The Wayshower

I truly love how Nature doesn't mess with Its nature. You don't ever see a tree trying to be a shrub or a duck trying to be a squirrel or a worm trying (excepting in children's books, perhaps) to sprout wings and fly. This alone accounts for the great power of Nature, it seems to me.

Touch, simply touch an early sprout in spring as I did this morning. Hold it for a bit as you would a baby's fingers or toes, say, and step back from thinking. Listen, that is to say, with your touch, and you will "hear" it. You will experience all the life of the earth burgeoning forth in that sprout. You will apprehend a pure and complete intention taking form: this branch will produce maple seeds and maple leaves. It's a staggering power, really, and it is the very same power that gives rise to you and to me.

Why, unlike the duck, the worm, and the tree and all the rest, we try at times to contort ourselves into disharmonious, "untrue" shapes and ways of being I do not know. I do know that we pay a price for it. But even that unpleasantness--illness or disease, say--is another of Nature's genero-
sities. You are off track, dear. Come around, come around, She all but speaks.

Nature will always lead us to true being--to our essence, our so-called Buddha Nature. She offers an infinite and endless array of wayshowers that remind us of that. It is my immense privilege to witness and remember from them.