John Diamond, M.D.

Here is Issa describing his young daughter: “When a passerby asks her to point out a dog or bird, she performs with her whole body, head to toe, poised like a butterfly on a grass blade, resting her wings.”[1] This movement from the Center, from the Buddha-Nature, I've always called grace – as does Issa: “She lives in a state of grace. The divine Buddha watches over her.”

Issa goes on to lament, “I've not yet found Buddha's grace myself … my daughter, two years old, is closer to Buddhahood than I.”[2] Perhaps every child lives in action meditation, only to lose it later in “wasted days and nights in empty busyness.”

[1] The Spring of My Life, trans. Sam Hamill. Boston: Shambhala, 1997, p. 53.

[2] Ibid., p. 52.