“Praise Allah, and tie your camel to the post.” Pray, but also make sure you do what is necessary in the world.

form. As Zen master Dogen says, “Flowers fall with our attachment, and weeds spring up with our aversion.”

Sylvia Boorstein

I had many teachers, but the most central were two of the wisest Theravada teachers of the past century: one in Thailand, Ajahn Chah, and one in Burma, Mahasi Sayadaw.

Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this when he said, “If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote his plays.”

A. T. Ariyaratane, a Buddhist elder, who is considered to be the Gandhi of Sri Lanka.

In the Christian mystical tradition one of the great texts is Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross, in which he talks about the periods of loneliness, fear, and doubt that one goes through after the initial awakenings into the light. Evagrius,

If you want to live a life of balance, start now. Turn off the news, meditate, turn on Mozart, walk through the forest or the mountains, and begin to make yourself a zone of peace.

Dipa Ma and other Buddhist teachers demonstrate the remarkable possibilities of the awakened heart. In Transformations of Consciousness, Harvard psychologist Jack Engler reports on his study of Dipa Ma and other advanced meditators.