When you awaken your heart, you find to your surprise that your heart is empty.If you search for the awakened heart, there is nothing but tenderness.You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness.It occurs because your heart is completely open, exposed.It is the pure raw heart that has the power to heal the world.
To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standard by which our acts, our economics, our laws, and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.
All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred. No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance: only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.