Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it - but take whatever comes with great trust, and only if comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

I moved gradually to this action. I had watched the connections among my delegates and their connection to their learning dissolve as soon as the breaks began and the phones came out. After a few years I had become unwilling to foster this loss any more. And I realized I was willing to lose business if necessary in order to stop this infiltration of the platform system of interruption. I wanted to restore the full, attentive, undistracted human mind to every minute of our study and practice. I have lost no business.

Learn how to give loving attention to your whole experience. Open yourself, even to those aspects you would rather do away with. Cultivate equanimity rather than searching for the next peak experience.

It takes time for the soul, so deep and complex, to sort itself out snd arrange itself for a decision. My own way is to wait and wait until the apple of decision is about to fall on its own. No doubt, I am extreme in my patience or temporizing. When I counsel others, I feel no rush. I think it’s important to gather oneself together before making a move. Many people make decisions just on the principle that you should do something. I’m afraid it may take a while for the soul to catch up with them.

This phrase, “flexible control,” describes the reconciliation of strength and submission. The Tao Te Ching recommends wu-wei: achieve things by not trying to achieve. But another quality helps turn masochism into flexible control—intelligence. You have to know when and how to surrender, even to whom to surrender.