Flowers of Air

As Autumn settles more deeply into the landscape it naturally settles more deeply into us. Being that we are nature...and nature is us. 

Our thoughts begin to take on the melancholic tones of the leaves and the inherent sentimentality of their departure. Our bodies, in their physicality, adjust themselves to the fading light and the cooling temperatures. 

In me, this change of season leads to a lot of reflection about the nature and passage of time, about what arrives and what departs, what comes back, and what doesn't. It reminds me of an old zen poem by Jianzhi Sengts’an where he describes each moment as lasting 10,000 years...knowing each hummingbird or monarch may be the last I see until May or June, that come Spring nothing will be exactly as it is now - not me, not the trees, nor the world itself. All will be new, and at the same time older...verifiably different. 

The poem, and the season, urge us not to cling to what passes, but to be present for it. To trust that when we have nothing left to hold on to - we are free.

As Sengts’an says: 

"These dreams are merely flowers of air; why work so hard at grasping them?"