Embracing the Koan of Friendship & Meditation
(Windhorse Publications Ltd, 2007)
Hello At Last is about spiritual friendship – specifically, ways of deepening our connections with others.
My interest in spiritual friendship began when I interviewed members of a Buddhist group in India and learned their practices for cultivating openness, trust, and warmth between people. I returned to explore similar practices in this country, from basic exercises in reflective listening to meditative dialog—on retreat, with a friend, and even online.
Although my experiences have been in the context of Buddhist meditation practice, the approaches described in this book apply generally to human relationships. The title comes from the final words in Allan Gurganus’s “Toward a More Precise Identification of the Newer Angels” (New Yorker, September 4, 1995), spoken by an angel greeting newcomers to heaven—
Hello at last.
You have only
just begun to
know each other.
—and is intended to suggest the true, deep, free way of being with others that we all long for.
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