what happens if I sit with that?

Only a self-centered self, a self that is attached to mind and body, can be hurt. That self is really a concept formed of thoughts we believe in. […] Suppose I feel I have no friends, and I’m very lonely. What happens if I sit with that? I begin to see that my feeling of loneliness are really just thoughts. As a matter of fact, I’m simply sitting here. Maybe I’m sitting alone in my room, without a date. Nobody has called me, and I fell lonely. In fact, however, I’m simply sitting. The loneliness and the misery are simply my thoughts, my judgments that things should be other than they are. I haven’t seen through them; I haven’t recognized that my misery is manufactured by me. The truth of the matter is, I’m simply sitting in my room. It takes time before we can see that just to sit is okay, just fine. I cling to the thought that if I don’t have pleasant and supportive company, I am miserable.

I’m not recommending a life in which we cut ourselves off in order to be free of attachment. Attachment concerns not what we have, but our opinions about what we have.



Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)


above, Morning Sun by Edward Hopper,1952; Oil on canvas, 28 1/8 x 40 1/8 inches; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio -- to see more please refer to:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/interior/