A Path With Heart: The Classic Guide Through The Perils And Promises Of Spiritual Life

True patience is not gaining or grasping, it does not seek any accomplishment. Patience allows us to open to that which is beyond time. When Einstein was illustrating the nature of time, he explained, “When you sit with a pretty girl for two hours, it seems like a minute, and when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, it seems like two hours. That’s

There is an awakening in the midst of all things, a love that can touch and include all things, a freedom and fearlessness that can enter every realm. In this we do not remove ourselves from life but rest in the very center of it. In this we are able to be intimate with all things.

In the emptiness of all things—the magical insubstantial way in which all things arise and vanish, lacking any abiding or fixed self—is hidden the gift of nonseparateness.

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is fond of reminding us of how we wash the dishes. “Can we wash each cup or bowl,” he asks, “as if we were bathing a newborn baby Buddha?”

ENLIGHTENMENT IS INTIMACY WITH ALL THINGS

people tried to escape their ordinary lives and become more spiritual beings.

A fourth quality of spiritual maturity is immediacy. Spiritual awakening is found in our own life here and now. In the Zen tradition they say, “After the ecstasy, the laundry.” Spiritual maturity manifests itself in the immanent as well as the transcendent. It seeks to allow the divine to shine through our every action. Altered states, extraordinar

idealistic and romantic. People tried to use spirituality to “get high” and to experience extraordinary states of consciousness.

Suzuki Roshi summed up all of the teachings of Buddhism in three simple words, “Not always so.” When we try to repeat what has been in the past, we lose the true sense of life as an opening, a flowering, an unfolding, an adventure.