If you’ve had years of lived experience teaching you that it’s not safe to trust yourself, whether via parents, siblings or friends bearing messages that you’re not enough, you don’t know enough, you don’t do enough: read on.
Let’s define intimacy according to Soto Zen Buddhism.
When you’re intimate, you’ve forgotten yourself, there is no-trace; you’ve seen beyond persona and are connected with reality as it is. Wisdom beyond wisdom. Not as you or anyone else wishes it could or should be.
Our practice, and our reason for practice: to realize the three valences of intimacy, or the “three fold transparency” as referenced by dear teacher Roshi Joan Halifax, founder and Abbot of Upaya Zen Center. These valences have helped me shift my perspective and clear my thinking.
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