Getting Over Yourself

This concluding chapter presents some recommendations and advice regarding Buddhism. For Dogen, a famous Japanese Buddhist philosopher, anything the individual does can be a form of Buddhist practice as long as they do it with the right mindset. This counters a temptation to think of practice as something formal, something that happens only at a meditation center or a temple. But ideally, Buddhist practice is not limited in these sacred domains; it is everything that individual does in their life. This can sound overwhelming, but Dogen's insight is that practice is not something the individual does in order to reach enlightenment; it is enlightenment. Ultimately, the heart of Buddhism is recalibrating how the individual relates to themself and to the world. It is about confronting unpleasant realities directly, with an attitude of problem solving.