What beauty and grandeur a flower bestows! The naïve take this lightly and are not sensitive enough to perceive the depth of the colors of the delicate petals.

For a short while the flower blooms, and then the petals drop to the dust without receiving any admiration or touch of love. Do you know, they cry for want of love, and that is why they are shy and drop their blossoms unnoticed in quiet lonely nights.

A flower is a living beauty that blooms only once and vanishes forever. It whispers vainly – for the deaf ears of the cruel human being have no power to listen to that pain. The flower waits to offer its petals to her Beloved before the dust assimilates her beauty and blends it into its grey ugly color.

Who has such an intense feeling of sensitivity to communicate with the blessed flower, which knows mothering but gives unconditionally and without reservation?

One day a priest gripped the stem of a flower, wanting to have it for his altar. While carrying that flower, he stumbled and the flower said, “O priest, are you injured?” Hearing the whispering voice of the flower, the priest wept. He felt as though he had twisted the neck of his own infant and was going to offer it to the dumb, lifeless image that was installed on the altar. Whenever one approaches the altar, the image never speaks or moves. What good is this worship for the tender infant of nature is snatched from its mother and offered to an inert, dumb god? Afflicted by the crying voice of the flower, the priest abandoned worship and from that day lived in solitude, contemplating the formless and limitless Infinity.

Human beings have strange and inauspicious methods of worship that have no purity, sincerity, or validity.

Editor’s Note

This is an excerpt from Love Whispers by Swami Rama, 1986 hardback edition, page 49.

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