Take stock of the reasons you give yourself for engaging in activities that take you away from your aim to be at peace and attain liberation. Resolve to return, again and again, to those actions that will help you along the path.

VANESSA ZUISEI GODDARD (1973 CE-), VANESSA ZUISEI GODDARD is a writer and Zen teacher based in New York City. She trained full-time at Zen Mountain Monastery from 1995 to 2014, fourteen of those years as a monastic.