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Posts by Carolina Flaminia Perrone

On a journey of self-discovery and discovery of the world... taking notes and photos as she goes along.... Collecting random bits of beauty on her blog smallcirclebigcircle.com and keeping track of her various articles on smallsosmall.com.

Carolina Flaminia Perrone's Website

Why We Should Stop Trying

“If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.” ~Edith Wharton

Several years ago a well-known Zen Master accepted me as a long distance student. In one of our first email exchanges I wrote, “Dear Teacher, I am trying to sit every day for thirty minutes and in my practice I am trying to follow my breath.”

“Please,” he wrote back, “stop trying. You are your breath.”

I remember reading his words and feeling perplexed, confused, almost annoyed. What in the world did he mean? Wasn’t it obvious that we had no choice but …