Daily Meditation: Thursday, April 20, 2017

Exchanges - we make with nature and all beings must be more profound

04/20/2017

We cannot live without making exchanges with the world around us. Beginning with respiration and nutrition, our life is nothing more than exchanges, made possible by our sense organs (touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight), which have been given to us by nature to allow exchanges with creation and its creatures. Our emotional and intellectual lives also consist of encounters and exchanges: by means of words, feelings and thoughts, we ceaselessly weave a network of relationships which is the foundation of family and social life. If human beings do not derive any great benefits from these exchanges, it is often because they do not rise above the level of instinct, of the unconscious as it exists in plants and animals. Like human beings, plants and animals breathe and nourish themselves. Animals also possess sense organs, sometimes even more highly developed than those of human beings, and they also have a family and social life. It is the responsibility of humans to make all their exchanges with nature and the other beings they encounter, more profound and richer. And our teaching provides many exercises for doing this.