I don’t talk about Zen much because, frankly, I’m embarrassed for it. It’s like having a cool older brother you looked up to as a kid, but at eleven or twelve he stopped growing while you kept going. Now you’re a grown-up and he’s still a dopey, doltish kid. Awkward. You have some residual fondness for him, but there’s no denying that he’s developmentally retarded and, worse, acts as emotional ballast that must be jettisoned for your own journey to continue. What do you do? Be a good person and abandon your own development to hang back with your brother, or cut the familial ties and get on with your life? You might as well make a policy-level decision about this now because, on this journey, you’ll come to this fork in the road many times. Do you allow sentimentality to strengthen attachments, or reason to sever them?