This kind of mystical occurrence is in fact always happening in myriad ways. What we think is rare is not really so; what’s rare is our being open to it, right in the midst of the ordinary.

When I am attempting to get free, that labor is also helping others to get free. Not only do I have to choose freedom, I have to understand that I deserve to be free.

They didn’t say the work of the war is too urgent, we have to work seven days a week. They understood that in order to sustain themselves, they had to take regular pauses to take good care of themselves.  The peace activist A.J. Muste has said, “There is no way to peace; peace is the way.” The young social workers in Vietnam were practicing peace, not working towards peace in a frenetic or frantic way. That’s not how we create peace. We need to manifest it in every step. Not running for something in the future, but being peace in this moment, because the future is made of this moment.

In many temples in Asia, you see statues of a great being, the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara Kuan Yin. A bodhisattva is an awakened being. In this particular statue, you’ll often see many arms and many hands. In each palm, there’s drawn an eye. Sometimes the bodhisattva is male, sometimes female, transgender; it is very gender fluid. This eye on the palm of each hand, is the eye of wisdom.

That if we look deeply into the situation, then our action will be appropriate action. But if we are caught up in our own story, and in our strong emotions, our anger, our reactivity, then we won’t be able to see the situation and its depth, and its complexity and its impermanence. Then our action may actually cause more harm than good because it doesn’t have this deep grounding in wisdom.  It’s challenging to see a situation clearly. The Buddha said that most of our perceptions are wrong. So we need to act, but we need to try to see clearly. For this we need the skill of equanimity, which is non reactivity. It’s seeing things from all sides.

The word in Sanskrit is upeksa. It means to be able to look and see from all around, like you’re standing on the top of a mountain. You’re not caught in any one side, in any perspective.

Dr. Langer and her colleagues recruited healthy men in their late seventies to early eighties to participate in a study that looked at the impact of the mind on health and the aging process. In this study, one group of men (the control group) were taken to a country retreat for a week and asked to talk about their past - specifically, reminisce about their experiences in 1959. The second group of men (the experimental group) were taken to a country retreat for a week and asked to live as if they were back in 1959. The surroundings of the retreat, from décor to appliances were set up to replicate 1959. They were only allowed to refer to themselves, others, current events, and experiences as if they were 20 years younger. Prior to the retreat, the men were given a battery of tests to include: weight, dexterity, and vision. Their intelligence and visual memory was assessed and each was photographed. At the conclusion of the retreat, each group showed improvement in several areas, like hearing, independent functioning, and memory recall, attributed to the fact that their minds were actively engaged, they were removed from their daily routines, and they were allowed to make independent decisions (Langer, 2009). In addition to these overall gains in both groups, the experimental group stood who “acted as if” they were in 1959 actually appeared to be younger than the control group at the end of the retreat. Results from tests showed that they were more open and aware of their surrounding, they showed greater improvement on intelligence tests (63% compared to 44%), and they had noticeable improvements in height, weight, gait and posture. When people unaware of the study were asked to evaluate images of both groups, all judged participants in the experimental group to be noticeably younger at the end of the study (Langer, 2009). The findings of this counterclockwise study led Langer to conclude that, “the mind has enormous control over the body” (Langer, 2009 p.10). This study led to the groundbreaking concept that perhaps our thoughts can actually affect the aging process – or, looking back to our original cliché, perhaps we are only “as young as we think.”.

This is what meditation offers us. The fruit of our practice is not miraculously never making mistakes again.

Mistakes are easy. As soon as we’re born, they begin.