*Susan Murphy* # Progressive Summary Hits you from the first page. Thoughts like koans. "The nonpartisan completeness of each moment." I am inspired to meditate after reading just a few pages. "Breath is the broker of this peace ..." # Definitions # Chapter Notes ## What is this Self? > The reasons to feel Earth’s distress arrive daily now, like the deepest rumblings of elephant love calls, inaudible yet received directly in the bones that lodge the heart. What scares you so deeply? Could it be a love cry from the Earth, earthing you, urging you back “home” to this interconnected reality? > > Caller on a podcast: “What do you mean by interconnected?” Pause, then the podcast guest, an ecologist, responds: “There is a species of moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds.” > With no goal or method or dream of conclusive answers, zazen comes alive with something bigger, more generous, and infinitely more promising than an eternally separate self could ever dream up. > When you choose not to object to what is, it has a much harder time becoming objectionable. And when you drop each niggling impulse to control or engineer your mind for outcomes, things as they are can finally meet and heal the fugitive, never-quite-willing-to-be-here self, who agreed to sit down and at least give it a good go. > The most alive and present state of mind dwells right on the point of the present moment—an invaluable asset to a world in distress. # Quotes # References