I think the message is that you don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking. - Ram Dass

Now isn’t preparation for later. Here and now is it. There is a spaciousness, an acceptance of what is in the moment, that says, “Yes, ah so!” to everything, whether it’s ugly, beautiful, boring, confused, dead, angry, the dark night of the soul, or the brilliant light of the spirit. This is just the way it is. And in just the way it is, is the spirit.

The Buddha believed in reincarnation, which means he thought that something reincarnates. The Pali literature says: “There are no real ego entities hastening through the ocean of rebirth, but merely life waves, which, according to their nature and activities, manifest themselves here as men, there as animals, and elsewhere as invisible things.” “Life waves” — that’s a nice image. In Hinduism they’re called vasanas, subtle thought-forms. Every act we do creates vasanas, life waves, based on the desires connected with the act. Those life waves go out and out. Even when we die, they continue; the physical body dies, and what remains are those subtle life waves, those mental tendencies that function like a kind of psychic DNA code to determine your next round. In Hinduism that’s called karma. Karma is basically a pattern of life waves, or desire waves, that keep going and going, life after life, until they spend themselves. When they do, there’s no more individual desire, no more separation, and therefore no more incarnation. The game is over.

Suffering is the sandpaper of our incarnation. It does its work of shaping us.