What is meditation?

Mother Teresa's biographer heard that when she awoke in the morning she would pray for an hour or two before she went out to do her spiritual work of charitable service. The biographer asked her what she said to God when she prayed, to which Mother Teresa replied, 'Oh, I don't say anything to God. I just listen.'

The curious biographer then asked, 'Well, when you listen to God, what does God say to you?'

Mother Teresa smiled and replied, 'Oh, God doesn't say anything. He just listens too!'

When her biographer questioned Mother Teresa further about her prayers to God, she replied: 'If I ever feel the need to speak to God in prayer, there are only two words that need to be said: thank you!'

Quoted from Meditation: An in-depth guide. Originally from an interview with a reporter, Dan Rather, CBS anchorman, and published in his book Deadlines & Datelines -- Essays for a new century, 1999.

Ways of being in relationship

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
-- The Prophet: On Marriage by Khalil Gibran

Living with your emotions

Praise and blame,
Fame and shame,
Gain and loss,
Pleasure and sorrow,
Come and go like the wind.
To be at peace,
rest like a great tree
in the midst of them all.
-- The Buddha