I’m writing these words in May 2020, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. Like many others, Kathie [Fischer’s wife] and I have been “sheltering in place,” seeing no one and going nowhere. In these times the importance of others in our lives, our children and grandchildren, relatives, Sangha friends, and many others, becomes desperately and poignantly clear. Not a day goes by when we are not thinking of the many people we cannot see in person, speaking with them on the phone or in video conference. This is a necessary blessing, but it is not the same as being in one another’s presence. We are living like hermits, but (perhaps like all hermits) our hearts are aching with love for people everywhere. I am these days literally praying that when this pandemic is over (and I hope it is by the time this books is in your hands) our world will be overcome with a moral imperative to take care of one another, ensuring that no human being will have to needlessly suffer for want of food, housing, education, and medical care. Compassion — feeling the suffering of others and caring for their spiritual and physical well-being — is surely the heart of all religious teaching.

Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow; Notes and Reflections from a LIfe in Zen