inexaustable love

How many people live a boring and sterile life in this world,
loveless, looking for love to fill them but never finding it.

Or suffering the bitterness of disappointed love.
Or the anquish of impossible, lost, or forbidden love,
and not finding fulfillment.

Or the sadness of love returned that does not satisfy.

These people could be overwhelmed with love
and their limitless capacity for love, tenderness, and self-surrender
could be filled, if they would only turn inwards
to the inexaustable love that lives and breathes within them.

Ernesto Cardenal

insubstantiality

The body's like a ball of foam,
And feeling is like a bubble;
Perception is like a mirage,
Formations like pithless trees,
And consciousness is like a trick;
-So says the kinsman of the sun.

However one reflects on them,
And carefully investigates:
They are empty and deserted
To one who sees them properly.
...
No essence is discovered here.

S 22:95

Read a comment on this passage in the newsletter - www.citta101.org/newsletter.htm

interpersonal practice

The mind emerges from the activity of the brain, whose structure and function are directy shaped by interpersonal practice.

Daniel Siegel, The Developing Mind, p.1

This critical value of interpersonal practice is the reason we make interaction part of our meditation practice.