I have a vague idea that a steering committee is a committee set up by an organization for the purpose of determining the best direction in which its efforts should be focused. Here is my view of a “cosmic steering committee:” there is That at the heart of existence that is always working for our good, and that knows much better than we do what constitutes our real best interest.

If I choose to trust the “cosmic steering committee,” to bow to It, and not to resist It, I allow It to help me. This is true even in the most difficult times and the most challenging situations.

As a Buddhist monk, I have spent most of my life doing lots of bows each day. I should be a master of all-acceptance. In actual fact, however, I am a person who keeps discovering that I often have to work my way to a genuine bow of acceptance through a maze of stubbornness and confusion.

Again and again, I have found that the disruptions and delays brought about by seemingly chaotic and unconnected events have helped me see something in a new light, do something in a different way. Again and again, I have found that changing circumstances are steering me in a different—and better—direction than whatever direction I initially had in mind.

Life is complex. The problems and difficulties that we encounter are often bewildering. Yet here and now the cosmic steering committee is quietly providing each of us with guidance that we can choose to listen to, or to ignore; follow, or resist.

It may be that some people can hear the guidance of the cosmic steering committee, and follow that guidance, without a contemplative religious practice. As a person who often finds that he just missedthe cosmic steering committee’s message by a hair, or just got the cosmic steering committee’s message by a hair, I feel that I need all the help I can get. And pure meditation provides that help.

NEWS OF THE TEMPLES