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As I was walking through the falling snow there was a realization for me. In my entire life, I have never seen a snowflake that I thought was defective. Every single one has a certain magical quality. And to heighten the magic, if I extend my bare hand, when a snowflake lands, it transforms into something else which is equally perfect. For an instance, a feeling arose that said, "We are like this." I stood there for a while, not looking at the moment, but feeling it.

A little later, when I walked inside, I said to myself (as if I were coming to my senses, but actually ruining the moment) "How could we possibly like the snowflake?" There have been more than a few times in my life where I felt I was totally defective and found myself rather wanting, for a better version of myself.

The truth is that at times, I've allowed myself to be possessed by a kind of delusional thinking that has the capacity to distort not only what I see, but what I feel. As Yasutani Hakuun Roshi once put it, "The fundemental delusion afflicting humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are there."

Instead of experiencing the interconnectedness of all being "without gaps, without limits" something else happens. A part of our mind forms that there is a yes and no, right and wrong, happiness and anger, safety and fear, kindness and hatred, communion and disconnection. The result it that we often major in minor things, as the expression goes.

Though the practice of Zen (trans. Unification) we have the opportunity to cease being deluded and recognize that we are inherently perfect, exactly like the snowflake, because we are the snowflake itself. That is not me being poetical, but rather literal.

A few times in my life, I guess because I've been practicing for a while, people have asked me, "have you ever experienced enlightenment?" I tell them the truth. "No. But there have been moments where I ceased being deluded for like 10 seconds or so and see that everything, everything, everything is A-okay." Know that We are the perfect snowflake, we just don't always so It.

Gassho,

Jaye Morris, Curator
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