Lotus Light Sangha Blog, The Peace of the Divine Reality

We are preparing for "Frankenstorm" Sandy to move through the area, so its seems like the perfect time to offer you our reading from this week's meditation. As we listened to the reading, we experienced the "aha" that wakes one up and clears the fog. Then meditating deeply, we emerged in present reality.

The reading was written by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Master and is included in a collection of contemplative writings from various spiritual teachers called "Handbook for the Spirit", edited by Richard Carlson, Ph.D. and Benjamin Shield, Ph.D. 

The Peace of the Divine Reality, Thich Nhat Hanh

"I would like to share a poem with you, written by a friend who died at the age of twenty-eight in Saigon, about thirty years ago. After he died, people found many beautiful poems he had written, and I was startled when I read this poem:

Standing quietly by the fence, 

you smile your wondrous smile. 

I am speechless, and my senses are filled

by the sounds of your beautiful song,

Beginningless and endless. 

I bow deeply to you. 

"You" refers to a flower, a dahlia. That morning as he passed by a fence, he saw that little flower very deeply, and, struck by the sight of it, he stopped and wrote that poem. 

I enjoy this poem very much. You may think that the poet was a Zen master, because his way of looking and seeing things is very deep. But he was just an ordinary person, a poet. I don't exactly know how or why he was able to see like that, but it is exactly the way we practice Buddhist meditation, the practice of mindfulness. We try to be in touch with life in the present moment and look deeply into things that happen to us in the present moment. We do that while we drink tea, while we walk, sit down and so on. The secret of the success is that  you are yourself, you are really yourself, and when you are really yourself, you can encounter life in the present moment...

...There is another story about a flower, a story well known in Zen circles. One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks. He did not say anything for quite a long time. Suddenly, he smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. The name of that monk was Mahakashayapa. Only one person smiled, and the Buddha smiled back and said, "I have a treasure of insight, and I have transmitted it to Mahakashyapa". That story has been discussed by many generations of Buddhists, and people continue to look for its meaning. To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. And if you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who is not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. 

That is the problem with life. If we are not here, if we are not in the present moment, fully ourselves, we miss everything. When a child presents himself to you, with his smile, and if you are not really there, you are thinking about the future or you are thinking about the past, or you are preoccupied by other problems, then the child is not really there for you. The technique of being alive, of living in the divine and earthly realities simultaneously, is to go back to yourself. Then the child will appear like a marvelous reality; then you can see her smile and embrace her. "