If we try to control our experiences, we are setting ourselves up for failure. The essence of life is that it is challenging, and we will never get it right. To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake, is to experience each moment completely new and fresh.
Knowledge and skill are neutral. They are to be used, that’s all, but mastery should not be used to bolster self-image. We should not allow ourselves to be categorized by what we know. It is better to free ourselves from the limits of tightly defined identities.
The world we live in takes great courage and patience. Giving your talents and resources to the world without restraint, the barriers of individuality breakdown, you then become one with the receiver and both become the giver.
Goodness should be an attribute of character rather than an accidental or isolated occurrence. Likewise teaching others, everything depends on consistency, for it is through repetition the pupil can make the material his own.
Quote: Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it.