In the context of these teachings, however, everything is always in relationship. In fact, you could almost say that everything is made of relationship, in a sense.

*Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel. The Logic of Faith: A Buddhist Approach to Finding Certainty Beyond Belief and Doubt.

Life is perpetual newness.

*Ilie Cioara. The Wondrous Journey: Into the Depth of Our Being.

Yet, can I know the flower by thinking about the flower, by fitting the flower mentally into the attributes of that genre of flower? Absolutely not; so, to see the flower, I drop the past thoughts of what the flower must be. Each flower is singular and is Life happening now. The flower is happening, flowerness is not happening, unless we say the flower happening arises as an extension of flowerness. Flowerness takes a journey through a flower, so, as flower has a beginning and end. Flowerness in itself has no beginning or end. Flowerness reproduces itself again and again and again, always in the one moment. Where does flowerness arise from? Good question. Yet, the question dissolves inside being-in-Love with the flower. When I see the flower, the flower becomes a single subjectivity with me; Love happens, two become one, again.

* * *

A flower needs no idea of what or whom it is to be the flower it is. Not knowing does not limit the flower being itself. Indeed, if the flower were told the kind of flower others say it is, even the flower experts, the flower, say a hibiscus flower, might find it essential to try to be what it is. The flower might attend seminars on how to be itself and read self-help-for-hibiscus books. The flower might say daily affirmations to help it be itself. It might compare and contrast itself with other flowers, and might suffer low-hibiscus-esteem and go to counseling for advice on having a more positive view of itself. The flower might entertain the question, "What is the meaning of being a hibiscus flower?"

Yet, the hibiscus might get fatigued with the big self-program focusing on itself, trying to be itself. Then, a transition might occur. The specific hibiscus flower might surrender the search and return to the flowerness of itself through its hibiscus self. Knowing its mysterious oneness with itself as expressing a universal prior flowerness, this would alter positively its relationship, and deepen it, with all other flowers in the whole world. In appreciating itself more, it would appreciate others more. In celebrating its qualities, its particularity, it would feel freedom to do the same for all other flowers. In this, the hibiscus would be rejoicing in the flowerness it itself is with all other flowers. The hibiscus would not fear that other flowers appear different from it, and it would see understanding those differences as enriching its own life. And, one could ask, "Hibiscus, where do you begin, and flowerness end?" And, the hibiscus could say, with a smile, "Nowhere."

The hibiscus would see its hibiscusness changing with time, as the years passed, but it would sense its flowerness ever-new, eternally youthful, like Spring following Spring, eternally. It would not fear its dissolution as hibiscus or desire a hibiscus afterlife, for it would know what others say is death is only a continuation of who it truly is. This one hibiscus flower would rejoice that from moment-to-moment it is Life creating flowerness from Itself. The hibiscus would be grateful its relationship with all other flowers and with itself, flowerness, and Life~in seamless gracefulness~, was happening fresh, each moment a miracle endowed with unseen possibilities and never-fathomed potentialities. And the greatest of these miracles, it would rejoice to know, in the quietness of its own heart in Silence, is to love other flowers, not merely as other flowers, but as Life, as oneself.

*(C)2018 Brian K. Wilcox