Life is suffering said the Buddha, and it is through chronic or acute suffering that we at last say ‘enough’ and begin the search for an alternate path, a way out of our humanness. Suffering is perhaps the greatest and most obvious portal into spirituality.
Some years ago I had a remarkable dream. In it I was a raindrop tumbling from a great, gray cloud and I felt ecstatically free the way one can in flying dreams. Then, suddenly, the clouds parted and below me stretched a vast and…