The practices of Buddhism — meditation, compassion, Dharma study, scrutiny of our own actions in the world — provide or create the conditions that can allow our preoccupations to fall away, so that we can experience our unity with the big mind or primal awareness. That experience is only clumsily described in words, because it is deeper than our ordinary consciousness; it transcends the verbal forms we have to describe things. It arises spontaneously. You cannot make it happen, but you can work to clear out your distractions, open your heart, quiet your mind, so that this deep sense of ultimate peace can be felt in all the atoms of your being.
— Sandy Boucher, Opening the Lotus