If given ten minutes,
how would you manage your mind?


Momentary liberation may be a matter of purifying ourselves of greed or anger by rolling around a single thought when greed and anger arise to harm the purity of our minds. Daily liberation is a matter of setting aside time during the day for Zen meditation?be it ten minutes, thirty minutes, or sixty or more minutes?so that the sense of self disappears. Liberation should also be discussed in terms of its different dimensions, but the most primary form of liberation is the light “no-self” feeling that one senses when the feeling of the self disappears.

Preface 6

Chapter 1 The “Special Forces” of Happiness

Life Is Cultivation 11
Declaring Yourself a Living Buddha 16
The Three Aspects of the Living Buddha 23
The View of Great Aspiration: “When We Emanate Great Hope and Love,
Our Greed, Anger, and Delusion Vanish” 29
The Beauty of “But” 35
The Seeds of Tomorrow Lie in Dreams Today 40
Living Here and Now 45
Awakened as We Are 51
Establishing a Path of Practice 57
The “Special Forces” of Happiness 63
A Pebble Preaches the Dharma: The Dharma Preached by the Dharmakaya 69
Conversation Topics 75
Ten Minutes of Meditation, Ten Minutes to Liberation 80
The 110 Idea: Life and Values 86
The Three Beats: The Basic Faith of “Confronting Spaces” 90
Meditating on Death 95

Chapter 2 Tending the Garden of the Mind

The Conditions of Happiness 105
Jeukbi 1: “A Cup Is Not a Cup, but What We Have Named ‘Cup’” 111
Jeukbi 2: A Secret Plan for Hope 117
Your Share, My Share 123
Lift Up the Consciousness: The Ten Levels of Contentment 129
Gratitude Meditation 135
Tending the Garden of the Mind 140
The Five Main Forms of “Bad Talking” 145
Riding on the Infinite 151
Buddhism’s Dual Truths 157
A Dedication to Humankind 163
Have You Been Happy Lately? 169
Packaging Is Also a Gift 175
Mind Practice for Accepting the Pains of Disease 180

Chapter 3 Gaining the Ember of Awakening

The Not-the-Self View 1: Siddhartha’s Puzzle 189
The Not-the-Self View 2: The Self Is the Root of Suffering and Warfare 194
The Not-the-Self View 3: When We Dismantle a Cart, It Is No Longer a Cart 199
The Not-the-Self View 4: The Mind Is Drawn by Thoughts 205
Gaining the Ember of Awakening 211