the seed

This morning, as I was waiting for the bus, a tree gave me a seed. Well, the seed fell to the ground at my feet, so I picked

it up and caressed it. It was a small round seed on the end of a short stem. I gave it some reiki and carried it with me until I found a place to drop it, a place where I felt it had a chance to grow.

This little seed that accompanied me for a while this morning reminded me, as all seeds do, of potential – especially of that seed of potential in every human being, that is our essence, our buddha nature, waiting, biding its time, until the conditions are right for it to flare up, to become alive, to grow within us until it overwhelms our whole being. This little seed of enlightenment within us remains viable forever. Nothing can kill it. It can wait for years, decades, until the conditions are right for it to spring into life, and then that tiny seed within us starts to grow. It becomes a flame, a fireball, eventually engulfing us, destroying everything that we thought ourself to be. But those thoughts were just that – thoughts – with no reality behind them. And this little seed, having destroyed our illusions about ourself, becomes a magnificent tree, the tree of life, the tree of a buddha.

All of this was so eloquently brought back to me by the tiny seed that fell at my feet this morning.