Fire & Tao
Proverb
The longer the night lasts, the more ghosts will come.
Poem
The temple is still for the ghosts
The helpers stand silent in awe
The nobles who assist the dead
Have been purified and purged.
Heaven displays its answering spirits
They flit through the temple so fast
As bright and glorious as the sun
Showing no disdain for we mortals.
Meditation
The past is not a foreign country,
as some would say –
it is what helps us shape our present life and our future.
But China has always taught
– despite the oftenseeming fatalism of Buddism –
that we are ulitmately in control
of how we use what has happend to us to determine our future.
This poem and proverb ask us to look hard at the past and,
through reflection, to make the right decisions
in order that the ghosts of the past fade away
and we can create for ourselves lives
cleared of the errors of past actions.
©Loes Raaphorst 10/2005