Viktor Frankl, the psychotherapist who spent years in Auschwitz, understood how the suffering of the Holocaust might be seen as overshadowing any other. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote that we can never compare the depths of suffering “because suffering is like a gas; it completely fills whatever chamber it is in.”

This state of love-filled delight in possibilities and eager joy at the prospect of actualizing them is known in Buddhism as bright faith. Bright faith goes beyond merely claiming that possibility for oneself to immersing oneself in it. With bright faith we feel exalted as we are lifted out of our normal sense of insignificance, thrilled as we no l

strong. I once had a dream in which someone asked me, “Why do we love people?” I answered, “Because they recognize us.” I think this is true. When someone recognizes a basic goodness within us, beyond our habits and conditioning, when someone recognizes who we fundamentally are, it is the most important thing that can happen to us, and we respond w

RILKE WROTE: “So you must not be frightened…if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness like light and cloud shadows passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think…that life has not forgotten you.”

Smiling, he said, “It seems…I’ve taught more about love through this stroke…than I have through all my thirty years…of lecturing about it.” He also has taught us about a power of faith that doesn’t depend on clinging to the known, but instead on opening to the vastness and mystery of what life provides in each moment.

When we believe that our circumstances—inner or outer—will never change, and that there is nothing we can ever do to find love or peace again, our faith is consumed by hopelessness.

Whenever I teach lovingkindness retreats in an urban setting, I ask the students to do their walking meditation out on the streets. I suggest they choose individuals they see and, with care and awareness, wish them well by silently repeating the phrases of the practice, “May you be happy, may you be peaceful.” I tell them that even if they don’t fe

Suddenly the image of my mother came into my mind. I realized for the first time that her life and her death were really her story, not mine. They were a part of my story, but not the primary part.

reality. When we feel torn away from connection and purpose, we can end up so caught in our state of mind that the whole world seems to exist in reference to our pain.