“By weaving our opinions, prejudices, strategies, and emotions into a solid reality, we try to make a big deal out of ourselves, out of our pain, out of our problems. But things are not as solid, predictable, or seamless as they seem.

In sitting meditation, our practice is to watch our thoughts arise, label them “thinking,” and return of breath. If we were trying to find the beginning, middle, and end of each thought, we’d soon discover that there is no such thing. Trying to find the moment when one thought becomes another is like trying to find the moment when boiling water turns into steam. Yet we habitually string our thoughts together into a story that tricks us into believing that our identity, our happiness, our pain, and our problems are all solid and separate entities. In fact, like thoughts, all these constructs are constantly changing. Each situation, each thought, each word, each feeling is just a passing memory.

Wisdom is a fluid process, not something concrete that can be added up or measured. The warrior-bodhisattva trains with the attitude that everything is a dream. LIFE is a DREAM,; death is a dream; waking is a dream; sleeping is a dream. The dream is the direct immediacy of our experience. Trying to hold on to any of it by buying our story line only blocks our wisdom.”

– Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty