In my sangha, where I practice, part of the daily recollection is reminding ourselves that the purpose of our practice is to wake up and end suffering. There's an interesting Zen mind tweak happening in there -- because if we focus only on ending suffering - there is no way we will wake up. And when we principally focus on waking up the ego floats by like a wisp of smoke, ephemeral, transient, diaphanous. Lots of traditions talk about suffering. Lots agree that suffering is r

The human mind; pulsing, sweating, striving, outdoing itself writhes against what is, even its own is-ness, scrambles against change. The tides nonetheless rise and fall, come and go, as breath does, in suchness. The tides are still, even in their undulations, watching all the comings and goings, the churchgoers and the church-comers hoping their prostrations might take the edge off (while the junkies just use needles, and the yogis cling to the lifeboat of mantra) Meanwhile