She meditated upon the meaning of life and death.
‘Death!’ she thought, ‘death, again and again!’
Suddenly she heard the voice in her speaking:
‘Death?
Why do you persist in seeing but the one side of truth?
What do the trees and nature reveal in spring?
Life!
Again and again!’
Life and death alternate in an everlasting circle.
Death is but the other side of life . . .’
The fountain of eternal existence
breathes Life into man,
then It inhales again,
withdrawing Its great breath,
so that the outer husk falls:
the body of man dies.
Yet Life does not cease at this moment,
It continues . . .
and clothes Itself with a new body,
in an eternal cycle and moves on,
as everything in this world lives
and moves on in rhythm,
from the orbit of the planets
to the breath and pulse of every living creature.
As she stood before the window
looking out at the falling autumn leaves,
she recognised
the law of re-incarnation in the chestnut tree.
REFLECTIONS 