Why We Should Stop Trying
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.” ~Edith Wharton
Several years ago a well-known Zen Master accepted me as a long distance student. In one of our first email exchanges I wrote, “Dear Teacher, I am trying to sit every day for thirty minutes and in my practice I am trying to follow my breath.”
“Please,” he wrote back, “stop trying. You are your breath.”
I remember reading his words and feeling perplexed, confused, almost annoyed. What in the world did he mean? Wasn’t it obvious that we had no choice but …
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