One thing I have tried to focus on here is why we practice, whether Buddhist or otherwise, meditation and other mindfulness practices. It’s often a difficult question to answer, and seems to me to be central to the process of offering help for others.

This article is a personal story that gives some very good, solid answers to that question. Primarily we practice to save our lives. And once we experience that, there’s some kind of natural inclination to want to share its benefits with others. If we keep at it a while, we learn lots about ourselves and the way one needs to live in order to stay connected with the meaning that keeps us alive.

This is to me the heart of the article, and the heart of practice:

As soon as I was willing to feel my pain, I regained access to my joy. I regained access to my love, and my boring, mundane life sprang forth in full color. The last day of that sesshin, I asked myself the question “When I am dying, what do I want my last thought to be?” and the answer came right away — gratitude. If I can die being grateful for my life, it will have been a life well lived.