INTERBEING

Sunflower Heart, Jamestown, NC
Camillia Heart, Jamestown, NC
Magnolia Heart, Greensboro, NC

Beauty is a mystery in its knowing, but we know it when we see it. It exhibits itself in the golden spirals of a sunflower’s seed arrangement, the florets of a daisy, the bracts of a pine cone and the branches of a tree. These Fibonacci numbering sequences are nature’s mathematical order in the universe all around us. Fibonacci numbers have been called the Fingerprint of God that is hidden throughout nature. They certainly belie randomness. It’s been said that if you look into the heart of a flower, you look into the face of God. And when you look into the heart of a sunflower, you look into the beautifully patterned order of all creation that shows the way into the Language of God in the form of spiraling DNA strands.

Buddhist philosophy teaches us that the earth is one giant, living, breathing cell and when we simply consider the heart of a flower, we can see that it is full of life. It is full of soil, rain, sunshine, clouds, oceans, minerals, space, and time. That’s one of the main reasons I find it so fascinating to photograph the heart of a flower and then edit the image even further into its interior. When we walk through a garden and observe patches of flowers, we don’t always bend over and look closely into their hearts.

Thich Nhat Hanh, whose students of mindfulness call Thay (for teacher), writes that “We too are full of so many things and yet empty of a separate self…The whole planet is one giant, living, breathing cell, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis.” Like the flower, we contain all its elements along with consciousness and the continuing DNA strings of our ancestors. Christians would add the critical element of an eternal soul that transcends this mortal life. The whole cosmos has manifested into who we are today. In fact, everything relies on the critical balance of life in this universe we occupy to survive and prosper. We are one with the universe.

Thay teaches that our parents “are in us and we are in them. We are the continuation of all our ancestors. Thanks to impermanence, we have a chance to transform our inheritance in a beautiful direction.” We have a chance to manifest the beauty of this existence as it was originally created, as we see it’s potential in the fleeting beauty of a flower’s heart.

And although there have been many disciples in the history of humankind, only we can be a disciple for our time.