Make Me One with Everything

Did you hear the one about the Zen Monk in Kinhin at a hot dog stand who said "Make me one with everything."?

Think of soil. Think of the soil in a river, the soil around the root of a tree. Think of the soil as boiling water or a load of laundry, it's always moving. Potato bugs make holes in it. Rocks make their way to the surface in a farmer’s field. Even under your house the soil moves. Have you ever seen a raised sidewalk? OK. Soil never sits still, it’s always moving around.

Think of water. Rain falls out of the sky, onto the ground. It seeps into the ground. A tree root soaks up the water, it moves up the trunk, out a branch and then into a leaf. Autumn arrives; the leaf falls to the ground and dries up. The water returns to the sky. Water never leaves, it just always moves around.

Think of air. Air just is, trust me. It's not just air with nothing there, it’s real and it's real. Air is so thin you can see through it. Air is so big the weather lives there. Air motivates my senses. Air is even in my blood. Air keeps me alive so I try not to play with it.

Consider this: Soil is not all soil, air is not all air and that water is not all water. There is air in the soil, there is water in the soil, there is water in the air, there is soil in the air, there is air in the water and there is soil in the water. Everything is everywhere. It's just that there are places where more of it is apparent.

Matter just doesn't appear and disappear, it moves around. Like the raindrop that never left and just moved around, people never leave, we just move around. We eat stuff, collect up the good stuff, add it on to us and get rid of the leftovers. The banana I just ate was on a tree in perhaps Jamaica, gathering minerals and water from the soil. Some time ago the banana was physically part of the tropics, now it is physically part of me. So, in a way, part of the tropics is me, I am part tropics. I come from everywhere. I am made up of all, air, soil and water. I am no different than a raindrop, a potato bug, a rock or a banana tree. I am composed of the very same. I move around collecting stuff, composing myself. Eventually, I will return to everything. (Lay on the beach long enough and you will die. Even if someone brings you food for the rest of your life, you will die. Just because you are getting food does not mean you will not die, it just means you will not die as soon. So, OK, you die, you dry up, you decompose. Decompose is the key word. ) Parts of me will move around regardless how the rest of me moves. I will decompose becoming less apparent in one spot. Liquid and ash separate, they return to the soil and sky. It's just that now I have a life form, a shell, a place where I am more apparent.

I never appeared out of nowhere and I will never disappear. All of me, all that ever was and will be was always here and always will be, so even now, I am one with everything.