Spirit is love, spirit is connection, inclusive, and that's what I'm interested in, and that's what moved me. That's what I got more and more into as I grew up and as I was in college in the 60's with consciousness raising and other kind of things, gestalt psychology etc.

Well neither of us were "Buddhists" then because it was new to us. We were 60's people. Psychedelic relics, you know... whatever, right on, radicals and world changers, social peaceniks perhaps, with a Buddhist spiritual veneer.

But you know, eventually that does kind of veneer, chemical veneers that you apply, they sink in. For better or for worse, so it's good to think about what kind of veneer you shellac yourself with. How superficial it may seep into your skin and into your blood stream and totally take over your heart, your brain, everything.

Spiritual joy is devotion, it's like a virus you know? It's a benevolent virus, but it spreads. It's infectious. Ram Dass was like a mentor in those days.

The secret, or innermost, level of wisdom is pure intuition, clarity, lucidity, innate wakefulness, presence, and recognition of reality. This transcendental wisdom is within all of us—it just needs to be discovered and developed, unfolded and actualized.

We're human beings trying to understand and cultivate what it means to feel divine love. We have to start with small, realistic goals.

Embracing our environment is a good direction, a very spiritual direction. It's too Aristotelian to separate man from the animals and man; humans from the environment.