Mark Epstein
Mark Epstein
Mark Epsteinis an American author and psychotherapist, integrating both Buddha's and Sigmund Freud's approaches to trauma, who writes about their interplay. In his most recent book, The Trauma of Everyday Life, he interprets the Buddha’s spiritual journey as grounded in Buddha's personal childhood trauma...
self two anxiety
Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.
past talking people
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
self land feelings
In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.
letting-go buddhism self
Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. In Buddhism, the impenetrable, separate, and individuated self is more of the problem than the solution.
healing thinking keys
The willingness to face traumas - be they large, small, primitive or fresh - is the key to healing from them. They may never disappear in the way we think they should, but maybe they don’t need to. Trauma is an ineradicable aspect of life. We are human as a result of it, not in spite of it.
sadness anxiety feelings
I have come to see that our problem is that we don't know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It's the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning.
letting-go buddhism self
When we seek happiness through accumulation, either outside of ourselves-from other people, relationships, or material goods-or from our own self-development, we are missing the essential point. In either case we are trying to find completion. But according to Buddhism, such a strategy is doomed. Completion comes not from adding another piece to ourselves but from surrendering our ideas of perfection.
according decision dismissed gift giving merit mister regarding rock
According to the court, there were no improprieties regarding honesty, expenses, gift giving; he just dismissed without merit all of those allegations. ... I think the chancellor's decision with regard to Mister Ovitz is rock solid.
activity behavior cautionary learned lesson
I think the important thing, and the lesson to be learned from England, is that cautionary, very cautionary behavior and activity is mandated in this case.
real independent dying
If things do not exist as fixed, independent entities, then how can they die? Our notion of death as the sudden expiration of that which was once so real starts to unwind. If things do not exist in their own right and are flickering rather than static, then we can no longer fear their ultimate demise. We may fear their instability, or their emptiness, but the looming threat of death starts to seem absurd. Things are constantly dying, we find. Or rather, they are constantly in flux, arising and passing away with each moment of consciousness.
book mean self
The central premise of this book is that the Western psychological notion of what it means to have a self is flawed.
real way realizing
We are looking for a way to feel more real, but we do not realize that to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unknown.
inspirational teacher mind
Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.
thinking ought
The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.