Chapter 16 - Celebrating with Everyone

A peaceful heart celebrates with everyone. “Nature” is a construct, the imposition of a category over the living, vibrating, collections of atoms and molecules, shaped into hearts and minds that are swaying, flying, and yodeling around us today. When even the concept of “nature” is removed, rivers and bears are seen to be as consanguineous as spouses and store clerks.

The process of impermanence and change unites the world. Nature and people have no clear demarcation. We are all tumbling on together. What we subsume under the rubric “nature” is the screen onto which we project our own love and compassion—or lack of them—and when we say “love of nature,” we refer to our capacity to pour out nurturant and fond delight toward all or any “others.” “Nature” is inner peace flashed back and forth between a human being and any other kind of cloud.

Dr. Paul Fleischman

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Copyright, 2020 Paul R. Fleischman

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