Howard Fast

The hardest thing is to be here. The mind suddenly sees itself as a prisoner.

tears loose to do what it has always done, to dream, to fancy, to race aimlessly like a squirrel in a cage, to hold conversations with itself – anything to avoid the reality of here.

be here is almost all of it, to be here and not anywhere else, to be present. Not to be in the past, with memories and regrets and things that might have been but never were – nor to be in the future, planning, dreaming and escaping, not to be elsewhere, in another city, in another country, or with another or in a fantasy or in a daydream or caught up in some invented inner conversation.

We are not in a monastery; we are in life, and Zen must be a part of our lives, not a replacement for it.