It is not answers that pull many people into the religious life, it is questions. The person who lives deeply and enduringly with, and within, a religion often finds that he is surrounded by ever more doubts as he goes on, not convictions. In an eloquent monk like Thomas Merton, say, the religious impulse is […]

Stay too far away from a spiritual teacher, the Tibetans famously warn us, and you cannot feel the heat; draw too close, and you get burned. The fire warnings grow especially urgent when that teacher attracts students through her warmth, and all the more so when the students, in turn, try to put words to […]