Generous with Daffodils

Yesterday i gave a Dharma talk at Valley Insight Meditation Society in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Doris, who sets up the room, drives more than an hour to sit with the sangha on the second Sunday of each month.

The group gathers in the lovely library of the AVA Gallery and Art Center, located in a former factory. Doris arranges the chairs and sets up a little side table with a Buddha, a votive candle, and a small bouquet of flowers.

Both the candle and the flowers remind us of impermanence. The flame flickers, never the same flame, but never exactly different either. The daffodils remind us of upcoming spring and the impermanence of winter and the snow that surrounds us.

At the end of the sit, when Doris extinguished the candle, she offered the daffodils to me. Oh, graceful generosity.