There is an ancient Buddhist mantra I return to again and again:
Om Mani Padme Hum.
It is often associated with compassion, and its imagery has been translated in different ways. One interpretation that has always spoken to me is:
The jewel is in the lotus.
These days, I hear something even more personal in those words.
The wisdom I have spent so much of my life seeking outside myself has been quietly waiting within me all along.
The teachers matter.
The books matter.
The practices matter.
But ultimately, they keep pointing me back to the same place.
Within.
From Seeking to Listening
I love learning.
At 78, I am still a student—and I hope I always will be.
My meditation teacher training with Davidji has immersed me in meditation, mindfulness, yoga philosophy, Ayurveda, Buddhist teachings, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads and many contemporary wisdom teachers.
And yet something interesting is happening.
The more I learn, the less I feel the need to search for the answer.
Instead, I am learning to listen.
Meditation creates enough quiet for me to hear what is beneath the noise.
Beneath the expectations.
Beneath the conditioning.
Beneath the voice telling me what I should do.
There is another voice.
Quieter.
Steadier.
It doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t argue.
It simply knows.
Nothing Essential Is Missing
One of the teachings that has become central to my life is beautifully simple:
Nothing essential is missing.
For much of our lives, we are encouraged to believe otherwise.
Something is missing, so accomplish more.
Something is missing, so improve yourself.
Something is missing, so find the right relationship.
Something is missing, so buy something.
Something is missing, so become someone else.
Even spiritual growth can become another form of seeking.
One more teacher.
One more book.
One more practice.
One more answer.
But what if the purpose of spiritual practice isn’t to add something to ourselves?
What if it is to remove enough noise that we can recognize what was already there?
The jewel within.
Meditation as Remembering
This is what meditation increasingly means to me.
It isn’t escaping my life.
It is becoming more intimate with it.
I sit.
I breathe.
Thoughts come.
Thoughts go.
Feelings arise.
Sensations change.
And gradually I remember that I am more than any single thought, feeling, role or circumstance.
There is an awareness beneath all of it.
The witness.
The quiet presence that notices.
Meditation doesn’t manufacture that presence.
It reveals it.
And when I carry even a little of that awareness into everyday life, everything changes.
I listen differently.
I respond rather than react.
I notice what my body is telling me.
I become more discerning about relationships.
I recognize when something feels aligned—and when it doesn’t.
This is where mindfulness stops being an idea and becomes a way of living.
Compassion Begins Within
There is another reason Om Mani Padme Hum continues to speak to me.
Compassion.
We often think of compassion as something we offer other people.
But genuine compassion must include ourselves.
That doesn’t mean excusing everything we do.
It means meeting ourselves with the same compassionate curiosity we would offer someone we love.
Instead of:
What’s wrong with me?
I can ask:
What is happening within me right now?
What am I feeling?
What do I need?
What is my body telling me?
What is true for me?
That kind of inner listening has become an essential part of my understanding of conscious living and healthy aging.
Wholeness Rather Than Perfection
The late physician and neurologist Dr. David Simon taught an integrated understanding of healing that brought together Western medicine with meditation, Ayurveda, yoga philosophy and mind-body wisdom.
His approach resonates deeply with me because I am less and less interested in perfection.
I am interested in wholeness.
Body.
Mind.
Heart.
Spirit.
Ayurveda teaches me to notice balance and imbalance.
Meditation teaches me stillness.
Yoga philosophy offers principles for conscious living.
And my own lived experience teaches me something equally important:
Listen.
The body has wisdom.
The heart has wisdom.
Our experiences have wisdom.
Even our discomfort can carry information.
The Jewel and Our Relationships
Recognizing the jewel within also changes the way we relate to other people.
When I believe something essential is missing in me, it is easy to ask another person to fill the empty space.
But when I come to a relationship from wholeness, something different becomes possible.
Friendship becomes sharing rather than grasping.
Community becomes belonging rather than approval.
Teaching becomes offering rather than proving.
And intimate love becomes two whole people choosing to walk together—not two incomplete people trying to complete one another.
I can remain deeply open to love without chasing it.
I can welcome a beloved without waiting for someone else to begin fully living my life.
The jewel is already here.
The Wisdom of Growing Older
Perhaps one of the gifts of aging is that eventually we become tired of looking everywhere else for ourselves.
We begin removing rather than accumulating.
Simplifying rather than striving.
Listening rather than proving.
Choosing relationships that feel reciprocal and genuine.
Choosing experiences that nourish us.
Choosing how we want to spend the precious currency of our attention.
For me, healthy aging is becoming less about holding onto youth and more about inhabiting my life completely.
I don’t want to become younger.
I want to become more present.
More peaceful.
More discerning.
More loving.
More fully myself.
The Jewel Is Within
I will continue reading.
I will continue studying.
I will continue meditating.
I will continue learning from extraordinary teachers.
I will continue growing.
But I understand something now that I didn’t always understand:
The teacher ultimately points me back to myself.
The wisdom isn’t somewhere out there waiting for me to find it.
The peace isn’t somewhere in the future.
The love isn’t something I must earn.
The wholeness isn’t dependent upon another person arriving.
The jewel is within the lotus.
And the lotus is already blooming.
Perhaps The Art of Living Well begins when we stop searching for what we believe is missing and become quiet enough to recognize what has been here all along.
Nothing essential is missing.
With love,
Sandi
