Advice Not Given

Why do you often feel trapped in your own mind—constantly striving, worrying, or judging yourself? In Advice Not Given, psychiatrist and Buddhist thinker Mark Epstein asks just that question. He argues that the ego, which our culture trains us to strengthen, is both our greatest obstacle and our greatest hope. By learning to engage with the ego rather than eradicate it, Epstein contends, we can live more freely, emotionally vibrantly, and compassionately.

Epstein brings together two traditions that rarely speak to each other: Western psychoanalysis and Buddhist psychology. His core claim is that both Buddhism and psychotherapy teach us to become observers of our own minds—to watch our impulses, fears, and desires without being dominated by them. The path to liberation, he argues, does not lie in escaping ourselves but in seeing ourselves clearly.

Understanding the Ego’s Grip

The book opens with an unsettling truth: egoism is a universal affliction. Our efforts to improve ourselves—whether through achievement, vanity, or control—often backfire, amplifying insecurity rather than curing it. Freud called this condition neurosis; the Buddha saw it as clinging, or self-grasping. Epstein merges these ideas into a simple insight: the ego isn’t evil, but when it runs unchecked, it makes us suffer.

In therapy, you may spend years decoding your defenses or unhealed wounds. In Buddhism, meditation trains you to observe the subtle movements of your mind without identifying with them. Both approaches, Epstein shows, lead to the same place: self-knowledge and compassion—what he calls “getting over yourself.”

The Eightfold Path as Psychological Roadmap

Structurally, Advice Not Given walks the reader through the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, reinterpreted through the lens of psychotherapy: Right View, Right Motivation, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. Each branch becomes not a list of moral commandments but a psychological toolkit for navigating modern life.

For example, Right View means seeing reality clearly—facing impermanence rather than resisting it. Right Motivation helps uncover your unconscious drives, replacing fear-based agendas with intention and curiosity. Right Speech doesn’t just mean avoiding gossip; it means changing how you talk to yourself. Right Action calls for authentic engagement rather than reactive behavior. Right Livelihood explores ethics and self-worth in work. Right Effort and Right Mindfulness are about balance and awareness, while Right Concentration reveals the mind’s capacity for quiet transformation.

Bridging Buddhism and Psychotherapy

Epstein recounts stories from his own life and practice to show how Buddhist wisdom can complement therapy. We meet Munindra, a Bengali teacher who tells his student that the Dharma “means living life fully”; Winnicott, the British psychoanalyst who described the “good enough mother” as someone who holds a child’s emotions safely; and patients like Claire and Debby, who use Buddhist reflection to confront feelings of unreality, anxiety, and parental pain. Even Epstein’s own struggles—with marriage, insomnia, and self-criticism—become teaching moments.

These examples ground the abstract principles. A student learns that meditation is not an escape; it’s an encounter. A mother realizes that patient acceptance of hate is an act of love. A therapist discovers that silence can be more healing than advice. In each case, the Buddhist principle interacts with a psychological one, creating what Epstein calls “living the life fully.”

Why This Integration Matters

In an age obsessed with self-improvement and mindfulness apps, Epstein’s argument is quietly radical: real transformation begins when we stop trying to fix ourselves. Whether you meditate or go to therapy, the goal isn’t perfection—it’s intimacy with your own mind. That intimacy, he says, gives rise to compassion, humor, and resilience. “The ego needs all the help it can get,” Epstein concludes, but not through punishment—through conscious, patient observation.

Across eight chapters, Epstein’s fusion of Buddhism and psychotherapy offers a map for living that is spiritual but earthy, philosophical but personal. It invites you to stop chasing your ideal self and instead meet the flawed, breathing person that’s already here. That, he says, is where freedom begins.

Right View, the first step in the Eightfold Path, is Epstein’s gateway into Buddhist psychology. It’s about seeing life as it is—not as we wish it to be. He asks you to notice how much of your mental life is spent escaping the present, controlling the uncontrollable, or narrating experiences instead of experiencing them. Meditation, he explains, is the training ground for undoing this reflex.

Facing Impermanence

Epstein connects Right View to the Buddha’s discovery of impermanence: everything changes—our bodies, relationships, and emotions. We resist this truth because change feels like loss. But as he reminds us, “we surrender to impermanence when we meditate.” Paying attention to breath or sound helps you experience constant flux without resistance. This practice softens the ego’s insistence on control and shows that instability is the nature of life.

When Acceptance Becomes Freedom

Epstein illustrates Right View through a story about his wife, Arlene Shechet, and her teacher Joseph Goldstein. When Arlene’s dear friend was dying of cancer, Goldstein’s deceptively simple advice—“Don’t make such a big deal out of it; life is like fireworks”—shifted her relationship with grief. She realized that honoring life meant embracing both joy and sorrow. Pain didn’t destroy beauty; it deepened it.

For Epstein, this moment captured Right View perfectly. Awareness doesn’t erase grief—it lets you live it fully without clinging or dramatization. This is why, he says, meditation is not an escape hatch but a mirror. You learn to see change without panic and face death without turning away.

Letting Realism Replace Idealism

Epstein reminds us that “Right” in Buddhism doesn’t mean “correct.” It means balanced or realistic. A student may eat a hamburger after a retreat; a teacher may die crying “help.” What matters is honesty, not spiritual posturing. By acknowledging imperfection, you enter the flow that Joseph Goldstein described to Arlene—vibrant and fleeting but real.

Right View reorients the mind from striving for transcendence to attending to truth. Instead of asking how to avoid suffering, it teaches you to be at home in it. That simple shift, Epstein argues, is the foundation of all healing—psychological and spiritual alike.

Right Motivation asks: why do you do what you do? Epstein combines Buddhist intention with Western insight into unconscious drives. Our behaviors, he says, are often dictated by hidden fears, unexamined rage, or ancient conditioning. To live freely, we must see these influences clearly instead of pretending they don’t exist.

Recognizing Unconscious Impulses

Epstein recounts the story of Jack Engler, a psychotherapist who traveled to India seeking meditation instruction from the teacher Munindra. After weeks of mundane talk about digestion, Munindra finally told him, “The Dharma means living the life fully.” This became Engler’s revelation: spirituality isn’t a retreat from ordinary life but a deeper engagement with it.

Munindra refused to indulge Jack’s desire for mystical training; instead, he taught him that real growth begins in the messy details of everyday existence. Epstein uses this story to show that motivation must come from authenticity, not egoic control. When you meditate to escape rather than to investigate, you’ll stagnate in what he calls “the anal stage of spiritual development”—where neatness and control replace openness.

Psychotherapy Meets the Dharma

Epstein shares his own struggles as examples. After years of meditation, he found himself sleepless and anxious early in his marriage—haunted by dreams of teeth crumbling. Therapy helped him uncover what Buddhist practice could not: buried “oral rage” from childhood—an unmet hunger for connection. Once he acknowledged that primitive anger, his meditation became more grounded and compassionate.

He extends this understanding into tales of professional failure, like his ill-fated workshop at the Open Center, where he left meditating participants alone to teach “no-self.” The backlash, he admits, revealed every break in the Eightfold Path—lack of compassion, speech, and effort. From these embarrassments, Epstein learned that spiritual pride is another mask for fear.

Holding Emotions, Not Eradicating Them

Drawing on analyst Donald Winnicott, Epstein reframes Right Motivation through the metaphor of the “good enough mother,” who holds her child’s rage without retaliation or rejection. That capacity—to hold difficult feelings—is the essence of transformation. Winnicott’s idea of a “holding environment” echoes Buddhist compassion: wisdom doesn’t eliminate emotion; it embraces it safely.

Right Motivation, Epstein concludes, isn’t saintly selflessness—it’s honesty. When you can notice fear, anger, and need without letting them drive you, your motivation becomes “right.” You begin, in Munindra’s words, to live the life fully—not by transcendence but by intimacy with everything you are.

Right Speech goes well beyond truth-telling. Epstein interprets it as how you talk to yourself—the inner dialogue shaping your world. Buddhism and psychotherapy both demand that you listen to your inner chatter, not as fact but as narrative. These stories, once seen, can be rewritten.

When Thoughts Become Prison

Epstein introduces Sharon Salzberg, a meditation teacher whose tragic childhood left her silently carrying grief. Through Buddhist practice, she learned to shift her narrative from “I don’t deserve happiness” to “I can participate in my own healing.” Her mantra became showing up—with faith that presence itself was curative. Freud’s reminder, “You cannot destroy someone in absentia,” echoes this: awareness is the antidote to repression.

Transforming Self-Criticism

Epstein’s patient Miranda embodies negative self-talk. A scholar of Beckett, she believed her “true nature” was worthless. Epstein challenged her idea, inviting her to see self-loathing as “extra”—a mental noise added atop real feeling. Through meditative inquiry, Miranda discovered her loneliness was bearable once she stopped narrating it as shame. It became a signal for connection rather than condemnation.

Beckett himself, Epstein notes, had made the same conversion—embracing his depression as his commanding side. Like Buddhism’s teaching of acceptance, Beckett’s art turned darkness into creative fuel. “I shall always be depressed,” he said, “but I can now make it work for me.” Right Speech is that act of reframing: you stop fighting your story and begin listening to the truth beneath it.

Speaking Gently to Yourself

Epstein closes the chapter on a tender note. In a conversation with his elderly mother, he explains that grief never ends—it only changes form. Her relief at “not having to be over it” exemplifies Right Speech in practice: replacing guilt and self-judgment with compassion. When you learn to talk to yourself this way, your thoughts lose their sting, and awareness expands into kindness.

Right Speech, then, is mindfulness applied to language. You notice the internal monologue, pause before believing it, and choose words—both spoken and silent—that honor experience rather than distort it. As Sharon Salzberg teaches, healing begins the moment you show up for your own conversation.

Right Action traditionally warns against harming others, but Epstein turns it inward: how can you act without betraying yourself? He presents it as the practice of restraint—engaging without aggression, helping without overcontrol, and responding rather than reacting.

Restraint as Creativity

To illustrate, Epstein tells the story of Ralph, an anxious man tormented by violent intrusive thoughts. Rather than suppressing them, Epstein encouraged Ralph to look more openly at his desire and vulnerability. By shifting from resistance to curiosity, Ralph transformed obsessive fear into awareness. He discovered that beauty—even erotic attraction—was not dangerous but human. Restraint became liberation.

Acting from Presence, Not Perfection

Reflecting on classic Zen tales, Epstein shows how mindfulness and spontaneity replace rigidity. In one, the monk Bodhidharma tells a disciple, “Bring me your anxious mind.” When the student cannot find it, Bodhidharma says, “There—I have pacified your mind.” The message: when you look for your anxiety with awareness, it evaporates. Right Action is like that—a balance of effort and surrender.

Epstein echoes this through extraordinary examples: Wilhelm Reich teaching a timid student to flirt, or a widowed woman reconciling with her husband’s former colleague after years of bitterness. In each case, Right Action meant breaking rules for compassion—a willingness to respond authentically instead of hiding behind moral rigidity. The act was simple but transformative.

Acting Without Ego

Epstein revisits a parable of two monks crossing a river: one stops to lift a woman, breaking his vow not to touch females; the other spends hours judging him. “I put her down long ago,” says the first monk. “You are still carrying her.” Epstein’s commentary is sharp: the real violation isn’t touching—it’s clinging. When you can act freely in service of compassion, your mind becomes still.

In life, Right Action feels risky. It can mean apologizing, confronting, or letting go of righteous anger. But when doing arises from awareness rather than punishment, it becomes creative engagement—the backward step that illuminates the self.

Right Livelihood shifts ethics into everyday work. Epstein examines how people relate to money, ambition, and status—asking whether livelihood can be an expression of compassion rather than competition. In the Buddha’s time, it meant avoiding exploitation; today, it means interrogating our sense of privilege and value.

Work and Self-Worth

Epstein explores how money quietly mirrors the ego. Some of his patients equated income with self-esteem, others undervalued themselves to appear virtuous. Right Livelihood suggests seeing work as relationship rather than domination—an exchange of attention, care, and ethics. He calls this “Right Living,” arguing that livelihood isn’t separate from how you treat people.

Letting Go Even When You’re Right

Through stories, Epstein turns philosophical lessons into intimate drama. Gloria, a celebrated artist resentful of her wealthy collectors, discovers compassion by remembering Epstein’s father—a doctor who sat on patients’ beds to heal racism in Harlem. “I, too, am the poorest of the poor,” Gloria realizes. Her humility transforms resentment into generosity. Her art becomes service again.

In another vignette, Kate, frustrated by her messy partner, fumes over fairness until Epstein quotes a friend: “Let go—even when you’re right.” The advice challenges pride, the last barrier to freedom. Kate’s willingness to clean up instead of clinging to grievance dissolves tension. The act seems small but reveals a profound insight—the ego’s need to be correct is the true bondage.

Ethics in Motion

Epstein ends with striking imagery: arrows of anger transforming into bouquets of flowers raining upon the Buddha. “Because he is not there,” the Buddha’s wisdom disarms hatred entirely. When you stop defending your ego, conflict loses substance. Right Livelihood, he concludes, is an everyday opportunity to drop entitlement and give care—to be “not there” in the best sense, present but egoless.

Whether in boardrooms or kitchens, Right Livelihood invites you to bring mindfulness into work and relationships, to act from generosity rather than pride. True success, Epstein reminds us, is measured not in wealth or praise but in your ability to get over yourself.

Right Effort, Epstein writes, is the art of tuning life like a lute. The Buddha’s teaching to the musician Sona—neither too tight nor too loose—captures the psychological truth that effort can sabotage itself. Pushing too hard creates restlessness; trying too little breeds apathy.

Effort Without Strain

Epstein shows how this insight applies not only to meditation but to therapy itself. Listening well is its own meditation: when therapists stop trying to be clever and simply pay “evenly suspended attention,” breakthroughs occur. He recalls Freud’s counsel to listen without memory or desire, and how this allows truth to reveal itself later. A tuned attention, Epstein says, makes the whole world sound beautiful.

Effort and Emotional Balance

Through case studies of patients like Debby and Martha, Epstein shows Right Effort at work. Debby learns that anxiety about separation from her son stems from old guilt and shame. By restraining her rush to self-criticism and simply observing anxiety, she finds compassion beneath it. Martha, confronting sexual trauma, lets go of self-blame when Epstein reminds her: “Maybe it wasn’t your fault.” Her cry—“Dr. Mark!”—becomes liberation’s sound.

Learning Non-Doership

Epstein also tells of Sam, a sculptor who wins a zoning dispute by following his lawyer’s strange advice: “Kiss ass.” Silence and humility, though unnatural to him, succeed where aggression fails. Like the lute’s strings, his restraint produces harmony. Effort, Epstein concludes, is not about proving yourself—it’s about listening to life’s rhythm and adjusting with grace.

Right Effort means using awareness as your instrument. Whether with patients, loved ones, or authority figures, tuning effort between ambition and surrender makes life play beautifully. Every moment invites you to ease off control—and in the loosened string, find melody.

Right Mindfulness is the most popular Buddhist practice in the modern West, but Epstein warns that many are missing its heart. Mindfulness is not a technique for self-improvement—it’s a way of remembering, of being fully present with what’s already here.

Mindfulness vs. Mindlessness

Epstein recounts learning that the original word, sati, means “remembering.” Mindfulness reminds you not to forget yourself in thought. A therapist in Oklahoma translates this for veterans as, “Go outside and close the door. Stand there and listen.” That, Epstein says, is mindfulness at its purest—presence without agenda.

From Observation to Insight

Through vivid stories, Epstein captures mindfulness in action. An attorney practicing hospital-based mindfulness hears an inner voice: “It’s time to forgive your mother.” His skepticism dissolves into grace. Mindfulness has led him from awareness to insight, uncovering empathy hidden under resentment. For Epstein, this illustrates mindfulness’s hidden agenda: freeing compassion by seeing impermanence firsthand.

Facing the Ego’s Reflex

During a retreat, Epstein sees how mindfulness exposes the ego’s defenses. In one moment, a screen falls and his instant thought—“Who did that?”—appears like a visual flare. Watching the impulse dissolve, he realizes how automatic blame can be. This awareness releases him from severity and judgment. “Right Mindfulness,” he writes, “means forgiving yourself, time after time, while not giving in to your worst impulses.”

Epstein’s revelation is humble but profound: mindfulness doesn’t end in the meditation hall. It’s the gentle muscle that helps you notice your reaching for the phone, your irritation, your guilt, and then laugh softly. In remembering yourself, you stop being run by yourself. The act of listening—to your mind and the world—is liberation.

Right Concentration, the final pillar, brings Epstein’s journey full circle. Concentration is the simplest and most mysterious form of healing—a sustained, single-pointed attention that reveals light within awareness. It’s not a reward; it’s a doorway into your own depth.

Concentration as Self-Discovery

Epstein revisits his early meditation when the mind became luminous, filled with impersonal love. In that stillness, he saw that his self-doubts were mere stories. “Behind my day-to-day preoccupations lies something fundamental,” he writes. That insight reshaped his clinical understanding: concentration isn’t about quieting the mind; it’s about revealing its hidden nature.

When Mystery Meets Everyday Life

Teaching psychiatry under Dr. John Nemiah, Epstein defined the unconscious as “the repository of mystery.” This fusion of science and spirituality runs throughout the book: therapy investigates darkness; meditation uncovers light. Both uncover the unknown that defines us. To cling to any single experience—ecstasy or silence—is to miss its living quality.

Epstein reminds us of a student who left a retreat shouting “It didn’t work!”—distressed that bliss had vanished. But, Epstein says, the loss itself was the lesson. Clinging to enlightenment is just another ego trick. Real freedom is openness to surprise.

Stillness That Connects

From news anchor Dan Harris finding calm with a hummingbird hovering before his face to a depressed cellist regaining appetite after meditating with Epstein, Right Concentration proves transformative. Silence doesn’t erase suffering; it converts it into connectedness. The instructor’s advice—“Don’t chase her; let her find you”—turns meditation into relationship, an erotic invitation to presence. When breath finds you, gratitude blooms naturally.

Epstein ends with a Zen death poem: “Empty-handed I entered the world, barefoot I leave it.” Right Concentration is this nakedness—the discovery that when striving ceases, being begins. The “mystery of stillness” becomes a lived truth: you don’t vanish when you stop grasping; you awaken.