Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form" states the Heart Sutra, one of the best known ancient Buddhist texts. The essence of all things is emptiness.

When you see around you the human form suffering or dissolving, you have empathy on the human level. You share the suffering because it has to do with the fleetingness of form. But if that is the only level that operates in you, you haven't gone beyond suffering.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spare them from all suffering? No, it wouldn't. They would not evolve as human beings and would remain shallow, identified with the external form of things. Suffering drives you deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although eventually suffering destroys the ego-but not until you suffer consciously.

Every being is a spark of the Divine, or God. Look into the eyes of the dog and sense that innermost core. When you are present, you can sense the spirit, the one consciousness, in every creature and love it as yourself.

Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.

Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.