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.
– Thich Nhat Hanh, excerpt from Peace Is Every Step
I received a question about what drives my practice as a counsellor, more specifically if there were religious values as my foundation.
My spring of inspiration is in working with people because I value compassion and love. It is not tied to any particular religion but it is the common ground of most religions.
A religion is like what we call a flower and there are many names: rose, lily, lotus, peony, and so on. The names represent the flower but it can never fully give us the experience of encountering the flower. Names are a human approximation for convenient communication and ultimately the names become arbitrary, and sometimes a burden to the flower -- it never asked to be named.
Smile and enjoy the flowers.
