Lovely morning. You have heard the saying that a person’s body may perish, but their soul lives on. We live in nature, and even though our physical bodies are gone, our thoughts and intentions are passed on through the ages. And just as we pass the baton from one person to another, our thoughts and intentions are passed on, evolving and perpetuating. Perhaps the indescribably solemn feeling we get when we visit temples and shrines is because we feel the thoughts of the many predecessors who have lived in the past.
Spring comes when the flowers bloom, summer arrives when the sky is blue, autumn arrives when the trees, dyed red and yellow, have their leaves fluttering down in the wind, and winter arrives when we look up at the sky and see beautiful snow flakes dancing in the air. The seasons seem to repeat themselves in the same way, but they are never the same. Nature may look the same, but it changes every second, and the things that live there also change every moment in response to nature’s changes. Even if the cherry blossoms bloom in the same way every year, they are never the same as they were last year.
Therefore, in the same way, our lives in nature are precious, and each one of us has a meaning in our own way of life. Even if a person’s underlying thoughts are not fulfilled in their life, they will be passed on. The thoughts are passed on from generation to generation, and the thoughts of various people are mixed in and passed on together with the thoughts. The feelings connect people, and what they have connected may in fact be the history we know.
This morning, I took a walk in the pleasant air after the rain, bathed in the soft spring sunshine, and strolled around the grounds of a nearby shrine. And I suddenly spelled out what I was thinking about.
It was a moment when I really thought that I would like to love and cherish this time that will never come again.