This is a special day for me, an auspicious day. A good day to reflect on gratitude for my body, my parents, my life.
Our meditation reading this morning was from Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Other Shore (p. 38): “Today physicists agree that matter is not solid but full of space. The atoms that make up our body are mostly space, and are not static at all – they have electrons orbiting a nucleus at thousands of kilometers a second. Looking deeply into our feelings, we see something similar. Feelings are fields of energy and are constantly changing. In the same way, our perceptions, mental formations and consciousness are also ever-changing, flowing rivers.”
How true this is! I can feel the flow of energy in my body, mind and feelings, especially during Qi Gong practice, meditation, dance and deep connections with other people and nature. It becomes more obvious as we age that our bodies are not static, immobile, unchanging. We change in every muscle, every cell every moment. How exciting that quantum physics is able to explain to us today what meditators have experienced in their own bodies for centuries. Movement, change, space where we see only solid mass.
I can see my body as a flowing river of energy, my feelings as sparks of energy that change so quickly, my life as energy that is being constantly transformed and connected to other forms of energy, other people, experiences and forms of life. The teaching that we are never born and never die makes sense.
What a joy to experience the flow of life today, to feel gratitude for each precious moment.