There is a Sufi saying that we polish our hearts into mirrors so that we can reflect the omnipresent love through them. The cultivation of the soul will help us gradually realize the integration between the spirit and the humanity. Life inevitably casts dust on our hearts, but our inner strength can sweep it away through love, and the process begins again. The dust does not come overnight, nor does the mind allow it to stay forever. What we have to do is fully engage in this endless cycle of life transformation. When we are weak or do not have the courage to polish, often will experience the necessary wind and rain, this is also a chance for life to wash itself and gain a new life. All of us suffer from spiritual dust, and all of us grind it out. We oscillate between awakening and exhaustion. In the process, the ocean of life is waiting for us, ready to wash for us like a wave. That's why we have to make our hearts into mirrors -- to open up and reach for the treasures of life that lie deep within us, so that the rest of us can feel them, so that everything can reverberate in the harbor of our souls. In this sense, endless practice means fulfilling the promise that in the journey of life, when we are constantly darkened by the dust, we must constantly polish it into a mirror, over and over again, until life reveals itself. Just or unjust, we must put aside our differences and come to terms with this conflict. Yes, you have suffered, but this is your life.

Another key contradiction: love and suffering. Our spirituality and humanity are part of a larger entity, the wholeness of life. To delve deeper into the totality of life, start here. In the sea of life, love and suffering are inextricably linked, and we can only pray that love will save us before the bitter waters suffocate us. The inexorable arrangement of life as a whole is God's or the mysterious universe's (whatever word you use) way of ensuring that we can stay together because life is challenging and we need each other's company. Only when we embrace life fully will life lead us to that constant stream of life. It is the irregular dynamic integration of life that breeds the resilience of life. Separate life from life, life loses its mystery, vitality will wither away. The hard part about embracing life fully is that we don't know whether each bite will contain more love or more suffering. If we have more pain than love, we need each other's support to get through it. And if all we're eating is sweet love, we need a reminder to keep our feet on the ground. Life seems to be deliberate, so full of challenges, no one can survive alone. In this way, human beings must depend on each other. This, too, seems to be a requirement of experience: to experience life fully, we need to be nurturing and open to each other. Since each of us is a part of the whole of life, one of the challenges of being human is to live our small lives while still appreciating the whole of life. Endless practice means that when we are immersed in our feelings, we do not lose our connection to the other beings who exist outside the experience. We often slide either one way or the other: denying our own feelings in order to maintain a solid connection to all beings, or being uprooted by our own strong feelings and losing our broader perspective. The real awakening is to take care of both sides and do your best all the time. Let me share with you two stories. I once taught a class in a beautiful, remote place, and the students had traveled thousands of miles to get here. At lunchtime on the first day, a good-looking man approached and introduced himself as a Marine biologist. In my morning lecture, I used an analogy about fish, and he was so excited that he told me point-blank that my analogy about fish was dead wrong. I sensed at once that his impetuous expression was not merely a challenge to the science of my fish metaphor, but a rebuke to me personally. I bent down and looked him straight in the eye, and I could tell that he must have been drawn to my class by something, and he must have known that I was only speaking metaphorically, and that through metaphor I was trying to convey a sense of awe at the mystery and the insoluble contradiction. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to get out of his scientific world, but he was having a hard time adjusting, and instead of asking for help, he was fighting. Although I found him rude, I didn't want to fight back against his sharp words, and I could feel more deeply that the argument itself was a tug of war between his own way of thinking and his attraction to explore new ways of thinking. So I switched gears and said, "Oh, you're a Marine biologist. Please tell me more about fish." At this, he relaxed a little and began to share his knowledge with me. He also gradually felt a sense of security in this strange place. When he finished, I thanked him and said, "One thing you need to realize is that no matter how inappropriate the metaphor I use, the truth of the metaphor does not diminish. I invite you to reflect on whether what I have to say makes you uncomfortable." It was clear that he had been challenged, and an argument he needed to have with himself had almost been turned into an argument with me. I think it's a mentor's job to return an internal debate to a student who is struggling with self-growth, and it's not an easy exchange. Although I was able to move past his disdain for my metaphors and his anger at the need to change my way of thinking, I felt uncomfortable inside. At lunchtime, I called my wife Susan, thousands of miles away, and exploded: "I just met this guy. You have no idea how stupid he is." Obviously, he's not an idiot. He went all the way to take a course that helped him grow personally. What I'm trying to say here is that while I acknowledge and accept my students' struggles, I also need to acknowledge my own feelings, which are both real. What I learned in that moment was that as I felt the full river of life rushing me forward, I also needed to respect my own feelings. The second example comes from my personal life. My father spent the last eight months of his life being treated in various hospitals and care centers, and I often flew to visit him. One time when I arrived, he was sleeping and my brother told me that he had been beaten to death, so I sat down by his bed. When he came to, he couldn't recognize me, which he had never done before. I was suddenly stimulated. My own father stared at me as if I were a stranger, and I felt a strange feeling of being removed. My heart sank and I thought, this is how I'm afraid I'll feel after he's gone. I held his hand and tried to help him remember, "Dad, I'm Mark. I'm your son." He looked at me like an old miner trapped in a mine and said, "Oh, am I still here? Are you here to help me?" My heart plunged into an abyss, but I also realized that the least I could do was be a kind stranger. Instead of trying to help him remember me, I moved closer and introduced myself to my father for the first time in my life, saying, "Hello, I'm Mark. I'm here to help you. I'm here for you. How are you feeling today?" His eyes softened as he squeezed my hand and thanked my company. Then he looked away from my face, as if to say, no one can save me from here, no one.

There is a Sufi saying that we polish our hearts into mirrors so that we can reflect the omnipresent love through them. The cultivation of the soul will help us gradually realize the integration between the spirit and the humanity. Life inevitably casts dust on our hearts, but our inner strength can sweep it away through love, and the process begins again. The dust does not come overnight, nor does the mind allow it to stay forever. What we have to do is fully engage in this endless cycle of life transformation. When we are weak or do not have the courage to polish, often will experience the necessary wind and rain, this is also a chance for life to wash itself and gain a new life. All of us suffer from spiritual dust, and all of us grind it out. We oscillate between awakening and exhaustion. In the process, the ocean of life is waiting for us, ready to wash for us like a wave. That's why we have to make our hearts into mirrors -- to open up and reach for the treasures of life that lie deep within us, so that the rest of us can feel them, so that everything can reverberate in the harbor of our souls. In this sense, endless practice means fulfilling the promise that in the journey of life, when we are constantly darkened by the dust, we must constantly polish it into a mirror, over and over again, until life reveals itself. Just or unjust, we must put aside our differences and come to terms with this conflict. Yes, you have suffered, but this is your life.

Another key contradiction: love and suffering. Our spirituality and humanity are part of a larger entity, the wholeness of life. To delve deeper into the totality of life, start here. In the sea of life, love and suffering are inextricably linked, and we can only pray that love will save us before the bitter waters suffocate us. The inexorable arrangement of life as a whole is God's or the mysterious universe's (whatever word you use) way of ensuring that we can stay together because life is challenging and we need each other's company. Only when we embrace life fully will life lead us to that constant stream of life. It is the irregular dynamic integration of life that breeds the resilience of life. Separate life from life, life loses its mystery, vitality will wither away. The hard part about embracing life fully is that we don't know whether each bite will contain more love or more suffering. If we have more pain than love, we need each other's support to get through it. And if all we're eating is sweet love, we need a reminder to keep our feet on the ground. Life seems to be deliberate, so full of challenges, no one can survive alone. In this way, human beings must depend on each other. This, too, seems to be a requirement of experience: to experience life fully, we need to be nurturing and open to each other. Since each of us is a part of the whole of life, one of the challenges of being human is to live our small lives while still appreciating the whole of life. Endless practice means that when we are immersed in our feelings, we do not lose our connection to the other beings who exist outside the experience. We often slide either one way or the other: denying our own feelings in order to maintain a solid connection to all beings, or being uprooted by our own strong feelings and losing our broader perspective. The real awakening is to take care of both sides and do your best all the time. Let me share with you two stories. I once taught a class in a beautiful, remote place, and the students had traveled thousands of miles to get here. At lunchtime on the first day, a good-looking man approached and introduced himself as a Marine biologist. In my morning lecture, I used an analogy about fish, and he was so excited that he told me point-blank that my analogy about fish was dead wrong. I sensed at once that his impetuous expression was not merely a challenge to the science of my fish metaphor, but a rebuke to me personally. I bent down and looked him straight in the eye, and I could tell that he must have been drawn to my class by something, and he must have known that I was only speaking metaphorically, and that through metaphor I was trying to convey a sense of awe at the mystery and the insoluble contradiction. I could see in his eyes that he was trying to get out of his scientific world, but he was having a hard time adjusting, and instead of asking for help, he was fighting. Although I found him rude, I didn't want to fight back against his sharp words, and I could feel more deeply that the argument itself was a tug of war between his own way of thinking and his attraction to explore new ways of thinking. So I switched gears and said, "Oh, you're a Marine biologist. Please tell me more about fish." At this, he relaxed a little and began to share his knowledge with me. He also gradually felt a sense of security in this strange place. When he finished, I thanked him and said, "One thing you need to realize is that no matter how inappropriate the metaphor I use, the truth of the metaphor does not diminish. I invite you to reflect on whether what I have to say makes you uncomfortable." It was clear that he had been challenged, and an argument he needed to have with himself had almost been turned into an argument with me. I think it's a mentor's job to return an internal debate to a student who is struggling with self-growth, and it's not an easy exchange. Although I was able to move past his disdain for my metaphors and his anger at the need to change my way of thinking, I felt uncomfortable inside. At lunchtime, I called my wife Susan, thousands of miles away, and exploded: "I just met this guy. You have no idea how stupid he is." Obviously, he's not an idiot. He went all the way to take a course that helped him grow personally. What I'm trying to say here is that while I acknowledge and accept my students' struggles, I also need to acknowledge my own feelings, which are both real. What I learned in that moment was that as I felt the full river of life rushing me forward, I also needed to respect my own feelings. The second example comes from my personal life. My father spent the last eight months of his life being treated in various hospitals and care centers, and I often flew to visit him. One time when I arrived, he was sleeping and my brother told me that he had been beaten to death, so I sat down by his bed. When he came to, he couldn't recognize me, which he had never done before. I was suddenly stimulated. My own father stared at me as if I were a stranger, and I felt a strange feeling of being removed. My heart sank and I thought, this is how I'm afraid I'll feel after he's gone. I held his hand and tried to help him remember, "Dad, I'm Mark. I'm your son." He looked at me like an old miner trapped in a mine and said, "Oh, am I still here? Are you here to help me?" My heart plunged into an abyss, but I also realized that the least I could do was be a kind stranger. Instead of trying to help him remember me, I moved closer and introduced myself to my father for the first time in my life, saying, "Hello, I'm Mark. I'm here to help you. I'm here for you. How are you feeling today?" His eyes softened as he squeezed my hand and thanked my company. Then he looked away from my face, as if to say, no one can save me from here, no one.