Our lives are chaotic – sometimes exhilarating, sometimes crimped by senseless suffering. In the face of erratically alternating pleasure and pain, we are stirred by music and by the arts, inspired by acts of generosity, and moved by a lover’s touch.

Neither naïve faith in a preordained purpose, nor nihilistic faith in meaninglessness, is a plausible alternative.

Buddhism is a path beyond implausible alternatives: self-righteous religion and self-indulgent consumerism; saccharine sentimentality and alienated depression; cautious respectability and pretentious rebellion. It is neither a simplistic compromise between extremes, nor a bland contract with mediocrity.

Buddhism is a way of appreciation and courage, of inspiration and realism, of celebration and service, of authentic joy and genuine sorrow, of creativity and compassion, of outrageous humour and deadly earnestness, of resilient humanity and wild vastness.

Buddhism is the passionate dance of ultimate reality performing within the ordinary reality of our lives.