Ah, the "butterfly effect" ... where a butterfly flapping it's wings in Australia might, under right conditions, start wind currents to trigger a hurricane days later in Florida.
But the "butterfly effect" we are discussing here is something much more intimate ... for imagine that all time and space, each atom and galaxy, is just held as a single, flapping monarch butterfly that is everything, fluttering its wings amid empty space. Nothing else. Oh, sure, I may sometimes see myself here as a hair on the left wing, and you as a bump on the back of the tail ... but left right back or front, just butterfly all around, butterfly through and through (
who can even judge which is the left or right or up and down of a butterfly in space, cause that is just where one stands and how one looks at things). Same for near or far, this or that ... the butterfly is never ever anywhere else. Yes, it is all of us individually working to keep our butterfly afloat, from flapping wings and guiding tail to all of it. Yet, simultaneously, sometimes we can see ourselves as 100% butterfly in the most
radical sense. When we truly see ourselves, you are just the butterfly and I am just the butterfly, and there is just butterfly looking at butterfly. For a moment, forget your little self ... do not think of yourself as just part of the wing or behind ... and be the
Whole Butterfly! Not simply parts of butterfly, but
Buddha-Butterfly through and through ... "you" are butterfly as much as "butterfly" is butterfly (
in such case, who can even say what is "big" or "small" or not vital to the whole?). What is not completely butterfly? There is nothing else but butterfly (
what else can there be in this butterfly-only world?), and every inch of butterfly is butterfly. Before you were "born", there was butterfly ... after you "die" there will be butterfly flying on ... and since the butterfly is you, there is simply flying flying on.
So, what to do, Buddha-Butterfly?
Flutter flutter flutter. Flap flap flap.
Where is it flying to? To where a monarch butterflies flies on great migration.
Buddhism is really not so complicated as people sometimes make it.