thorny bush

I'm in Himachal Pradesh, in the foothills of the Himalaya, and I'm sitting on a rock in the afternoon sun, on a little used goat herder's track, high up in the hills. And next to me there's a thorny bush. I don't know the name of this plant, but there are many of them hereabouts. They have small leaves, and many, many thorns, delicate, slender thorns, incredibly sharp.

Having spent a lot of time in this part of the world, I have come to associate these plants with torn clothes and scratched skin. In that sense, a part of my mind thinks of them as hostile. But sitting looking at this plant, all I am feeling at the moment is a sense of beauty. There's a particular cluster of thorns I'm looking at. They're so slender, elegant, and the whole cluster has an angularity to it. There's a certain masculine, minimalist feel to it. Really it's a work of art. It's not a soft work of art, and yet it has this beauty, in its own terms.

So sitting here, looking at these thorns, it brings me this realisation, that even the things we feel an aversion towards have a beauty, in themselves, in their own terms. There's an inherent beauty in everything. So I give thanks for this little thorny bush.