(Effort, surrender, and the balance at the heart of practice)
Each of the four roads to power involves a tremendous passion, a great fire within us.
The critical balance we need to discover in meditation practice—and indeed in all aspects of our life—is the equipoise between effort and surrender. On the surface these two qualities
Experiment with the technique of noting to find the most skillful way to use it. At one time in my walking practice, as I took each step slowly and mindfully, I abbreviated all the notes to the first letter. Instead of noting lifting, moving, placing, I started noting l, m, p, l, m, p. The notes seemed to slide effortlessly along right on top of each movement of the step.
(Mindfulness versus perception — stepping out of the story)
Through its strong power of observation, mindfulness uncovers the characteristic nature of experience itself.
Perception by itself does not lead to insight into impermanence and selflessness, because it engages us in the content and story
Mindfulness emerges from the story and notices the moment-to-moment arising and passing of sense impressions, thoughts, and consciousness itself.
(Allowing what arises — the softening of the mind)
At such a time, try this “mantra”: “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. Let me feel it.” That is the softening of the mind.
The easiest way to relax is to stop trying to make things different. Rather than try to create another state, simply allow space for whatever is going on.
the mental note, chaos, chaos. Instead of having an agenda to change
Everything comes and goes by itself. We do not have to do anything to make it come, or to make it go, or to let it go. We just have to let it be.
unpleasant ones is not the purpose of our practice. The purpose of mindfulness practice is freedom.
When we do not know the harm in our actions, we cannot discriminate between skillful and unskillful, which leaves us the unconscious slaves of habits and desires. Without the wisdom of that discrimination, we have no chance to make wise choices. So being aware of the dukkha in unwholesome actions is a freer state than if we are just going along enmeshed in them,
back. Simply be aware of the whole area, letting your mind relax and settle into the physical sensations. Second, observe precisely the particular nature of the sensations. Are they burning, pressure, searing, tightness, piercing, twisting, or some other variant of bodily feeling? By noting the
intense. Then move your attention to that point, and then to the next—
(Working with pain, sensation, and the hindrances)
Times of discomfort teach us how to practice freedom in all those life situations that make us uncomfortable.
The goals we seek through practice are wisdom and compassion, not some permanent tingle. How long
What we have experienced in the past is gone. It is dead, it is a corpse. We do not have to drag the corpse along with us. We practice to open to what is present,
Mindfulness is the vehicle through which we can open to the continuous, spontaneous arising and passing of all phenomena.
beings. Partaking in the universal creates a sense of oneness, of interconnectedness. When we understand the process in ourselves, we understand the process in everyone.
Oddly enough, we discover that these neutral feelings are actually more enjoyable than the happy or pleasant ones.
Four Divine Abodes: the mental states of lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.
Dharma reflections can become extremely compelling and interesting—they themselves become a hindrance to deepening insight.
the fact that though the unwholesome qualities of consciousness appear to be getting stronger, in fact they are not; you are only becoming more aware of them.
We see restlessness, laziness, anger, doubt, greed, conceit, envy, and all the rest, and it sometimes seems that our mind contains nothing but these afflictive emotions.
(Conceit, judgment, and the comparing mind)
When we do not know that we are thinking, our thoughts carry us into so many different worlds.
If we pay attention to when that tightening takes place, when that charge in the mind begins to happen, then the contraction becomes a signal that we have gone from the place of having an opinion to a place of attachment to it. We are using the radar of mindfulness to pick up times of suffering, of unease, of constriction.
In this way, liberation is not always dramatic fireworks. It can be the step-by-step, moment-by-moment freeing of our mind.
judgments. First I started counting the judgments as they arose. Every time a judging thought
“Judging one, judging
The second technique I used when these thoughts proliferated was to tack on to the end of each judgment the phrase “the sky is blue.”
At a certain point we stop not liking it. Then it is no problem.
When we think about ourselves as better than, equal to, or worse than someone else, we are giving expression to conceit. This comparing mind is called conceit because all forms of it—
The antidote to conceit is to drop right back into mindfulness and to focus on the momentariness of phenomena.
(Relating to emotions — from identification to observation)
First, emotions as appearances in the mind are amorphous; they have no clear boundaries, no definite sense of beginnings and endings. They are not as tangible as sensations
is the fact that we are deeply conditioned to identify with them.
The first step is taking care to recognize precisely each emotion as it arises and to learn to distinguish among subtle differences.
We find ourselves trying in every way imaginable to change the situation rather than simply to be with the feeling.
How much, and what kinds of things, do we do in our lives just so that we do not have to feel bored or lonely or afraid? Not opening to the range of emotions, not understanding that they will arise and pass away by themselves, compels us to actions that may not actually bring us happiness, but may rather keep us continually on the run. Many
Skillful, in the Buddhist sense, refers to that which leads to happiness, to freedom, and unskillful
That step is learning, even as we open to the whole range of feelings, not to identify with them. Identifying with the emotion—that sense of its being self, being “I”—is
of “I am angry” and the experience of “This is anger”? Through that little distinction
When we become angry, for example, first there is some external situation prompting the anger to arise. Someone is doing or saying something we do not like, or we feel is harmful to ourself or others. Second, there is our reaction to that situation, namely, the feeling of anger. And the third component is the relationship of our mind to the anger itself.
“How am I getting caught in this anger? How am I getting hooked by it? How am I identifying with it?”
So it is not that we avoid dealing with the external situation. Rather, if we can become clear in our
“What is the external situation?” “What is my reaction to it, the emotion I am feeling?” “What is my relationship to this emotion? How am I getting hooked?” Step by step, situation by situation, we learn how it feels to be free.
react. And there are some circumstances that do call for a forceful response. We do not always have to be passive and accepting in every predicament. Sometimes we might have to use our umbrella! Sharon Salzberg,
This bold action in the mind is not about avoidance or shoving away something unpleasant because we do not want to experience it. If we do it, we must do it with the feeling of lovingkindness, not with aversion.
“This mind state or emotion is unskillful, unwholesome. I’ve seen it many times already. Now I let it go.”
But it is also important to explore that place of strength and resolve in the mind, the place of the warrior within us, so that we can use our growing power to cut through unskillful states in appropriate and loving ways.
(Fear, boredom, and unskillful states as visitors, not owners)
This mind state has extraordinary range of expression: from mild worry to chronic anxiety to abject terror.
will. And not only is fear a great power in itself, it also too often provides hidden motive energy to many other states that cause us pain.
We begin to allow ourselves to feel it all. As these things start to come up and we feel them consciously and mindfully, with a sense of softness and acceptance, less and less energy is required to hold them down. The energy in our system begins to flow in a much freer way.
Because of that aversion, there was also a negative identification with it. In the moment of actually realizing that fear is just a mind state, the whole thing disappeared.
They are just what they are, each manifesting its own quality. With this understanding, we can cultivate the emotions that seem helpful and simply let the others be, without aversion, without suppression, without identification.
The practice is a process unfolding, and
Practice cannot be measured in time, so let go of the whole notion of when and how long.
it unfolds in its own time. It is like the flowers that grow in the spring.
We do not need any particular length of time for this process of lettings things be. Why not do it now?
Like anger and other emotions, boredom most often fools us into diverting our energies entirely to an external situation. Thus it keeps us from liberating ourselves by seeing our relationship to the emotion itself. We make a great mistake about boredom when we think that it comes because of a particular person or situation or activity.
To realize that boredom does not
come from the object of our attention but rather from the quality of our attention is truly a transforming insight. Fritz Perls, one of those who brought Gestalt therapy to America, said, “Boredom is lack of attention.”
Then boredom becomes a tremendously useful feedback for us. It is telling us not that the situation or person or meditation object is somehow lacking, but rather that our attention at that time is halfhearted.
What is this experience we call the breath? If someone were holding your head under water, would the breath be boring? Each breath is actually sustaining our life. Can we be with it fully, just once?
(The way out is through — spaciousness dissolves contraction)
To come to the end of suffering, the way out is through.
Freedom comes from creating a mind so spacious and clear that those places of contraction begin to dissolve because we remove our resistances to them.
We may be visited by various hindrances and defilements that color our mind for some time, but they are only visitors; they do not own the house.
not mindful, when we are identifying with whatever is happening. So in every moment of awareness, wisdom frees us from the contraction of self, because ego delusion is as discontinuous and impermanent as everything else. The wisdom of mindfulness and the delusion of selfhood cannot coexist at the same time; the one drives out the other.
We create the sense of self anew in each moment when we are
(No self, no problem — selflessness and the emptiness of ego)
We feel wise remorse in a mental environment of forgiveness, because forgiveness recognizes the truth of change; what happened in the past does not have to happen in the future. There is no forgiveness in guilt because we have congealed the sense of self into a kind of unchanging stasis through negative self-judgment; according to guilt, “once bad, always bad.”
Do you accept that approach? Do you take it? Do you claim it as “I”? If you do, Mara has won. But if you see the trick and wag your finger—“Mara, I see you!”—then thoughts of guilt may come, but you do not empower them with identification.
(Desire, craving, and watching the treadmill of wanting)
Desire arises from contact with these pleasing objects, and this desire can range from obsessive passion to addictive craving to a simple passing wish for something.
In Pali the word tanha means the desire of craving, and the word chanda is translated as “desire to do.”
Desire, wanting, craving, clinging are all expressions of the greed factor in the mind. We feel it as thirst for a particular object.
How many pleasant feelings have we already enjoyed? Too many even to count. And yet we still feel as if something is lacking, something is not complete. Without understanding how or why, we stay on the treadmill, endlessly looking for yet another pleasant experience.
It is hardest to cure a disease when the medicine we take itself causes the disease.
We try to quench our thirst by drinking salt water, and we make ourselves thirstier. This is what happens when we believe that the only way to end desires is to fulfill them.
We can begin to see that addiction is the burden, and that not buying into it is the freedom.
To let go of the commercials on TV is easy; letting go of the endless commercials in our mind is more difficult.
What happens in meditation when we choose not to act on desire? We watch it, watch it, and at a certain point, it is gone. Although the desire may be back when conditions re-form, in the moment of its leaving it is really gone.
Watching that experience of being filled with a very compelling and strong desire, and then seeing, knowing, and feeling what happens as it vanishes by itself, relieves us of the tremendous burden of having necessarily to do anything about it. The mind washes free with a great sense of relief and spaciousness.
(Anatta — the difference between a healthy self and an empty self)
We use the words ego and self one way in Western psychology and another way in the Buddha’s teachings.
In the Western psychological sense, “ego,” or “self,” refers to a certain kind of balance and strength in the mind. Having a strongly developed ego in that sense is essential to our basic well-being.
We have to have that balance in order to function in the world as harmonious human beings. People with an underdeveloped or misperceived sense of self cannot operate well in the world or be at peace within themselves.
The Buddha’s use of the word self is different from this concept of balance or mental-emotional maturity. When he refers to “self,” he is talking about an idea or concept we hold of an unchanging essence to whom experience
is happening. So when he talks about the absence of self, or anatta in Pali, he means understanding that experience does not refer back to anyone—and this is the crucial, transformative understanding that grows so deep in our practice.
Everything is just what it is, and only what it
healthy sense of self develops through learning to see clearly and accepting all the different parts of who we are; realizing the emptiness of self comes from not adding the burden of identification with those parts.
We learn to accept the fullness of our experience, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant.
So insight into anatta, into selflessness, grows out of self-acceptance. A healthy self and an empty self are
What we call personality is the habit patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that have been conditioned throughout our lives.
on all levels: thought, emotion, body. We really begin to feel things in a much fuller way than when our mind is scattered and distracted. The result is a kind of passion in dispassion. Dispassion in this sense does not mean no emotion; it means that we are no longer so identified. We no longer create a strong sense of “I” in the emotions, the thoughts, the sensations of the body.
Although this level of psychological inquiry is valid and extremely important, we do not want to divert the mind to that particular area of investigation during meditation practice.
The key question is, how do we relate to what is arising? Are we relating to these emotions by thinking about them or analyzing them? Or are we relating by simply feeling and observing?
Because our personal stories are so fascinating and interesting, it is helpful to practice the “not now” technique of noticing during meditation practice.
It is neither helpful nor necessary to create a polarity or conflict between these two areas or levels of mind, the meditative and the psychological. The psychological domain of understanding is of great importance in our lives, and it provides a valuable complement to what we learn in meditation.
The first insight was that who we are is a package composed of many different qualities. I saw clearly that I have strengths and weaknesses, skillful qualities and unskillful ones. All of them make up the “Joseph” package. Each one of us is like this. The second realization was that I do not have to judge or even change or fix the conditioning. Seeing that I could accept the whole package has been tremendously freeing.
If there is no self, who makes effort in practice, who gets reborn, who has memories, who gets angry, who falls in love? What does “no-self” mean?
But deeply understanding no-self is the great jewel of the Buddha’s teaching; it is the heart of a free mind.
“No self, no problem.”
absent. Awareness itself is the most profound, everyday mystery of our lives.
In every moment various mental qualities arise with knowing and modifying it in different ways. Greed, hatred, love, mindfulness, concentration, conceit, despair, compassion are some examples of these mental factors. They each have their own flavor. Some are wholesome, bringing us happiness, others are unwholesome, bringing suffering. So, there is the natural purity and clarity of consciousness, of knowing, and a great variety of mental factors arising and passing away in different moments.
One particular factor of mind often gets out of balance and keeps us imprisoned in the conventional idea of self. This is the factor of perception, whose function is to recognize appearances by picking out their distinguishing characteristics and then to store them in memory through the use of concepts.
(Perception, concepts, and the hallucination of solidity)
Why do we have this perception of solidity? Why is it so deeply conditioned as our view of reality? This hallucination of perception arises from the great rapidity of changing phenomena. When we go to the movies we cannot see the separate frames of film. They move too quickly to be noticed, and so we remain in the illusion of appearances, overlooking the reality of how the magic works.
Of course, in a movie theater that is the whole idea; we go specifically for the illusion. However, when we overlook the reality of our life, it has more serious and far-reaching consequences.
When we look at trees from a distance, we just see an undifferentiated mass of color. But as we get closer, we can distinguish individual leaves, and even the small distinct parts of the leaves.
up and down, concentrating on the sensations, what happens to the idea of “finger”? It disappears. When you stay in the bare awareness of your experience, the concept vanishes, and you know the actual changing sensations.
Life is a process of becoming, of conditions arising and passing; it is not happening to anyone. There is no being behind it to whom it happens.
Each one of us is a constellation of mental-physical processes. We recognize the familiar pattern, name it, and then become so identified with the concept that we fall into the great illusion of believing that some being is ultimately there.
Our practice is to awaken from the illusion of taking concepts to be the reality, so that we can live in a clear awareness of how things actually are. It should be easy to free ourself from attachment to concepts,… but it is not.
Of course, we need concepts, and in many situations they serve us very well. We use various concepts as convenient designations, but if we understand that the words do not refer to solid “things” that have independent existence in themselves, then we stay free in the use of them. Problems only arise when we forget that they are constructs of our own mind, and impute a reality to them that they do not inherently have.
You live in illusion and in the appearance of things. There is a Reality. You are the Reality. But you do not know it. If you wake up to that Reality, you will know that you are nothing, and, being nothing, you are everything. That is all.
A subtle identification can still take place, however, with the knowing faculty itself: “I’m the one who’s knowing all these changing objects.” We might believe the knowing is I, is self. Because knowing, or consciousness, is
much more subtle than other arising objects, you might find it difficult, at first, to be mindful of it. But as the mind’s power of steadiness, stillness, and clarity grows stronger, we can actually become aware of awareness.
At certain stages of meditation practice, it becomes clear that consciousness itself is a changing process. This discovery can be unsettling, because for so long we have identified with the faculty of knowing as being most essentially who we are, taking it to be our soul, our self, our center. And now we see that it, too, just like all other phenomena, continuously appears and passes away.
We often go through a similar emotional sequence in meditation practice. As our identification with things loosens up a little, and we see the rapidity of change, at first there can be real exhilaration, a greater sense of spaciousness. But feelings of panic can come when we realize that there is nothing at all to hold on to. Both the objects of awareness and the faculty knowing them are continuously falling away, like water over a waterfall. We understand now, on a deeper level, that nothing we grasp at for security actually provides it. But as we continue with the practice, enlightenment dawns: there is no ground to hit and no one to hit it—just empty phenomena rolling on. Then we feel the great relief of letting go, the deep feeling of equanimity, and the joy of ease.
From this understanding of selflessness comes a deep connection with everything. We need not rely on certain forms of relationship to feel connectedness, because there is no longer separation. There is no one to be separate.
The writer Wei Wu Wei expressed this same insight regarding humility: “True humility is the absence of anyone to be proud.”
(Emptiness, ecstasy, and sitting until only the mountain remains)
Ecstasy can mean different things, and it can come from many different causes. In the course of meditation practice, ecstatic feelings often flood our consciousness when our mind is pure, bright, and luminous. Although they may be wonderful feelings, they arise because of certain conditions and will inevitably pass away. There is another kind of ecstasy. It results from the wisdom of emptiness, of seeing the impermanent, insubstantial nature of all phenomena, where there is no clinging, no attachment, and no fear. In this experience, we become one with the unfolding process of life. This oneness is quite subtle, because it is the oneness of becoming zero.
We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.
When we look at mind directly, we see it as dynamic, continuously changing, conditioned and reconditioned by all the different mental qualities that arise and pass away within it—qualities like love, fear, anger, joy, mindfulness, ignorance, and many more. Sometimes these qualities work harmoniously with one another, and sometimes our mind seems engaged in a Star Wars of mental factors.
Vipassana means seeing things clearly, as they are.
we win the all-important possibility of making wise choices.
We choose wisely simply by cultivating the ability to look at ourself honestly, at our own particular package of qualities, both the wholesome and
If you think too much about karma, you will go crazy, the Buddha warned bluntly. It is too vast.
This is not an accurate understanding, because our actions do not bring about predetermined results. Rather, each action is a seed, and the seed will bear some fruit, but what that particular fruit will be depends on many different conditions interacting in extraordinarily subtle and complex ways.
That is what is really happening. All of the harmful actions that people do, all of the things that cause suffering—where are they rooted? They are rooted in deep ignorance, in not understanding the suffering being caused, and not understanding the karmic fruits being created for themselves in doing such
Compassion feels the suffering caused by ignorance, and wisdom understands what to do.
flour. So even as we understand the selflessness of this living process, we still take care with the actions of our lives.
(Metta, compassion, and skillful communication)
Is there a difference between the enchantment of falling in love and that quality of being when we are standing in love? This special quality in Pali is called metta, lovingkindness.
Because we react less and remain more open when we cultivate metta, the softness and pliability of love become the ground for wisdom. We see with greater clarity what is wholesome and skillful in our life and what is not. As this discriminating wisdom grows, we make wiser life choices that lead us again to greater happiness and more love.
Compassion—karuna in Pali and Sanskrit—is the strong feeling of wanting to alleviate pain and suffering.
Compassion arises when we come close to suffering, when we open to and feel the suffering either in ourself or others.
Try gently to drop aversion to the pain, and just open to it. Open to the one or the ones in suffering. Allow the feeling of separation from that being or beings to dissolve. And then notice how your heart feels. Even though you are encountering suffering, a kind of happiness has come. It is not the suffering itself that causes our discomfort; rather, it is our aversion to it and our sense of separation from others. When those go, the discomfort goes. Even though it encompasses anguish and pain, compassion is an empowering joy.
words have on others, and theirs on you. Because speech is so predominant in our lives, and because our words are so consequential, learning the art of skillful communication needs to be a significant aspect of our Dharma practice.
always two parts in any interaction. One part is to learn how to speak effectively, and the other is to learn how to listen effectively.
When you are in a confrontation with someone and you are each very attached to your own perspective, ideas, and feelings, see if you can find a moment to take a mental step back and say, “Okay, let me try to understand this from another vantage point.”
This does not mean that you do not express your own understanding. You can, but from that space of openness where it becomes much easier to speak without aggression. If you are able first to listen, already the ground between you and the other person has changed.
This skill takes a lot of practice. If you have not practiced it before, in the midst of an intense communication you will at first find it difficult to do.
Can we be firm without anger or blame?
People sometimes confuse acceptance with a wishy-washy way of being in this world: letting anybody do anything, and never taking a stand. That’s not it at all. Acceptance means taking responsibility for our own mind states. With mindfulness, it is possible to take a strong stand, to initiate effective communication, yet to do it without getting caught in reactive judgments. The energy with which we communicate is the key.
Sometimes people become so charged with enthusiasm from the fresh energy of a meditation retreat that they want to tell their friends and family all about it. They assume that everyone will be interested.
is genuinely interested in learning about your experience, you need to let go of your own agenda in order to use the right skillful means.
inadequate, not hitting the mark, remember that the deepest communication is always in the way we are with people, not in what we say. The words we use may or may not connect, but the quality of our presence always communicates.
If you are more loving, more accepting, less judgmental, and more compassionate in your relationship with friends and family, that is a powerful communication.
“My parents hate me when I’m a Buddhist, and they love me when I’m a Buddha.”
Of all forms of human communication, connecting skillfully to parents can, for many of us in the West, seem the most challenging.
Parents can be a splendid test. We practice on ourselves, then we go home. Here is the final exam! “Oops. Didn’t make it that time.”
What are some ways to work with situations where our parents are difficult or the relationship is difficult? One of the hardest things is not to expect them to be different from what they are. Relating to people by wanting them to be different creates tension and conflict.
As you relate to difficult parents, you might also remember the proximate cause of metta, or lovingkindness: seeing the good in beings.
Our generation of practitioners will pass on a wisdom forged through a lot of difficulty, because this search for solutions is not an easy one.
We are visitors on this planet. We are here for ninety, a hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives. Try to be at peace with yourself and help others share that peace. If you contribute to other people’s happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.
Before beginning meditation practice, reading and studying can clarify the teachings and inspire people to take the next steps on their spiritual journey.
So if you have done some sitting already, and if you are inclined to do so, you may find that going back to the original sources widens your perspective of the path.
Being able to see the humor, the lightness, and the emptiness of phenomena is really a great blessing during those times when we become caught in the various dramas of our lives.
Every sitting, every walking, every moment that we practice is an opportunity to train our mind. Can I open to this? Can I accept this? And the deeper we go in practice, the closer to the edges we get, those boundaries of what we are willing to be with expand. Death may be such a boundary. Can we train ourself so well that we can cross that boundary with confidence when we come to it?
the power of vipassana, insight meditation, develops a very strong observing power of mind.
(Insight into impermanence — the seed of freedom)
The Buddha then said that it is far more consequential to experience just one moment of a mind fully absorbed in the feeling of lovingkindness, or metta, than it is to give a gift to the Buddha himself and the entire order of enlightened beings. And further, he said that many times more powerful than a mind fully concentrated on loving feelings is the karmic consequence of one moment’s clearly seeing the arising and passing away of phenomena.
This clear and sure insight into impermanence is far more fruitful than giving a gift to the Buddha and the whole order of enlightened beings, or of feeling lovingkindness. Why? Because in that clarity of vision lies the seed of freedom.
practice we do, this simple, clear observation, is tremendously powerful? Do not undervalue the results of simply staying present with the moment’s experience, and of insight into impermanence on a momentary level. The consequences for how we live and how we die are far greater than we may ordinarily realize.
As we rest in the simplicity and strength of these feelings, we see that when metta is in our heart, fear is absent. Metta and fear do not coincide.
The stronger the metta, the more it stands as a bedrock for us. It becomes a refuge. So we gain tremendous strength from cultivating this quality deeply, a strength we can turn to at any crisis in our lives, including our death.
Metta and vipassana are complementary powers that can be blended together skillfully.
(Practice benefits all beings through the web of interdependence)
To Benefit All Beings Whether we consciously intend to or not, we journey on this path of awakening not only for ourselves but also to benefit all beings. As we begin to understand more deeply our own nature, the reality of mind and body, we see that this nature is universal. We see that differences are relatively superficial; they are differences of certain kinds of conditioning only. Our personalities are different. So are the look of our bodies and the contents of our thoughts. But the way our mind and body works is the same in each of us: anger, fear, love, and compassion feel the same in all people; our bodies all get old and die. From a growing awareness of ourselves, we come to a much deeper sense of our commonality with others.
Our own practice also directly benefits all beings. Precisely because everything is interdependent, we recognize that our life, of necessity, has an effect in this world. There are so many levels of connection among all beings and things that the quality of our mind and heart inevitably has effects that we might not even see.
The more sensitive we are to the interdependence of things, the more we see how the quality of our own lives affects not only the people we actually meet but also all beings.
In this mysterious universe of subtle and vast interconnections, each one of our actions is as delicate and far-reaching as the butterfly flapping its wings. And the freer we are from greed, hatred, and ignorance, the more our lives will be for the benefit of all. Reflecting on that fact can infuse our practice and our lives with spaciousness and love as we travel this ancient and fully contemporary path.