We often find that relating with our own bodies and minds is a foreign situation. We are confronted with foreign territories constantly, again and again, all the time. We are always faced with the unknown. Our death, our birth, our parents, our emotionality: everything is always a foreign country. That foreign territory can be conquered, as much as a physical geographical territory is conquered. In my tradition, such hard-core conquering of foreign territory comes with an immense sense of softness, surrendering, and sentimentality. Being emotional and hard core at the same time is experiencing both romanticism and the threat of foreign territory at once. It is being very much in contact with what’s going on, virtually going on, actually going on, on the spot, on the dot.

From The Mishap Lineage: Transforming Confusion into Wisdom, pages 12 to 13. Published by Shambhala Publications.