“To hate the hate was just more hate; to reject the rejection was just more rejection; to judge the judging, just more judging.”

“When I was young, I lacked certainty, too,” he says. “I have the certainty, now, of not needing certainty. I have the certainty, of uncertainty. The peace, with being uncertain. All is good. All is holy. Whatever you choose, it can be fine. Hatred never ceases with hatred, but with love alone is healed. Rejection never ceases with rejection, but with acceptance alone is healed.”

“You just do it, then if you die, you die.”

“Why hold secrets? Why harbor anything? Let me just share everything with you. Let me just talk. Let me let go of the censor that is within me ... I’m tired of trying to be someone other than who I am.”

“Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disripute, these are just the worldly winds of existence.”

“There were so many beliefs which we had about the world, which then influenced everything, everything, about how we saw the world and interacted in the world and were with others. Everything. It was profound to me, amazing, the ramifications, the implications, the far-reaching impact that one’s beliefs could have on the world. It was actually mind-blowing for me. Figuratively speaking. Like, it was just, holy shit. Look at that. And nobody, hardly anybody sees it. They’re just ideas. Ideas. And yet, I’d believed them for so long, and still, was still shirking free of them. How was it that we believed in them, so readily, so easily?”

“And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I’m going to hit back, and hard.”