Tag: Present moment

This sublime poem by Ryōkan, written toward the end of his life, sees all of life in the falling maple leaf. Just like the leaf shows both front and back, life is filled with good times and challenging times, moments of happiness and unhappiness, ups and downs. We can learn from Ryōkan who simply observes the naturalness of what’s happening, without adding “it’s sad the leaf is dying. It’s sad it is falling down.”  The existence of the leaf is a series of transformations and it will turn into soil, to support new life.

Showing its front

Showing its back

The maple leaf falls

Ryōkan, 1758 – 1831, Buddhist monk and hermit

I have come to see that our problem is that we don’t know what happiness is. We confuse it with a life uncluttered by feelings of anxiety, rage, doubt, and sadness. But happiness is something entirely different. It’s the ability to receive the pleasant without grasping and the unpleasant without condemning.

Mark Epstein

Very appropriate for Ireland this Autumn as we seem to go from one Atlantic Storm to the next. Also true of the difficulties in our lives.

When I interviewed Maya Angelou she told me to write this sentence on my notepad and to never forget it:

“Every storm runs out of rain”

I still think of that line to this day.

Alex Banayan, American author