Last summer, our friends Candi and Roger spent a few happy days with us when we went to see the opera Aida. One afternoon we were poking around the West Seattle Nursery, and Roger generously bought me this beautiful Buddha. OK, I said-- but only if you find a place for him in the garden. Roger, with his perfect artist's eye, plunked him down on a shelf with the bonsai, and he hasn't moved since. Even through the worst Seattle winter in memory. And he gets more beautiful with age.If you have ever tried meditation and stuck to it, you know that sitting is the easiest and hardest thing in the world. Most of us start out with big health goals for our practice and this can be motivating, especially in the beginning. I suppose sometimes we even attain these goals. But more often, even better things we never expected creep in the backdoor. Of course you can only "learn" meditation by doing it, not reading a book about it. That said, there are some wonderful and wise writers like Jon-Kabat Zinn who have a gift for making complex ideas and practices accessible to everyone.
And there is also my favorite reference book "Meditation for Dummies."
And then, there was once a man who was not a dummy at all who wrote:
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self."
The World As I See It
Albert Einstein, 1932
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