The Holy Life

There is something so incredibly life-affirming about the kind of joy and fellowship that emerges when many human beings, inspired by spiritual values and a higher sense of purpose, come together. The Buddha, when asked if association with like-minded people was a part of the holy life, is reported to have declared: "Association with like-minded people is not a part of the holy life, it is the whole of the holy life." The longer I have been teaching, the more obvious it has become to me that the Buddha was right—association with like-minded people is the whole of the holy life. And that is simply because the holy life, the spiritually enlivened and awakened life—if it's to have any real impact on the world—is about creating and sharing higher values with other human beings. When insight and revelation are being experienced as part of a shared higher state, something truly sacred begins to occur. The potential of a new, more enlightened world emerges here and now.

—Andrew Cohen