]mpermanence [is] the very thing that makes [life] vibrant, wonderful, and alive.

What makes human life--which is inseparable from this moment--so precious is its fleeting nature. And not that it doesn't last but that it never returns again.

The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.

As we live out of such a mind, we become generous, with no sense of tolerance. We become patient, with no sense of putting up with anything. We become compassionate, with no sense of separation. And we become wise, with no sense of having to straighten anyone out.