Mindfulness is this kind of attention. It is a nonjudging, receptive awareness, a respectful awareness.

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.

The art of listening is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive. —ALAN WATTS

bodhisattva vows based on the words of the beloved sixth-century sage Shantideva: May I be a guard for those who need protection A guide for those on the path A boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood May I be a lamp in the darkness A resting place for the weary A healing medicine for all who are sick A vase of plenty, a tree

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

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

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.”

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.

To continue this journey requires reinforcing the necessary foundation of virtue. By establishing a practice of basic morality, of nonharming, virtue becomes a safeguard on the path, guiding and protecting us and all we touch from harm. In the simplest fashion these safeguards are spelled out in the five traditional Buddhist precepts: (1) not