The Dog Mind The dog has only one master. It doesn't wag its tail for everyone. It doesn't seek affection from just anyone. It shows its fierce nature to those it doesn't know, and its loving nature to those it does. When the dog chooses its master, it becomes utterly devoted. It guards the master's house, protects the master's family. The dog remembers who has shown it kindness, and who has shown it cruelty. The dog doesn't forget. It doesn't forgive easily either. But once it accepts someone, that acceptance runs bone-deep. We humans have much to learn from the dog's mind. We scatter our loyalty everywhere. We wag our tails for everyone. We seek everyone's approval. But the dog teaches us: choose your people carefully. Once chosen, be loyal completely. Remember kindness, remember cruelty. Don't be quick to trust, but when you do trust, let it be absolute. The dog shows us what it means to love without reservation, and to be wary without paranoia. Perhaps we need a little more dog-mind in our human hearts.

If someone wishes to leave, let them go; care for those who wish to stay. If it happens that the person who wants to stay is not to your liking, then learn to live with yourself.

There are some people you don't enjoy being around. You too, in the eyes of certain others, belong to that category of unwelcome souls. Accept this. Why do you find it so difficult to embrace the same philosophy for your preferred companions that you live by for yourself?

It is more honorable to be ignored than to be annoying. More peaceful still is to give no opportunity even for being ignored. Let your heart be shameless if it must, but you need not be shameless yourself—isn't that so? You, your heart, and your mind are three separate entities. Become the master of heart and mind; then you'll see, everything falls into place.

People can be bound at best, but never truly held. Once someone's heart turns away from you, nothing can keep them with you. Never mistake someone who isn't meant for your life as your life itself.

The human heart is like a dog. It would rather be on broken streets with a beloved master than in a royal palace with an unloved one. What the heart doesn't want, even wealth cannot retain.

Those who want to be with you will make a place to stay even if you offer them just a tiny stool to sit on. And those who don't want to stay will feel suffocated even if you build them a palace, gasping to throw open windows and escape. Even gods don't wish to be indulgers in palaces—they want devotees for their grace.

The human heart is a most difficult thing. If you try to hold someone back against their will, you'll get only a snakeskin—an empty shell with the person no longer inside, nothing but flesh and blood remaining. What's the point of keeping someone by force if you cannot keep their heart?

Let go of those desperate to flee. A domesticated bird knows how to fly but doesn't fly away; even with the cage door open, it doesn't escape. People are like birds—if they won't be tamed, even caging them keeps their hearts turned skyward.

When the bonds of a relationship choke the throat, when the seal of an identity causes cancer in the brain, it's wiser to destroy such relationships or identities. Of course, humans give precedence to emotion over wisdom; and they die for it. Some die in old age, some die in emotion.

Rather than two people hanging by the rope of relationship, dying moment by moment for a hundred years, it's happier for two to separate through mutual understanding and live a few days in peace like free birds. People change. If you cannot accept this change, there's truly no way but to change your thinking. Either you'll change, or you'll regret.

Let them live too, and live yourself. Live two, four, ten years less if you must, but let the days you do live be days you truly, truly live to the fullest. Life runs out on its own—what glory is there in that? Living—that's what one must do oneself!

Rather than a thousand years in turmoil, live a few years in peace.