People who believe they can learn, actually can ("growth mindset"). People who don't believe they can learn, struggle to learn ("fixed mindset").
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." Pablo PIcasso
Looking back, I understand perfectly why I didn't recognize myself. What I saw in the mirror was my true self. But the life I was living didn't reflect my true self.
Your true self is constantly in conflict with the expectations of the world around you.
The only way to become your true self is to find the art inside you and make it real. Your art is the best expression possible of who you really are. You make art when you take your passions, your interests, and even your compassion for others, and combine them to make something uniquely yours.
Whether it's your fault or not is irrelevant. You are responsible.
It's a crowded world out there. Sometimes it feels as if every good idea is taken. But if you follow your curiosities, they'll eventually converge into something completely original.
One factor is absolutely critical to doing something notable: You have to listen to the voice in your head and pursue its ideas.
It's better to be right one time out of a hundred than to be right zero times out of zero.
If we believe we're going to make a grand masterpiece, we can justify not starting. Our egos will fool us into thinking that we need to do more research, or that we just need to carve out a few months of free time to rent a cabin in the woods.
That cringe-worthy expression "They all look alike" has long been considered the province of being a bigot. But it is actually a function of biology and exposure. Our brains are better at processing faces that evoke a sense of familiarity.
Although we tend to think about seeing as objective and straightforward, how and what we see can be heavily shaped by our own mind-set.
Without our permission or even awareness, stereotypes come to guide what we see, and in so doing seem to validate themselves. That makes them stronger, more pervasive, and resistant to change.
Black people are stopped by the police at disproportionate levels and are more likely to have force used upon them. I know how our sons are perceived in society generally, and that can affect how they're perceived and treated by police.
Our attention can be driven by stereotypic associations that we are not even aware are operating on us.
The researchers examined whether racial bias was related to the capacity to do harm. White participants rated black men as more capable of doing harm than white men of the same physical stature and size. Black participants exhibited no such bias. They then showed nonblack study participants a series of faces and asked them to imagine that the person depicted had "behaved aggressively toward a police officer but was not wielding a weapon." Study participants thought that the police officer would be justified in using more force to subdue the black men in this situation compared with the white men.
When black drivers are pulled over, they are more than twice as likely as white drivers to have been stopped for a high-discretion equipment violation as opposed to a moving violation. That's according to a meta-analysis of 18.5 million traffic stops across the country between 2010 and 2016.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized nation in the world. We account for only 4.4 percent of the world's population but house 22 percent of the world's prisoners.
In death penalty cases, where the stakes are irrevocably high, race can act as the thumb on the scale of justice. Decades of research have shown that murderers of white victims are significantly more likely to be sentenced to death than murderers of black people -- even when controlling for nonracial factors that could influence sentencing.
There is something destabilizing about having to accept that your tribe is seen as a permanent outlier in your country's collective consciousness. That, still, your dark skin is seen as a stain that no measure of progress can cleanly erase.
Part of the stigma of black skin has to do with cultural associations that mark white as a sign of purity and black as something else entirely.
The South was especially perilous for colored girls, who were often preyed upon by white men who knew there would be no consequences for raping and assaulting them. According to the city's historical records, it wasn't until 1965 -- long after my mother's family had left the South -- that a white man was ever convicted of a crime committed against a black person in Anniston.
Living with diversity means getting comfortable with people who might not always think like you, people who don't have the same experience or perspectives. That process can be challenging. But it might also be an opportunity to expand your horizons and examine your own buried bias.
As recently as 2015, one of the nation's largest textbook companies was still publishing a high school geography text in Texas that portrayed slaves as "workers" who'd cruised here on ships from their native Africa to toil in southern agricultural fields.
Research shows that people tend to grossly overestimate the extent to which they will speak out against prejudice, particularly when they are not the target of the offense. And standing up against racism can be dangerous.
A study of flourishing white supremacist networks on Twitter in 2016 found that two hashtags drew the most retweets: #WhiteGenocide and #DonaldTrump.
Moving forward requires continued vigilance. It requires us to constantly attend to who we are, how we got that way, and all the selves we have the capacity to be.
The applications with black-sounding names were 50 percent less likely to get a callback than applicants with white-sounding names. The racial difference emerged regardless of the applicant's gender, regardless of where the ad was placed (Chicago or Boston), regardless of the occupational category of the job (sales, administrative support, clerical, or customer service), and regardless of whether the position was entry level or management.
This particular practice of fitting in is so widespread that it even has a name: Whitening the Resume. Two-thirds of the students the team interviewed either engaged in the practice or knew someone who did. In the same way that minorities on the home-stay platform Airbnb might curate their profiles to increase their odds of booking a spot, these students -- all from top-tier private universities -- curate their resumes to keep from getting knocked out of the job process in the very first round.
Neuroimaging studies show that our brains work harder to process positive information about out-group members than negative information. And we do just the opposite with in-group members.
Black people regularly encounter racial bias in all types of businesses and in all types of routine interactions. They attract outsized attention from sales and security personnel, who follow them around in retail stores. They pay more than whites for cars at auto dealerships, even when they have equivalent credit histories. They wait longer to be helped at restaurants. They receive poorer service. And as social media has so graphically made clear, individual black consumers are often subjected to racial epithets from other customers, insulted by clerks, and challenged -- or even physically removed -- by police.
This book is a collection of Seung Sahn Soen-sa's teaching in America -- dialogues, stories, formal Zen interview, Dharma Speeches, and letters. The words arise as situations arise. Each situation is a game, and a matter of life and death.
Original nature has no opposites. Speech and words are not necessary. Without thinking, all things are exactly as they are. The truth is just like this.
In a cookie factory, different cookies are baked in the shape of animals, cars, people, and airplanes. They all have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same dough, and they all taste the same. In the same way, all things in the universe -- the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains, rivers, people, and so forth -- have different names and forms, but they are all made from the same substance.
Four blind men went to the zoo and visited the elephant. One blind man touched its side and said, "The elephant is like a wall." The next blind man touched its trunk and said, "The elephant is like a snake." The next blind man touched its leg and said, "The elephant is like a column." The last blind man touched its tail and said, "The elephant is like a broom." Then the four blind men started to fight, each one believing that his opinion was the right one. Each only understood the part he had touched; none of them understood the whole.
Throw away all opinions, all likes and dislikes, and only keep the mind that doesn't know. This is very important. Don't-know mind is the mind that cuts off all thinking. When all thinking has been cut off, you become empty mind. This is before thinking. Your before-thinking, my before-thinking mind, all people's before-thinking minds are the same. This is your substance. Your substance, my substance, and the substance of the whole universe become one. So the tree, the mountain, the cloud, and you become one.
It is like a cat hunting a mouse. The mouse has retreated into its hole, but the cat waits outside the hole for hours on end without the slightest movement. It is totally concentrated on the mouse-hole. This is Zen mind -- cutting off all thinking and directing all your energy to one point.
Don't make difficult, don't make easy. Just practice.
Dogen says, "Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way."
If we cut off all thinking and return to empty mind, then your mind, my mind, and all people's mind are the same. We become one with the whole universe.
No one knows when he will die. It could be next year, or next week, or in the next five minutes. So put it all down, now, at this very moment. Keep your mind as if you were already dead. Then all your attachments will disappear, and it won't matter whether you study Zen or not. Right now you think, "I am alive, I am strong." So you have many desires, many attachments. Only think, "I am dead." A dead man has no desires.
Ma-jo said, "Where is your question coming from? This is your treasure. It is precisely what is making you ask the question at this very moment. Everything is stored in this precious treasure-house of yours. It is there at your disposal, you can use it as you wish, nothing is lacking. You are the master of everything. Why, then, are you running away from yourself and seeking for things outside?"
When you hold on to your own opinions, it is very difficult to control your karma, and your life will remain difficult.
The Buddha sprang from the right side of his mother and took seven steps in each of the four directions. He then looked once each way, pointed one finger to the sky, and touched the ground with his other hand. He said, "In the sky above and the sky below, only I am holy."
Actions themselves are not good and not bad; only the intention is important. If you think something is good, it is good; if you think it is bad, it is bad. If you want to cut off all thinking and all karma, you must practice Zen.
The true you is without six senses. But the six senses use you, so you ask ten thousand questions. You must return to your true self. Then you will understand.
Having no opposites is the Absolute.
If you desire something, then you are attached to it. If you reject it, you are just as attached to it.
The sea doesn't say, "Your water is dirty, you can't flow into me." It accepts all waters and mixes them and all become sea. So if you keep the Buddha mind, your mind will be like the great sea. This is the great sea of enlightenment.
Zen teaches us to cut off all discriminating thoughts and to understand that the trust of the universe is ultimately our own true self.
When appearing and disappearing disappear, then this stillness is bliss.
The sutra says "Water becomes square or round according to the shape of the container it is put in. In the same way, people become good or bad according to the friends they have."
The more you want enlightenment, the further away it will be.
If one person makes great effort, if another person makes no effort -- don't worry. All that you need to be concerned about is your own job.
A truly great man has no words or speech -- only action.
