Home Is Where You Find Happiness "Home is the place where you find happiness" a fortune cookie told me on Mother's Day. My ten-year old niece asked me "Is it so?" Yes. Home is the source of my greatest joy. "Where is your home?" Elisa inquired As she had read The Odyssey, I told her: It's what Homer spoke of when Odysseus turned down Calypso's gift of immortality during his seafaring to realms of the gods but yearned the family life of mortal men, weeping tears of joy sighting Ithaca's shore returning home to his wife Penelope at last. Home is where we came from, where we will return, where we are now. "But we're in the car right now" she looked at me. Yes, my body is in this car, but not so my mind. Home is where my mind is, a place to store our treasures as Athene helped Odysseus hiding his gold and placed a stone at the cave's entrance. Then the bright-eyed goddess and our hero sat beneath the holy olive tree and planned their attack on the suitors. This act would be replayed a millenium later— at Christ's crucifixion, when Joseph of Arimathaea wrapped Jesus in a linen, laid him in a cave and rolled a stone unto the sepulchre's door, where in three days he would triumph over death. When discovering these connections a few days ago my mind flew back almost two thousand years to the Mount of Olives at Christ's last sermon: "Store your treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust may corrupt, and where thieves do not break in nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Home is in the Cave of the Heart, the Cave of both Odysseus and Jesus. It is our incorruptible treasure ground. Home is the center where OM is found, the Pure Consciousness of the Mind, where each of us find our True Love. Elisa looked at me and smiled, and from all the fairy tales she has read, I knew she has tasted the pure joy of Home.         — Peter Y. Chou              Palo Alto, 5-10-1987