Facing yourself requires great courage as it is a painful process. But in order to free ourselves from endless suffering, that's the way to go. Here, Zen Master Miao Tsan tells us why we need to do it and how to achieve it. "In life, man has already suffered for a long time due to his own mental habits. Freedom from suffering can only come with the right view: we must train to break through the false sense of self that is developed from habitual grasping and the attachment to our thoughts. Life is like a battlefield of individual effort, so you must ask yourself: Are you ready to defeat your attachments? The true meaning of spiritual readiness is the willingness to face your own problem--the real problem in life--and ultimately its source in the mind. The unity of essence and function is the Truth, which is universal. The person who is ready to make a change has recognized this view, knowing that the only true path is to take everything that happens as a manifestation of the mind and look back to the essence of the situa­tion, instead of trying to make or prevent things from happening. The presence of difficulties in life shows that the way of attachments has reached a dead end. We must face our obstacles and reflect inwardly, deeply contemplating the reality of our so-called problems or obstacles. We must be able to skillfully change our own thoughts as we guide our­selves out of the current predicament." Fa Hwa