The ascent to yes

All that’s necessary is to want what happens. Herein the flower of peace, the death of desire.

Actionless activity

The mere presence of a single flower—in my case, immediately, a single iris in a squat, narrow-necked vase—changes an entire room. How does one flower do this? By not doing anything.

The first fact

Everything is temporary. The galaxies are temporary. One day our sun will blink out. As for us, said the freed slave with the twisted leg, we are souls carrying corpses. To illustrate the point, the Buddha upheld a picked flower. Seeing its severed stem, its petals, one of his followers stopped asking questions.