The Keys to Spiritual Practice

It’s tempting to write that the path I wish to follow and share with you is a journey to tranquility—as if peace is a destination, a state of being that we can someday attain and eternally keep. If only it were possible to arrive that way and stay, I’m tempted to wish! But even that wish is attractive illusion. Many masters have phrased the deeper truth in their own way, speaking of tranquility as the journey itself, peace as the path. In choosing the epigraph for my new book Grace and Tranquility, I chose Thich Nhat Hanh’s eloquent summary: “Peace is every step.” My book is one of those steps, so is this online journey, and so is my collaborative album with the elegant band Gypsy Soul. As I write this, all of these steps are being released into the public light. I take the steps not as the next master of tranquility—I’m not some ethereal peaceful soul floating above the detritus of messy human emotion—but as another student willing to learn alongside you. It’s no accident that the first line of the title track to the musical version of Grace and Tranquility is, “I am just a student/Of the art of being human…” It’s an art that requires lifelong practice, and to practice with diligence and share with honesty is the best I can offer. It’s my revision of the old writer’s adage, “write what you know,” which I believe should be instead, “write what you want to know.” It’s in our explorations that wisdom is found. It’s in our admission of not knowing that our growth can be attained. How is it that I can deepen the grace with which I move in the world? How can I take this very next step with more tranquility? How can my own attempts at this deepening serve your own? That’s what I’m here for, in these words that draw from my books and move beyond them. This is the living moment-to-moment journey with tranquility, and I hope you’ll join me for every peaceful step.