Mark Epstein
Mark Epstein
Mark Epsteinis an American author and psychotherapist, integrating both Buddha's and Sigmund Freud's approaches to trauma, who writes about their interplay. In his most recent book, The Trauma of Everyday Life, he interprets the Buddha’s spiritual journey as grounded in Buddha's personal childhood trauma...
teacher buddhist space
As my Buddhist teachers have shown me, wisdom emerges in the space around words as much as from language itself.
warts term direct
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.
spiritual addiction soul
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.
real way realizing
We are looking for a way to feel more real, but we do not realize that to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unknown.
pain grief suffering
Trauma never goes away completely, it changes perhaps, softens some with time, but never completely goes away.
needs need-a-change
Anger is sign that something needs to change.
inspirational teacher mind
Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.
buddhist disappointment moving
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.
thinking
We are what we think, having become what we thought.
self two anxiety
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.
past talking people
It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.
mean meditation ego
Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.
self land feelings
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.
letting-go buddhism self
Buddhism teaches us that happiness does not come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. In Buddhism, the impenetrable, separate, and individuated self is more of the problem than the solution.