reflection of acacia branches in dishpan
ACACIA REFLECTIONS

Breakfasting atop the outside kitchen's concrete sink, I happened to glance into the rainwater-filled, red-plastic dishpan beside me, shown below. Atop the water the reflection of acacia-tree branches above us struck me as an elegant natural composition, the kind seen as mood-enhancing background images on pages of classical Chinese poetry. And yet, when I looked at the actual acacia branches above, I saw nothing particularly inspiring about them. Why was that? How could the charm of a reflection surpass that of a thing itself?

For one thing, the reflection, like good poetry, filtered out most of the reality, featuring only artfully selected attributes. In the reflection, colors were refined to monotonal grayness, and the acacia branches' three-dimensionality was reduced to two.

This insight appealed to me, for I like to think of us conscious, sentient beings in a monastic way, in which we ourselves are much filtered expressions within the One Thing. Filtered out are all but a tiny measure of the One Thing's information, insight, and feeling. Our artful filtering even causes the illusion that we're somehow set apart from the rest of Creation. In contrast, I believe we might be something like the One Thing's nerve endings. What we experience, think and feel contribute to the One Thing's being, and in that way we share in the One Thing's dignity. Belief in this shared dignity can serve as a starting point for a useful and beautiful sense of morality, for who would want to diminish one's own worthiness with unthinking, unfeeling, unwise behavior?

While I meditated on this favorite theme, a drop of morning dew that had gathered on the branches above dripped into the dishpan's water, utterly shattering the reflection.

So, that's how the Universe deals with us smug, nicely composed, highly filtered manifestations. And yet, I had to chuckle when it occurred to me that the image's wildly jittering scintillations might, on the level I was seeing things that morning, be no less than the One Thing's own chuckles.