You may think you are meditating with the purpose of attaining peace in your own mind or tenderness in your own heart. You may think that meditation practice is about creating a deep awareness and mindfulness in your own life so that you can choose what leads to happiness for you rather than what leads to suffering. You may even feel the benefits

My gratitude to the Center for Whole Communities in Waitsfield, Vermont, for introducing me to the terminology of “whole communities.” One of CWC’s founders, Peter Forbes, describes Whole Communities as being “the sum of healthy relationships between people, and between people and place. A community is made complete or whole when people are fully

There is an intentional relationship between personal spiritual practice and how we live together in community in the world. What we do when we meditate and are mindful is directly connected to what we do in our lives when we are off the cushion. The peace and stillness that we are inclining toward, strengthening, and cultivating in ourselves are

The Dalai Lama has observed, “In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences, yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don’t bother to cross the road to meet your neighbors.”

Rainer Maria Rilke describes this gracefully: Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

As practice expands from the personal to the collective, from the internal to the external, from the particular to the universal, it comes to embody the value of inclusion of all things, of all people, of all differences. All of our experiences are invited and belong; none of us is marginalized or excluded. In this way, we are being invited to

meditation does not so much change our lives as it changes our relationship to our lives.

all human. We all want to feel safe, to feel we belong, especially in the vulnerabilities at the beginning of our spiritual paths. In the service of this, it is helpful to see ourselves reflected in the teachings, reflected in the teachers who share them, and reflected in the spiritual community surrounding us.

inclusive of the diverse experiences of all of us.