Monday, February 16, 2009

Meng Shih

It was a subtle thing. A gift that silently slipped into a persons life. There was never any memory of it arriving, only an awareness that it was there.

It was passed from person to person for thousands of years, winding its way through a million subtle paths. Of old, the scholars called it Meng Shih - the waxing and waning of Heaven. He could not say where he found the gift.

Somewhere in his travels perhaps, the outer travels or the inner travels. He never possessed the gift.

He simply carried it and gave it way, like a post-modern Easter Bunny in an off the rack business suit delivering painted eggs and sweet chocolate.

He usually gave it in common conversations that slipped into a persons mind and like a seed blossomed in later times, often at the moment when it was most needed, for that was an essential part of its very nature.

To understand Meng Shih is to understand life, to understand the waxing and waning of Heaven, to understand the waxing and waning of all things. In an otherwise unremarkable life it was his lasting gift to the world.

(The above entry was my entry on One Minute Writer today - the link is over there on the right, it is a great web site, inspiring and interesting.)

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