The flower is itself. The light is itself. The silence is itself. I am myself. All perhaps illusion, but no matter. For illusion is the shadow of reality
[Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander]
A few months ago I had a dream that I was standing on a cliff next to my home and I could see a tsunami approaching that was so high it would engulf me and my home, yet I was struck still by the beauty of the frothy bits on the top of the wave.
It felt like becoming nothing in the presence of perfect beauty – like this poem by Sappho –
