As I had come to reinhabit my emotions more fully, I noticed that my body also required its own loving attention and that it was not enough to see and understand or even to feel with love and compassion—I had to move further down the chakras. I learned that if I am to live a spiritual life, I must be able to embody it in every action: in the way I

relationship. We are always in relationship to something. It is in discovering a wise and compassionate relationship to all things that we find a capacity to honor them all. While we have little control over much of what happens in our life, we can choose how we relate to our experiences.

MEDITATION ON EQUANIMITY Equanimity is a wonderful quality, a spaciousness and balance of heart. Although it grows naturally with our meditation practice, equanimity can also be cultivated in the same systematic way that we have used for loving-kindness and compassion. We can feel this possibility of balance in our hearts in the midst of all life w

These were the imitative and self-absorbed qualities that Chogyam Trungpa called “spiritual materialism.”

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?”

Mullah, “unfortunately, she was looking for the perfect man.”

It is an easiness of heart that understands that all of the spiritual vehicles are rafts to cross the stream to freedom.

Love is mysterious. We don’t know what it is, but we know when it is present. If we seek love, we must ask where it is to be found. It is here only in this moment. To love in the past is simply a memory. To love in the future is a fantasy. There is only one place where love can be found, where intimacy and awakening can be found, and

After ten years of focusing on emotional work and the development of the heart, I realized I had neglected my body. Like my emotions, my body had been included in my early spiritual practice in only a superficial way. I learned to be quite aware of my breathing and work with the pains and sensations in my body, but mostly I had used my body as an a