Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries--to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain.

At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm.

Keep practicing, even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

Mastery is a journey, and that the master must have the courage to risk failure.

How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself.

What was once impossible now summons us to dismantle the walls between ourselves and our sisters and brothers, to dissolve the distinctions between flesh and spirit, to transcend the present limits of time and matter, to find, at last, not wealth or power but the ecstasy (so long forgotten) of commonplace, unconditional being. For the atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest of clay. The life of every woman or man-the heart of it-is pure and holy joy.