Tsuyu no inochi.
--_Buddhist proverb._
[Illustration]
To the bamboo lattice of my study-window a single dewdrop hangs
quivering.
Its tiny sphere repeats the colours of the morning,--colours of sky
and field and far-off trees. Inverted images of these can be discerned
in it,--also the microscopic picture of a cottage, upside down, with
children at play before the door.
Much more than the visible world is imaged by that dewdrop: the world
invisible, of infinite mystery, is likewise therein repeated. And
without as within the drop there is motion unceasing,--motion forever
incomprehensible of atoms and forces,--faint shiverings also, making
prismatic reply to touches of air and sun.
*
Buddhism finds in such a dewdrop the symbol of that other microcosm
which has been called the Soul.... What more, indeed, is man than
just such a temporary orbing of viewless ultimates,--imaging sky and
land and life,--filled with perpetual mysterious shudderings,--and
responding in some wise to every stir of the ghostly forces that
environ him?...
*
Soon that tiny globe of light, with all its fairy tints and topsy-turvy
picturings, will have vanished away. Even so, within another little
while, you and I must likewise dissolve and disappear.
Between the vanishing of the drop and the vanishing of the man, what
difference? A difference of words.... But ask yourself what becomes of
the dewdrop?
By the great sun its atoms are separated and lifted and scattered. To
cloud and earth, to river and sea they go; and out of land and stream
and sea again they will be updrawn, only to fall and to scatter anew.
They will creep in opalescent mists;--they will whiten in frost and
hail and snow;--they will reflect again the forms and the colours of
the macrocosm; they will throb to the ruby pulsing of hearts that are
yet unborn. For each one of them must combine again with countless
kindred atoms for the making of other drops,--drops of dew and rain and
sap, of blood and sweat and tears....
How many times? Billions of ages before our sun began to burn, those
atoms probably moved in other drops, reflecting the sky-tints and the
earth-colours of worlds in some past universe. And after this present
universe shall have vanished out of Space, those very same atoms--by
virtue of the forces incomprehensible that made them--will probably
continue to sphere in dews that will shadow the morning beauty of
planets yet to be.
*
Even so with the particles of that composite which you term your
very Self. Before the hosts of heaven the atoms of you were--and
thrilled,--and quickened,--and reflected appearances of things. And
when all the stars of the visible Night shall have burnt themselves
out, those atoms will doubtless again take part in the orbing of
Mind,--will tremble again in thoughts, emotions, memories,--in all
the joys and pains of lives still to be lived in worlds still to be
evolved....
*
Your personality?--your peculiarity? That is to say, your ideas,
sentiments, recollections?--your very particular hopes and fears and
loves and hates? Why, in each of a trillion of dewdrops there must
be differences infinitesimal of atom-thrilling and of reflection. And
in every one of the countless pearls of ghostly vapour updrawn from
the Sea of Birth and Death there are like infinitesimal peculiarities.
Your personality signifies, in the eternal order, just as much as the
especial motion of molecules in the shivering of any single drop.
Perhaps in no other drop will the thrilling and the picturing be ever
exactly the same; but the dews will continue to gather and to fall,
and there will always be quivering pictures ... The very delusion of
delusions is the idea of death as loss.
There is no loss--because there is not any Self that can be
lost. Whatsoever was, that you have been;--whatsoever is,
that you are;--whatsoever will be, that you must become.
Personality!--individuality!--the ghosts of a dream in a dream! Life
infinite only there is; and all that appears to be is but the thrilling
of it,--sun, moon, and stars,--earth, sky, and sea,--and Mind and
Man, and Space and Time. All of them are shadows. The shadows come and
go;--the Shadow-Maker shapes forever.