From Spirituality & Practice E-Newsletter, July 2009

A Zen story relates how a young man left home to study with a famous Zen teacher. On his journey he met a man who asked the youth where he was headed. The young man repeated his intention. The other man advised, "Instead of looking for a mere teacher, you'd be better off looking for the Buddha." "Do you know where I can find him?" the young man asked. "When you return home," he was told, "a person wearing a blanket and with shoes on the wrong feet will come to greet you. That person is the Buddha." The youth arrived home late at night. In her haste to greet her son, his mother threw on a blanket and accidentally put her shoes on the wrong feet. The son took one look at her and was suddenly enlightened. Our love ties may provide us with our richest lode — maybe the mother lode — of enlightenment.

— from Zen and the Art of Everything by Hal French