Inner excellence articles

• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us be the same after good news

  Krsna puts success and failure in the same definition, so the lift that comes with good news belongs on the list of things that move us, and the aim is to be found in the same place whichever way the news comes.

  Sent 2026–10–20
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us not need to see what it did

  Stay in front of something hard without asking it, partway through, what it is doing for you, because the effort of attention lands somewhere the problem cannot show.

  Sent 2026–10–19
• P2 — This Is Water

  Let us not keep an opinion where nothing can reach it

  An opinion held behind good behaviour never leaks into anything, so nothing can ever correct it, and the thing to watch is which of our views have been put out of reach.

  Sent 2026–10–18
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us not carry the name

  The name we use for what we are good at is a store that lets us skip today’s doing, and Epictetus asks us to leave it unused while the thing gets done.

  Sent 2026–10–17
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us know who moved

  Dōgen’s two motions, the self going out to the thing and the thing coming to act on the self, leave one question: which of them happened.

  Sent 2026–10–16
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us know which part was the room

  Within your power is not the same as you will; what attention returns is the word know, a piece of information about which part of the line was the room.

  Sent 2026–10–14
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us not answer that question with our eyes

  The senses face outward, so a question about ourselves gets an outward answer with our name on it; the verse’s wise man saw with his eyes closed, the forward equipment out of use.

  Sent 2026–10–12
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us know what we are leaning on

  The verse says nothing against outward pleasures; its claim is that something stable is being sought among things that do not hold still.

  Sent 2026–10–10
• P2 — This Is Water

  Let us count ourselves in

  The one fact that would explain the crowded shop is that everyone in it has your reason, and the view from behind your own eyes cannot show you that.

  Sent 2026–10–08
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us keep our own opinion of ourselves

  The half-second of trimming before we speak consults a picture of what the other person will be left holding, and the question is which way the edit went.

  Sent 2026–10–07
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us not hold the act back

  The teaching takes away the accounting that comes with the act and leaves the act exactly where it was.

  Sent 2026–10–06
• P2 — This Is Water

  Let us not let natural settle it

  Natural, normal, anyone would report that a thing is common, and whether it is right is a separate question that has not been asked yet.

  Sent 2026–10–03
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us be in the speaker’s mind

  We want to be in the speaker’s mind while they are still speaking, instead of inside our own prepared reply.

  Sent 2026–10–02
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us be the one who turned

  We want to be the one who turned, this once, and to be able to do it again later from the same starting place, with nothing banked from before.

  Sent 2026–10–01
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us not wait to be told

  A thing’s quality sits in the thing and stops there, so it is finished when it is right, not when somebody says so.

  Sent 2026–09–30
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us keep the second possibility

  Few is not zero, and the whole sentence turns on that: one possibility does not feel like a possibility at all, it feels like the situation itself.

  Sent 2026–09–29
• P2 — This Is Water

  Let us stop counting our own experience as proof

  We want the middle to be one of the things we know about the picture, the way you know a window frame is there.

  Sent 2026–09–28
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us call it a rascal

  We want to meet the thing we catch at its own size.

  Sent 2026–09–27
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us not look for the trace

  We want to let a quiet moment go by unchecked.

  Sent 2026–09–26
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us not worship being seen as smart

  We want it to be enough that the thing was true.

  Sent 2026–09–25
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us not stop at warmth

  We want to be empty enough, when somebody is in trouble, that what comes in is them.

  Sent 2026–09–24
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us give the wool

  We want what we know to come out as wool, not vomited back up as the rule itself.

  Sent 2026–09–22
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us put the light on the rope

  The read that arrives first is usually the older one — built from what you’ve seen before, laid over what is actually in front of you.

  Sent 2026–09–21
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us not be afraid to stop counting

  We want the act to stand up on its own when the record is taken away.

  Sent 2026–09–20
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us not wait for a better hour

  We want the thing in front of us to be the thing, rather than the gap before the thing.

  Sent 2026–09–19
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us arrive without the answer

  Self-conceit is the opinion that we already know — it arrives as the answer before the question has finished being asked.

  Sent 2026–09–17
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us not be bothered by the waves.

  A thought arrives, and then you are bothered by it — the arriving is weather, the being bothered is a position taken against your own mind.

  Sent 2026–09–16
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us be a vine

  All three men did the service. The difference sits in what happens afterwards, where nobody can see it.

  Sent 2026–09–15 · Shape 21
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us look at the person, not at our picture of them

  Nothing happens in the story. D does not change. The entire movement happens in M, through looking.

  Sent 2026–09–12 · Shape 21
• The movement — effort to look, no effort in the seeing

  Let us get wet in the fog

  A shower announces itself. Fog does not, and what soaks in slowly does not evaporate.

  Sent 2026–09–11 · Shape 21
• P4 — Choose What You Worship

  Let us not drop the bow

  Everyone knows the first half of this verse. The half that does the real work comes immediately after it.

  Sent 2026–09–10 · Shape 21
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us not need it to be interesting

  Most of a life is the usual everyday routine. If that is the waiting room, you have arranged to be absent for most of your own days.

  Sent 2026–09–04 · Shape 21
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us stop grading strangers

  Hastily is what you saw. Ill is what you added. They arrive together and feel like one thing.

  Sent 2026–09–02 · Shape 21
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us be free in the slow line

  The passage is the same; the writing around it is not.

  Sent 2026–08–30 · Shape 21
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us be glad to be contradicted

  The ego is invisible while nothing is pressing on it. The heat is the one moment it announces its own position.

  Sent 2026–08–28 · Shape 21
• P3 — Attention Is a Moral Act

  Let us give attention instead of spending it

  Attention is emptying rather than gripping. The thing most of us do when we concentrate is not attention at all.

  Sent 2026–08–25 · Shape 21
• P1 — The Default Setting

  Let us be taken out of ourselves

  The self did not lose an argument. Something else turned out to be more interesting than she was.

  Sent 2026–08–23 · Shape 21

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