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Praying Mantis (and pausing to make offering)
This morning as I approached my office, I noticed in the middle of a wide patch of sidewalk that is flanked by the street on one side and a brick building on the other, with no tree boxes or other plantings for several yards in any direction, a praying mantis stranded in the middle. I wondered how it had gotten there and worried that it would not survive if it was just stuck in a sea of concrete.
I crouched and put out my finger. The praying mantis crawled on to my hand. I did not have time to go all the way back to the park next to the Capitol or to the nearest “island” with trees, but I took it to the nearest tree box, certain that there would be enough mosquitoes for it to eat well. When I placed my hand next to the bush in the tree box and helped the praying mantis move onto the greenery, it first came back onto my hand again. So I talked to it (as if it understood English) and encouraged it to get onto a branch (yes, I was getting some strange looks from passers by at this point). I watched as the praying mantis eventually turned around and started moving into the denser foliage.
With this act, did I make anything in the world better except give myself the joy of interacting with a wonderful being? Does it matter?
Nyaya of the Rosebud and the Rose
As I walked through the neighborhood for the past couple of days, going from one place to another, I have seen hundreds of rosebuds. In enjoying the exquisite form of the buds before they open, I thought about the teaching I have heard from Paul Muller-Ortega of the rosebud and the rose.
The buds are lovely ad perfect in their on right, and at some level, we hate to see them go. But the rosebud itself must dissolve or be destroyed for us to get the rose. The transformation into the full-flowering of the rose requires the dissolution of the bud.
So too, with everything in life. When we can fully appreciate this cycle of dissolution as part of creation, we will be less attached in a way the leads us to be bound up in grief and loss, and instead find a fuller appreciation of whatever beauty is present in where we are in the cycle.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.





