A note on what is

Image: Ryan McGuire

I read accounts of people meditating who notice a bird, butterfly, moth, or other pleasant creature (not a rat or cockroach) and decide that it’s a deceased loved one visiting in another form. This kind of magical thinking seems to me to deny the suchness of both the dead person and the living creature. When we project a personal, self-centered story onto life as it is, we miss the birdness of the bird, bird-nature, butterfly-nature, moth-nature, the Buddha nature of...