Eternal Life

Lance Kinseth, The Speech Of The Flower, 48x60”

ABBOT ZENKEI SHIBAYAMA [1894-1974] whom I met in late 1960s writes,

Silently a flower blooms,


In silence it falls away;…


The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.

How can the quickly fading flower demonstrate eternal life?

Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
    

The world of the flower, the whole of
    

the world is blooming.


This is the talk of the flower, the truth
    

 of the blossom;

Flower buds, blossoms, shrivels, and disappears—still, no birth and death, and flower not “there” and you “here.”