Introduction
“bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp”: Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), chapter 21.
“Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom”: For more on this, see Yamada Mumon Roshi, Lectures on the Ten Oxherding Pictures, trans. Victor Sōgen Hori (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), p. 5.
Mara remained a force: Stephen Batchelor, Living with the Devil (New York: Riverhead, 2004), pp. 16–28.
After the ecstasy: Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry (New York: Bantam, 2001).
An aged Chinese monk: Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart (New York: Bantam, 1993), p. 154.
Path is there to be cultivated: Stephen Batchelor, After Buddhism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), p. 83.
Chapter One: Right View
“Don’t make such a big deal”: All unattributed quotations from Arlene Shechet are from her correspondence with Jenelle Porter, December 22, 2014, in preparation for Jenelle Porter’s Arlene Shechet: All at Once (Munich/London/New York: Delmonico Books–Prestel and The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2015), pp. 12–31.
Some translators use “realistic”: See Robert A. F. Thurman, Essential Tibetan Buddhism (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
“not a recipe for a pious Buddhist existence”: Batchelor, After Buddhism, p. 127.
Chapter Two: Right Motivation
Engler, has a story: Engler’s story about Munindra was relayed to me in personal correspondence. It was reproduced in my Open to Desire (New York: Gotham, 2005).
“dharma means living the life fully”: For more on Munindra, see Mirka Knaster’s Living the Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2010).
“Oral rage”: I presented a truncated version of this episode in Thoughts without a Thinker (New York: Basic, 1995), pp. 170–72.
Winnicott wrote of how inevitable failures: See, for instance, Donald W. Winnicott, Babies and Their Mothers (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988).
a famous paper of Winnicott’s: Donald W. Winnicott, “Hate in the Counter-Transference,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 30 (1949), pp. 69–74.
“However much he loves his patients”: Ibid., p. 69.
“A mother has to be able”: Ibid., p. 73.
Chapter Three: Right Speech
“Each of us tells ourselves”: Sharon Salzberg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience (New York: Riverhead, 2002), p. 1.
“an ambient, opaque silence”: Ibid., p. 3.
“The story I was telling myself”: Ibid., p. 3.
“You know what your problem is”: Ibid., p. 5.
“Just showing up”: Ibid., p. 16.
“participate, engage,” and “link up”: Ibid., p. 16.
“For when all is said and done”: Sigmund Freud, “The Dynamics of Transference” (1912), in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12 (London: Hogarth, 1958), p. 108.
“You can do anything you want to do”: Amy Schmidt, Knee Deep in Grace: The Extraordinary Life and Teaching of Dipa Ma (Lake Junaluska, NC: Present Perfect, 2003), p. 58.
“Amid the howling wind”: Mason Currey, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (New York: Knopf, 2013), pp. 90–91.
talking with my eighty-eight-year-old mother: This discussion was first published in my article “The Trauma of Being Alive,” New York Times, August 3, 2013.
Chapter Four: Right Action
“Acceptance of not knowing”: Donald W. Winnicott, “Mind and Its Relation to the Psyche-Soma” (1949), in Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis (London: Hogarth, 1975), p. 137.
“Learn the backward step”: Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History; Volume 2: Japan (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 79.
Huike says to Bodhidharma: Andre Ferguson, Zen’s Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings (Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2011), p. 20.
The mind’s empty, aware nature: Joseph Goldstein, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013), p. 314.
“Flirtation, . . . as a social art form”: Michael Vincent Miller, Teaching a Paranoid to Flirt: The Poetics of Gestalt Therapy (Gouldsboro, ME: Gestalt Journal Press, 2011), p. 116.
“My analyst looked up briefly”: Louise Glück, Faithful and Virtuous Night (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), p. 38.
Chapter Five: Right Livelihood
four kinds of happiness: Nyanaponika Thera and Hellmuth Hecker, Great Disciples of the Buddha: Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy (Boston: Wisdom, 2003), p. 352.
“Right Livelihood is not only about”: Goldstein, Mindfulness, p. 387.
a murderer named Angulimala: For more on this story, see my Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (New York: Broadway, 1998), p. 56.
Chapter Six: Right Effort
“Tell me, Sona”: Nyanaponika Thera, Aṅguttara Nikāya: Discourses of the Buddha (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1975), p. 155.
“The rule for the doctor”: Sigmund Freud, “Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis” (1912), in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 12 (London: Hogarth, 1958), p. 112.
“It must not be forgotten”: Ibid., p. 112.
“To put it in a formula”: Ibid., p. 115.
“The basis of the treatment”: Donald W. Winnicott, “Two Notes on the Use of Silence” (1963), in Psycho-analytic Explorations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 81.
“a child, an invalid, one in the flush of youth”: Richard Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 64.
Chapter Seven: Right Mindfulness
“With excessive thinking and pondering”: “Dvedhāvitakka Sutta” (chapter 19), The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya, trans. Bhikkhu Ñānamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), p. 208.
Chapter Eight: Right Concentration
good example of this comes from Dan Harris: See Dan Harris, 10% Happier (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).
“I’m not trying, it’s just happening”: Ibid., p. 138.
“like the fleet of choppers”: Ibid., p. 138.
“Empty-handed I entered the world”: Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems (Boston: Tuttle, 1986), p. 108.
Epilogue
describing the relief that comes from getting over yourself: Shunryū Suzuki (Suzuki Roshi), Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Boston: Shambhala, 1970, 2006).