When we return to our breath one of the things we are doing is we are returning to our relationship with all things.

Bring your attention to your heart area. How does it feel, to give, this moment, to ourselves, completely to ourselves? Wherever you are, with your thoughts and feelings, painful or joyous… how is it to give, completely, to what we are feeling at this time?

For Dogen, that dropping away of body and mind that he considers awakening, is the dropping away of that center of experience.

It is often spoken about that this meditation, this sitting, is a practice to meet our own death.

In some ways, being in conversation is the only thing we can do — one long groundless conversation. That’s this life.

I have seen this happen, when some tinny little thing will happen in my relationship and the intensity of the response is so tremendous because it is connected to a whole stream of unforgiven, unnamed, unfelt pain.

How do we live in this world? From where do we respond? Are we in touch enough with the place of the heart so that we can speak to a roommate that is difficult for us from a place of openness, from a place from where we don’t disconnect?

None of us are good. None of us are bad. And we are all going to die.

I don’t have to wait for gratitude to happen to me. There are opportunities to practice it now and let it fluoresce in the heart.

How do we get back in contact with those possibilities for us to live in a playful, creative, connected, curious, courageous way?