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If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful.

I am not the born; how can there be either birth or death for me?

When the soul is understood and attended to, we can be liberated from hurry, preoccupation, unsatisfied desires, and chronic discontent.

Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

Birth and death; we all move between these two unknowns.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

I feel like trouble has followed me from the day I was born.

No single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. It would be a bit too easy if we could go about borrowing ready-made souls.