The Gift of Tears The human instinct is to block suffering and pain. This is especially true in the West where we have been influenced by the “rationalism” of the Enlightenment. As anyone who has experienced grief can attest, it isn’t rational. We really don’t know how to hurt! We simply do not know what…

– Leo Tolstoy

They say in my Buddhism, that emptiness and compassion are like the two wings of the great bird.
 And when you have two wings you can soar and you can float on the air.
 But really the two things are one wing.
 When you can appreciate the flavor of emptiness on the tongue. You know…

There is no single way to meditate. There are, however, certain acts and attitudes inherently endowed with the capacity to awaken sustained states of meditative awareness. . . . With respect to the body: Sit still. Sit straight. Place your hands in a comfortable or meaningful position in your lap. Close your eyes or lower…

From Tolstoy’s “A Calendar of Wisdom”: Every good or charitable action, every unprofitable assistance which supports other people in need, when we come to its origins and foundations, becomes a mysterious and unexplainable thing, because it comes out of the mysterious understanding of the unity of all living beings, and it can be explained by…

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes. ” — Marcel Proust

Proust, on meditation (well not exactly but close):

“Here is the principle: We can only transform people to the degree that we have been transformed. We can only lead others as far as we ourselves have gone. We have no ability to affirm or to communicate to another person that they are good or special until we know it strongly ourselves. Once we…