On Sunday this lily in a bouquet sent by Nancy to Margaret for Mother's Day was an unopened bud. Life is happening all around us...
not just in spring but all the time. I am determined to be constantly aware.

Below I've posted an e-mail I received yesterday from friend Gerald Naus who is obviously aware of the mystery and beauty surrounding us. He explains why Buddhism and Taoism appeal to him.Jerral,
Nietzsche said, "Man is something that needs to be overcome." I’ve always felt that we need to overcome nature/the reptilian brain. This of course requires a modicum of peace and stability. I feel that overcoming the base/basic instincts is what I’d call salvation. Not dispassionate, but exhibiting equanimity and magnanimity.

I don’t share the Catholic view of a “Fall”, but rather view existence as the possibility to get up, to rise. (As opposed to getting a rise out of people, my prior hobby)
Some 9 months ago, the way I experience reality changed completely. (or you could say, I experienced reality for the first time, apart from scattered lucida intervalla over the years). Having returned to Buddhist studies, mainly Zen, plus Tao, I was introduced to myself. It was akin to a near-death-experience (but without being sick). I almost felt my own death – curiously, I’d always dreaded the death of loved ones, from early childhood on, but never contemplated my own.
King Yudhishthira of ancient India, when asked, “What is the greatest wonder in the whole world?” replied: “That we see people dying all around us and never think that we too will die.”

The Zen teacher had warned of the dangers of such contemplation, “You may not like what you find.” Ain’t that the truth. However, since then I’ve felt a great urgency and experience everything more thoroughly. I’m also more peaceable and more kind to others. (an easy improvement, that!) I can only laugh at the nonsense I used to spout for a couple of years. But, as an organic “farmer”, I know that wonderful things feed on and emerge from crap. Bat crap especially. Or, to use Buddhist imagery, the lotus has its roots in the mud. I guess you could call me a syncretist now (OooOOooOOo). I sing the body eclectic, if you will (pardon, Walt Whitman).

We can’t know for sure what, if anything, lies beyond, but we do know that others are happy if you reduce their suffering. Now, if I could stop asking what the Buddha called “indeterminate questions” (existence of a god etc), that’d be true acceptance. To quote Whitman “for realz”,
“I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;”

I am drawn to old places, soon I’ll be in France again, that beguiling country, where even nature puts on its Sunday best. The longer people have lived in an area, the richer it becomes. For good or ill – last year I stood at Omaha Beach looking up at the cliffs. But even there, hope, for instead of German tanks there are now German RVs and the laughter of children. Indeed, love among the ruins.
Gerald