I recall seeing a sign outside a Christian church that said: “If you do not like the way you were born, try being born again.” Trust emergence is a way of being born again, fresh in each moment. In this radical act we leave behind personal baggage, emotional and intellectual. Such release may be temporary, but the universe cracks and spills its copious jewels when we penetrate the veils of certainty and glimpse the vast potential of uncertainty. We meditate alone but live our lives with other people; a gap is inevitable. If our path is to lead to less suffering, and much of our suffering is with other people, then perhaps we need to reexamine our sole commitment to these individual practices...Meditating individually, we lack any practice that explicitly addresses the interpersonal realm....We are not clear that the personal and interpersonal paths are profoundly connected, nor do we know how easily and even elegantly they can be interwoven. A wider vision is available to us. Buddhist Path - Human Path The teachings of the Buddha are about human life. Rituals and philosophies have gathered around the Buddha’s teachings—different forms in different places—but the heartwood of the teachings is not about these things. It is about coping with our all too human lives of suffering and joy. We can take heart in the fact that the Buddha was a man, not a god. The Buddha taught what he learned from his own human experience. He offered his teaching to other human beings, who were able to benefit from them because they were human. This humanity does not deny the subtle or mysterious aspects of our being, those attributes only realizable by a still, keenly alert mind. Being born into a human’s sensitive body and heart-mind is both exquisite and challenging. The Buddha’s insights have astonishing depth and right-now relevance because they were based upon his direct, embodied experience. He rose to the challenges of his human life and taught others how to do the same. It makes little difference that the earth touches my bare feet thousands of years later or that the thoughts crowding my mind were influenced by the Internet or that my emotions have a modern Western flavor. The facts of our shared physiology, and of the heart-mind’s tender responses, ensure the continued relevance of those human teachings. Interpersonal Suffering The relational elements of the Buddha’s teachings are often overlooked. This is evident in all schools of Buddhism....As a result there is much ignorance about the suffering associated with human relationships, its cause, and the nature of freedom. This suffering has been unnamed and overlooked. It is simply a result of being born as a sensitive social being in a complex and changing interpersonal and social environment. This is interpersonal suffering....Interpersonal suffering is the suffering that stems from our associations with other people. It is a vast subset of psychological suffering. Stresses with family members, coworkers, and friends are interpersonal suffering. Loneliness and disconnection are also part of interpersonal suffering. Each of us regularly experiences interpersonal suffering. Simply recognizing these dynamics at work, and knowing that they arise as constructions of the sensitive heart-mind, can be some help. A huge portion of our emotions, painful and pleasant, arise in relationship to other people… Interpersonal suffering is sticky stuff. People are complex, emotions change faster than summer storms, solutions are never certain. Loneliness is a fundamental form of interpersonal suffering. It is the interpersonal manifestation of our root fear of emptiness and death....