there's nothing better we can do than to wake up. She says Why do I say relative happiness? No matter how much we may feel that our life is happy still our life is based on a self, we cannot have a final resolution. Why can there not be a final resolution for a life based on a self because such a life is based on a false premise? The premise that we are a self. Without exception, we all believe this, every one of us in any practice that stops with the attempted adjustment of a self is ultimately unsatisfying. Yeah, people will still make waves. To realize one's true nature has no self a Buddha, is the fruit of Zen and the path of practice. The important thing because only it is truly satisfying is to follow this path. As we battle with the question of our true nature, self or no self, the whole basis of our life must change. to adequately wage this battle, the whole feeling the whole purpose, the whole orientation of life must be transformed. What might be the steps in such a practice? First, as I said, is to move from relative unhappiness to relative happiness. At best, this is a shaky accomplishment, one that is easily upset. But we must have some degree of relative happiness and stability to engage in serious practice, then we can attempt the next stage. An intelligent persistent filtering of the various characteristics of mind and body through the Zen, we begin to see our patterns, we begin to see our desires, our needs, our ego drives, and we begin to realize that these patterns, these desires, these addictions are what we call the self. As our practice continues, and we begin to understand the emptiness and impermanence of these patterns, we find we can abandon them. We don't have to try to abandon them. They just slowly wither away. For when the light of awareness plays on anything. It diminishes the false and encourages the true and nothing brightens the light as much as intelligence I Zen done daily and in sesshin.