Reflections on motivation and attitude to formal practice when beginning a longer, solitary practice period.

"There is so much everything that nothing is hidden quite nicely" - Wizlawa Szymborska. It is easy to create an idea of emptiness, but how can we be present and come to know groundlessness? How do we practice this truth? For starters we need to be quiet, still and open.

A gnawing sense of incompleteness underlies much of our experience. Desire is thehuman response to the discontent described in the first noble truth. Desire and human istinctual nature cannot be supressed, so what does it mean to bow down to our nature and practice in a way that truly embraces the fact that we are animals, with a hunger for life and experiences? We must learn to use desire, not be used by it, but in our practice we have to take to heart that there is more to desire than suffering. There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual and there is a drive for trancendence that is implicit in the most sensual of desires.