Hi everyone

Sitting in my garden and enjoying nature come to life again, I decided to do an experiment. In the garden there are some radiant yellow flowers (I don’t know the English name for them) that grow in the grass and are considered to be a weed. An unassuming and humble plant, soon to disappear in the mowing machine. Today I decided to place my zafu opposite to this flower, sit and focus my attention. Try to really see the flower for what it is and not just what I think it is. A few thoughts I’d like to share with you guys.

A flower blooms because that is what it does. It’s sole purpose during short existence is being attractive and beautiful. Sometimes. when we are in the right mood and break away from our daily troubles, by chance we stop and see it. Really see it for what it is. This beauty, we must understand, exists because of us or rather because of the Buddha that we truly are. A flower or a weed for that matter, may be conscious on some level but not self-conscious like you and me. This self consciousness in itself makes us or is Buddha. By looking at the flower we ad meaning and there is appreciation. By fully seeing it, in a way, we make it exist. The flower will not get brighter or more dull because of this, but because we are consciously looking, beauty comes to be. For that short and wondrous moment, beauty speaks to beauty in a language we cannot consciously understand. It is ungraspable and beyond us. We can however catch a glimpse and this glimpse alone, when experienced with our full attention, is the magic of life.

The flower blooms and burns itself up just to fully be a beautiful flower. It does not have a plan or an agenda. It’s life is short but it does not hold back and gives it all it has. No right or wrong. No better or worse. No holding reservations or judgment. You and me are the same as flowers, in a way we are flowers. We seem to resist this fact and aim to be more beautiful or work to rival another flower never realizing we already are what we are supposed to be, complete and flawlessly beautiful.

Sitting in my garden, I realized everything that we see and perceive, is the same as the flower that sparked these thoughts. The world, the flower and you and me are all one single thing. It all exists for a short while, a temporary manifestation of something truly amazing. Like a light far away on a storm tossed sea. First it is there, then it’s gone only to quickly or later on reappear somewhere else again.
By seeing it, we make the flower beautiful and existent, and in turn the flower makes us beautiful and existent because we see it. So what is essentially you and what is essentially the flower?

First sitting to admire the flower then sitting and letting it all go. Leaving the beauty to be just what it is. Magnificent, radiant. Nothing to add, nothing to change and nothing to find or realize. Deep bow to the flower and so to all existence.

Gassho

Enkyo