Gary Snyder. "The flowers of flowering plants co-evolved with insects and are beautiful and sweet scented for them, not for human beings. The flowering cherries of Japan - Prunus serrulata and relatives - produce negligible fruit and are closer to a wild type, the mountain sakura, that blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds. There are a trembling, expectant several days of openness - waiting for the seed to move around - and then they blow off and away. Saigyo says, as if he himself were a bee drawn to the flower, that the masses of blossoms on the slopes of the Yoshino mountains draw him to the depths of the hills for knowledge:
Yoshino mountains -
The one who will get to know
You inside out is I,
For I've gotten used to going
Into your depths for blossoms.
The blossoms then are also a way into
the inner depths, as well as the more commonly taken symbol of
evanescence and youthful beauty."
From chakras to the flower sermon, flowers have represented the transmission of wisdom. We speak of people and even of being as flowering and blossoming... a beautiful process of opening, and often of opening to a higher light, or to a light that is simply there but has not been recognized. Flowers open to the sun, to the moon, to insects. We as flowers open to love in its manifold varieties: we blossom when we receive and give love - to a lover, to a friend, to being. The bodhisattva, I think, gives and receives especially to and from being, and hopefully the friend and the lover help one another to blossom as bodhisattvas. We give flowers to those we love, and hopefully our love is also a transmission of wisdom. The symbol of love/wisdom us humans have chosen, these flowers that us humans give to those we are attracted to, has its own history of evolving over countless spans of time to attract insects: another form of omnipresent sexuality, and also of the infinite interconnectedness witnessed by Mahākāśyapa, who, perhaps, smiled like Snyder at the thought of an insect buzzing towards the Buddhas flower.
The wild mountain sakura "blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds." In San Francisco we are far away from this particular vision but always close to infinite varieties of beauty. We can spend some time in a text, but sometimes it is best to gain wisdom directly from looking into the blossoming that is constantly occurring in the world all around us, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the eyes not only of those we are closest to but of all beings.
Saigyo speaks to the mountain as if to a lover: The one who will get to know you inside out is I, for I've gotten used to going into your depths for blossoms. In my own life, I know that to be the lover I hope to be, I must see all being with such intimacy. At the same time, it is through the graces and processes of having of a lover that many of us learn to go into the depths of being, where we see blossoms everywhere and constantly.
From chakras to the flower sermon, flowers have represented the transmission of wisdom. We speak of people and even of being as flowering and blossoming... a beautiful process of opening, and often of opening to a higher light, or to a light that is simply there but has not been recognized. Flowers open to the sun, to the moon, to insects. We as flowers open to love in its manifold varieties: we blossom when we receive and give love - to a lover, to a friend, to being. The bodhisattva, I think, gives and receives especially to and from being, and hopefully the friend and the lover help one another to blossom as bodhisattvas. We give flowers to those we love, and hopefully our love is also a transmission of wisdom. The symbol of love/wisdom us humans have chosen, these flowers that us humans give to those we are attracted to, has its own history of evolving over countless spans of time to attract insects: another form of omnipresent sexuality, and also of the infinite interconnectedness witnessed by Mahākāśyapa, who, perhaps, smiled like Snyder at the thought of an insect buzzing towards the Buddhas flower.
The wild mountain sakura "blooms on the dark confier hillsides like gleaming clouds." In San Francisco we are far away from this particular vision but always close to infinite varieties of beauty. We can spend some time in a text, but sometimes it is best to gain wisdom directly from looking into the blossoming that is constantly occurring in the world all around us, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the eyes not only of those we are closest to but of all beings.
Saigyo speaks to the mountain as if to a lover: The one who will get to know you inside out is I, for I've gotten used to going into your depths for blossoms. In my own life, I know that to be the lover I hope to be, I must see all being with such intimacy. At the same time, it is through the graces and processes of having of a lover that many of us learn to go into the depths of being, where we see blossoms everywhere and constantly.
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