How are you seeing yourself, others, and the world around you?
It is interesting to consider the notion that we are seeing and experiencing life from different perspectives. The late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote about the idea of seeing the world in a sheet of paper.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote,
If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are.
Consider taking a moment to see it yourself. Contemplate (or look thoughtfully for a long time) at a sheet of paper. According to Hanh, “If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine.”
Similarly, in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki explained that the true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes... “Zen practice is to open up our small mind.”
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