zen-and-the-art-of-happiness

Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations.

Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.

What determines each person's state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.

The answers are never "out there." All the answers are "in there," inside you, waiting to be discovered.

Your actions create an "energy vortex" that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture.

Hard to restrain, unstable is this mind; it flits wherever it lists. Good it is to control the mind. A controlled mind brings happiness.

I think of the friendships I've strained, the generosity I've exploited, the bridges I've torched. Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; with them, forgive yourself. There may be hope for me yet.

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rockIf you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,maybe you can grasp it.

Zen is a journey of exploration and a way of living that, in and of itself, does not belong to any one religion or tradition. It is about experiencing life in the here and now and about removing the dualistic distinctions between "I" and "you" between "subject" and "objective", between our spiritual and our ordinary, everyday activities.

There is only one way to achieve lasting happiness. That is simply: Be happy.

When nothing else worked, we created a holistic, hand-tailored program that saved Pax's life. At Passages, he and I use what we learned in curing him to help other discover the roots of their addiction or alcoholism and break free.

The best way for you to get that new experience is to change your response to what happens.