One day I will show you
the dirt beneath my nails
and you’ll know
not only of the things
I’ve buried and the graves
I’ve dug, but of the weeds
picked and the flowers
grown.

… and I’m not afraid of a beating. Know, sir, that such beatings are not only not painful, but are even a delight to me. For I myself cannot do without them. It’s better: let her beat me. Let her ease her soul.

…nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

All that philosophy can do is to destroy idols. And that means not creating a new one — for instance as in “absence of an idol.

I have been this way since the day that I was born
I have been trying to change but I am so easily bored
by the idea of saying ‘thank you’ and ‘how are you’

I would like to be loved and I am trying my best
But the devil is inside me and he is coming out through my chest
And he is whispering in my ear that everyone in the world would like me dead

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.