Common Quote by Mark Epstein

“We all want to be normal. Life, even normal life, is arduous, demanding, and ultimately threatening. We all have to deal with it, and none of us really knows how. We are all traumatized by life, by its unpredictability, its randomness, its lack of regard for our feelings and the losses it brings…” quote by Mark Epstein — Download Open image

““We all want to be normal. Life, even normal life, is arduous, demanding, and ultimately threatening. We all have to deal with it, and none of us really knows how. We are all traumatized by life, by its unpredictability, its randomness, its lack of regard for our feelings and the losses it brings. Each in our own way, we suffer.””

Mark Epstein

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More by Mark Epstein

Anger is sign that something needs to change.

Mark Epstein

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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,…

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“the Buddha may well have been the original psychoanalyst, or, at least, the first to use the mode of analytic inquiry that Freud was…

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The willingness to face traumas - be they large, small, primitive or fresh - is the key to healing from them. They may never…

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One of the age-old truths about love is that while it offers unparalleled opportunities for union and the lifting of ego boundaries, it also…

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The central premise of this book is that the Western psychological notion of what it means to have a self is flawed.

Mark Epstein

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“In making a path like the Buddha, we discover our own capacities for relationship. Doing this is like feeling our way in the dark. We need a healthy appreciation for what kind of obstacles we are facing within ourselves, and we need a method for working our way around those obstacles. It is in this sense that the path is…

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“The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but…

Mark Epstein

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.

Mark Epstein

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“A recently deceased American Zen master and navy veteran, John Daido Loori, used to say that those who think Buddhism is just about stillness…

Mark Epstein

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“The early parent-child environment, the balance between being and doing, lives on in the mind. Mindfulness offers an opportunity to see these patterns clearly.…

Mark Epstein

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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…

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More Common quotes

A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.

Rowan Williams

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We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what…

John Dryden

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The ability of the gospel to unite us on common strengths and common truths is one of the great miracles . . . of the gospel.

Jeffrey R. Holland

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Our times demand the declaration of the world's resources as the common heritage of all people.

Jacque Fresco

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Neither Italian fascism nor German national "socialism" have anything in common with such a [Soviet socialistic] society, primarily because private ownership of factories, plants,…

Joseph Stalin

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When you have a cavity in your tooth and you let it get worse, eventually you have to get a root canal. If you…

Olivia Newton-John

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There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet everybody fools us out of it who has a mind to do it. If a man borrows a paltry sum of money, there must needs be bonds and securities, and every common civility is presently charged upon account. But he who has my time thinks…

Seneca the Younger

Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.

Albert Einstein

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A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional…

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood