Anyone who’s interested in meditation in the first place probably already senses that we are all in a mess, the human mess, and that we have no choice but to clean it up. People who are ill — with heart conditions or cancer or stress-related illnesses or simply greater-than-average unhappiness — or people who have been forced to recognize the inescapable truth that life isn’t easy and smooth, that it inevitably brings problems, that going along with business as usual as if none of this were so is simply not sustainable. Such people have realized that life is always in crisis, not only for them but for everyone. Meditation practice helps us to face this crisis as it really is and nourishes our process for working on it.

Norman Fischer, Taking our Places