“In the Buddhist tradition, as well as other spiritual traditions, the human world is considered a place of special possibility precisely because we are positioned between heaven and hell. Each human life inevitably contains a mix of happiness and misery, and nothing stays the same. Things are lost without warning. Mishaps are always happening. Keys and jobs and great loves are lost, as well as a red wine spilling on a white suit. And it turns out that our true awakening depends on this very instability. It is in the midst of those awful moments that something inside us sometimes opens to a greater sense of belonging.
“Being in a human body offers us the chance to take a very special kind of journey — from self-enclosed separation from others and the whole of life to a sense of belonging. On earth, we can all be heroes — not in the sense of being solitary actors brandishing swords, but by daring to put down our defenses and take off the armor to really experience and feel what is happening in any given moment, without fighting or fleeing.”
