Don't get me wrong, I love plants. But don't give me flowers. I appreciate them much better when they are on the plant.
I tried to be into flowers once. In highschool... I hooked up with some girls and in an attempt to be cool (little did I know I was cool already.. but that's another story and one you're likely to never hear) I went with them on a "flower raid" which involved going to a botanic garden in the wee small hours and robbing a rhododendron of almost all it's blooms and filling my car with them (an old blue morris minor, the kind with the split windscreen and the flip out side paddle blinkers that handled about as well as a marble... but that's not relevant at this juncture). And I do mean filling. I felt pretty bad for that tree for quite some time after. Actually there were a lot of things I did in my teens that I have taken my lifetime to forgive myself for and accept that that was who I was and now that I know better I do better. But I digress..
I like things to be green.
Flowers are, by their very nature, mostly flashy showy attention grabbers and that is not something that appeals to Shine. It's far to easy to like those flashy things in life. Those things that easily catch your eye. To me that saying "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" is not a positive thing really. I far prefer the quiet underdog aspects of life that not many people take the time to notice and generally flowers just don't fit that bill.
Having said this, it was interesting to note tonight in my bookdwelling, a story about flowers that I do appreciate.
It is the story of one ordinary white flower, and the birth of Zen and involves one of the principal disciples of Buddha - Mahakasyapa.
Buddha was one to prattle on for great lengths delivering the dharma to his disciples - one day, they all gathered, as they did, including Mahakasyapa, expecting to hear him deliver some buddist equivalent of the sermon on the mount.
But Buddha did not speak. Instead he pulled from his sleeve a flower and held it there for hours, gazing tranquily at it.
Legend says that Mahakasyapa was the only one to realise this flower gazing was, in fact, the sermon and he smiled having the realisation and appreciating the special delivery of the dharma that the flower sermon brought him. It was the onlyness of this smiling that prompted Buddha to say
"I have the eye treasury of right Dharma, the subtle mind of nirvana, the true form of no-form, and the flawless gate of the teaching. It is not established upon words and phrases. It is a special transmission outside tradition. I now entrust this to Mahakasyapa."
And thus from this smile was born a new way within buddhism of delivering the dharma in a practical way rather than through the scriptures. This smile, this realization, was passed down through Mahakasyapa and through a succession of twenty eight masters and eventually flowed into what became The Zen.
In writing this recount for you I have just had a realisation myself. I can see why this story is the one I have picked to share tonight, why it has struck a cord with me.
My own dharma in this life comes from a similar experience as was shared between Buddha and Mahakasyapa in this tale.
"Dharma transmission isn't a matter of giving and getting, but an acknowledgement of intimacy, an acknowledgement of One Mind, Buddha smiling at Buddha."
Nothing makes me feel more connected to the strength of my purpose* and worth in this world than this buddha smiling at buddha concept. The intimacy of the shared wavelength, the inside joke, if you will, that comes from a shared experience. This is the closest one can experience to ever really knowing you are understood by another.
It is of course, a fallacy, as it is impossible to be truely understood or understand the reality of another (and you really are fooling yourself if you cling to the idea that you are and do) - but it is the closest to that that you can get. And it is through this that we feel our true belonging and purpose in this world.
That we are validated, that we make a difference, that we are cared for, that we matter.
And it is The Feeling.
*NOTE: the use of one's purpose in this piece depends not one whit on you ever knowing or understanding what that may be, just that one exists for you. The sooner you just accept that you do have one and that it may never be revealed to you and that it is not important for you to know it, the more smootly things will flow.
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