zen moment

"We're here to get our present model repainted a little bit. If the car of our life is deep grey, we want to turn it into lavender or pink. But transformation means that the car may disappear altogether. Maybe instead of a car it will be a turtle. We don't even want to hear of such possibilities. We hope that the teacher will tell us something that will fix our present model. A lot of therapies merely provide techniques for improving the model. They tinker here and there, and we may even feel a lot better. Still, that is not a transformation. Transformation arises from a willingness that develops very slowly over time to be what life asks of us.

Most of us (myself included at times) are like children: we want something or somebody to give us what a small child wants from its parents. We want to be given peace, attention, comfort, understanding. If our life doesn't give us this, we think, 'A few years of Zen practice [please substitute D/s, slavery, submission, whatever, here] will do this for me.' No, they won't. That's not what practice is about. Practice is about opening ourselves so that this little 'I' that wants and wants and wants and wants and wants - that wants the whole world to be its parents, really - grows up."

- Charlotte Joko Beck