Quotes by Mark Epstein

“I think the important thing, and the lesson to be learned from England, is that cautionary, very cautionary behavior and activity is mandated in this case.”

“Changing the standards on the books is not the same as changing the meals themselves.”

“I just remember that there were a couple of times I was dating somebody for a relatively long period of time, and by the time New Years came around and made its way to Valentines Day, I remember thinking I was really letting myself settle for feelings I really didnt feel satisfied with. Valentines Day is really a time where you take a look where you are.”

“According to the court, there were no improprieties regarding honesty, expenses, gift giving; he just dismissed without merit all of those allegations. ... I think the chancellors decision with regard to Mister Ovitz is rock solid.”

“I must refute the implication ... that a landscape architect is a glorified gardener. A landscape architect -- unlike a landscape designer, nurseryman or gardener -- must complete a rigorous education from an accredited university program.”

“We dont want to make the wrong decision and increase (sea turtle) mortality. Were going to do a ghost crab study.”

Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.

The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but we all just are. The movement from object to subject, as described in both Eastern meditation and modern psychotherapy, is training for this union, but its perception usually comes as a surprise, even when this shift is well under way. It is a kind of grace. The emphasis on sexual relations in the tantric teachings make it clear that the ecstatic surprise of orgasm is the best approximation of this grace.

While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of being, my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.

Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.

There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can. ... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires.

We look to the accumulation of sensory pleasures to give our lives meaning. We have the ability now to consume anything we want and this capacity far exceeds our actual needs. With so much at our fingertips, a kind of gluttony pervades our mind-sets.

Awakening does not mean a change in difficulty, it means a change in how those difficulties are met.

When we stop distancing ourselves from the pain in the world, our own or others, we create the possibility of a new experience, one that often surprises because of how much joy, connection, or relief it yields. Destruction may continue, but humanity shines through.

Enlightenment does not mean getting rid of anything. It means changing ones frame of reference so that all things become enlightening.

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.

[The Buddha] is not dividing himself into worthy and unworthy pieces; he is one being, indivisible, immune from the tendency to double back and beat up on himself. He has seen the worst in himself and not been taken down.

To be free, to come to terms with our lives, we have to have a direct experience of ourselves as we really are, warts and all.

In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.

Trauma, if it doesnt destroy us, wakes us up both to our own relational capacities and to the suffering of others. Not only does it makes us hurt, it makes us more human, caring, and wise.