Lino Printing Pattern Series

Flowers, a window into the formless

Earth, 114 million years ago, one morning just after sunrise, the first flower ever to appear on the planet opens up to receive the rays of the sun.

Flowers were most likely to be the first thing human came to value that had no utilitarian purpose for them.

The Buddha is said to have given a “silent sermon” while helding up a flower and gazing at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

When you are alert and contemplate a flower, without naming it mentally, it becomes a window for you into the formless.

Adaptation from Echart Tolle’s book: A new earth, 2005