Given the pace at which our days and nights are cooling down here in the north, it appears that this year's rose bloomings are at an end. What an astonishing season it was - profligate, shamelessly extravagant, so riotously hued and sublimely fragrant that the bees in our garden went about in a state of happy buzzing intoxication all summer long.The last rose of this calendar year is a glorious creature to be sure. She was captured just after sunrise, kissed by early breezes, brilliantly scarlet, velvety and dappled with beads of glossy dew.
Viewing the last rose of the season is always a "wabi sabi" experience, and however beautiful the bloom in its suchness, one cannot refrain from thinking that it is transient, waning and already passing away. The Buddhist expression for suchness is "Tathata", and it comes from "Tathagata", meaning both "one who has thus gone"(Tathā-gata) and "one who has thus come" (Tathā-āgata). Tathagata is how the Buddha referred to himself while he walked this earth, and thus it is a synonym for Buddha and "Awakened One".
Tathata describes the contemplation or appreciation of everyday things in their own fleeting space and time. No two objects or moments in life are just the same, and we may partake fully of each, knowing that it is perfect, complete within itself, utterly unique and ephemeral.
Nowhere in the plane of existence is suchness or tathata more evident or perfectly expressed than in that which is wild, natural and often mundane.
2 comments:
This is a beautiful post. I am always amazed by how late roses bloom in Toronto.
Beautiful rose, beautiful prose, beautiful thoughts. Glad to have found your blog.
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