“The difference is what we focus on,” he smiled and winked.

Dr. Wen was the Dean of the Asian Studies school, and – though one of the busiest administrators on campus, he always found time to meet with me each day. We sat in a small park just outside the front entrance, surrounded by the markers of a time long past and the gracious shade of the willow tree.

“Sometimes we focus on all the wrong things,” he smiled. “But, the mind can not see what the heart readily knows.”

At the time, I thought he was referring to a Scarlet Tanager hiding in the brush. It took me quite a few years to finally determine, he was speaking of much greater things.

He was trying to show me the illusion of our separateness; to share with me the importance of understanding our inherent interconnectedness. Everything in this world is intimately connected. Even our actions – both positive and negative – can not be realized without the existence of another.

And yet, here we stand – confused by the hindrance of labels.

When we see something – a painting, for example; do we see it as separate from the artist’s passion. Are the brush strokes delineated in such a way that we are unable to appreciate the depth of shadow and pattern?

When you consider in this manner, my loves – we are not so separate, after all.

In closing, a passage from the Samadhiraja Sutra:

“Know all things to be like this:
A mirage, a cloud castle,
A dream, an apparition,
Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen.

Know all things to be like this:
As the moon in a bright sky
In some clear lake reflected,
Though to that lake the moon has never moved.

Know all things to be like this:
As an echo that derives
From music, sounds, and weeping,
Yet in that echo is no melody.

Know all things to be like this:
As a magician makes illusions
Of horses, oxen, carts and other things,
Nothing is as it appears.”
Namaste my loves ❤️