I am doing a lot of desktop centrifuging this morning and attached to the lid of the machine is a little sign that is right in my face.
It’s a note from my boss.
It’s been there for at least eleven years. And it never ceases to strike me as poetry. Strange poetry, but none-the-less a poem, which today I share.
It goes like this:
FELLOW SCIENTISTS:
When you use this centrifuge,
make sure that the flange on the shaft
fits onto the slot in the rotor
and
that
the screw
is securely fastened
onto
the shaft.
I don’t know. Do you hear it too?
It amazes me. The poem that’s always there, right under my nose.
No Wait, This Was Germaine!
No sooner did I post the above, that an email from Mara arrived containing Tricycle's Daily Dharma for July 31, 2007.
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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