Take a walk in a forest or park.

What do you see?

Trees and flowers of various sizes, shapes and colors.

Beautiful ones and strange ones and ugly ones too.

Look at the small details.

Feel them.

Smell them.

Perfect in all of their imperfections,

a wonderful enjoyment of natural freedom,

no need to alter, left to remain just as it is.

 

Then we have birds and bugs, even spiders and mice.

How amusing these creatures.

Beautiful ones and strange ones and ugly ones too.

Look at their details.

Listen to them.

Watch them.

Perfect in all of their imperfections,

a wonderful enjoyment of natural freedom,

no need to alter, left to remain just as they are.

 

And then we see humans.

How amusing indeed.

Beautiful ones and strange ones and ugly ones too.

Look at their details.

How do they act?

What do they say when you interact?

Could they be smarter or pick up the pace?

Could they excuse themselves for their wayward ways?

Are they agreeable, friendly and nice?

Or should they act better?

C’mon, remember “Leave no trace!”

Are they perfect in all of their imperfections?

Do you enjoy their natural freedom?

If you could alter, just a tweak, would you?

Could you?

 

This is the root of the human dilemma.

The source of our problems, our wars and our rage.

The problem doesn’t lie in the natural world.

It lies in our mind and our own faulty vision.

We won’t fix it if we keep trying to fix others,

for others are too many and our time is too short.

Better to change our own lens, train our own minds.

Resolve our own faults and imperfections,

and imperfections become perfections,

a wonderful enjoyment of natural freedom.

Left to remain, just as we are.

 

Judgment of one, judgment of all.

Conflict in one, conflict with all.

Resolving one, we resolve all.

The essence of the path isn’t to gain something new.

It is to resolve your own condition,

and rediscover your natural freedom.

Liberate one, and all is liberated,

just as it is.

 

Let’s take a walk in the park.

 

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Apprentice Editor: Brandie Smith/Editor: Travis May

Photo: ethermoon/Flickr Creative Commons