We are citizens of two worlds - the outer world of names and forms and the inner world of thoughts and desires, emotions. To be free, we must learn to act skillfully according to our objective knowledge of both worlds.

“Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, has written about what he calls “the tyranny of freedom,” arguing that the sheer volume of choices in American life has come to feel oppressive and overwhelming: the proliferation ratchets up expectations and anxieties (there’s always something better around the corner) and overloads the psyche..

…The mathematics of desire mitigates precisely that anxiety. A woman-particularly a woman who feels fundamentally disempowered and uncertain-makes up new rules, replaces external constraints with internal ones, installs systems of mastery that operate from the inside out, the tyranny of freedom reconfigured as the tyranny of self.”

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one; always remaining in one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you’re banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only the burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you.

“An analogy for bodhichitta is the rawness of a broken heart. Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all.”