The curled brown fallen leaf at your feet,
The moss-filled crack in the sidewalk,
The two hummingbirds, just now, appearing from nowhere and weaving, like little rockets, in and out of the echinacea and lilies.
And high above the Oaks and Pines, Cirrus clouds are sliding to the west.
Do we really know what any of this is? Isn’t it all, beyond the names we give things, a vast mystery? Yet, somehow, we know, without knowing, that the curled brown leaf, the Moss-filled crack in the sidewalk, the two hummingbirds at play, the cirrus clouds high above, in fact, the whole wide world, with its ocean and forests and deserts and billions of people, is what we are. There is, in fact, nothing outside of us. To be intimate with this truth is to fulfill our deepest desire, which, oddly enough, is to come to the end of desire. This paradox is at the core of true spiritual inquiry.
But don’t take my word for it, or, for that matter, anyone’s word for it. The beauty of this truth has to be discovered empirically, beyond words or belief, for oneself.
