Finding Our Voices

I was listening to a book on tape by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, recently and one of the Buddhist teachings she mentioned was the Four Limitless Ones which is a teaching about four qualities that are available to all people and without limit. The qualities are loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. According to the teaching these qualities are like bottomless wells if we but draw from them. You don't have to work for them or manufacture them although they do have “enemies” or analogs which you need to avoid but the true qualities themselves are available just through receiving them.

In Genesis 2 there is the familiar story of the creation of Eve. It's one of those stories that we've known about for so long that we usually take the meaning (and what we think is the end of the story) for granted. A couple of years ago I read it in a different fashion and it changed my life.