be here, in this present moment
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
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Very true, thanks for sharing!
Don't we have the tendency to make our lives more complicated than they are - and the tency to live in the past or the future - anytime but here and now? As for 'over thinking' ... I am such a master of that!
ooops - tendency - I could do with being properly here when I'm typing ;-)
Ahh the lotus. I think that Buddha was trying to enlighten his followers by explaining that a flower can say everything. I am not sure which sect of Buddhism you follow, but a lot of them point toward knowing a peace that is being part of everything around you. Nirvana can be simply achieved by realizing that you are everything and everything is you. Thus by showing them a simple flower he could demonstrate that beauty can be found in ourselves as well as nature. At least that's how I always interpreted it... I have to tell you, in all the religions that I spent time in college studying, I was fond of Buddhism the most.
Wonderful. I need to remember this.
Thankyou.