Circle

Walking home, just yesterday, I was taking photos and I saw it; a beautiful Cicada, sitting on the grass nearby. I decided it was near the foot path, and may be steppy apon, so I picked it up. It had no problem with this, and sat on my hand for a long while. I took some photos, and then walked along with it, in hopes of finding a new, safer, place for it. Accepting that I will never see it again, I placed it in the shade just underneath a tree elevated from foot steps. I thought about how I have saved it from the feet of the unnoticing passerby. I felt gratified that I could leave it be in a safer, shadier place.

A day later, I am walking the same route again, pondering on the Cicada, did I do the right thing, or should I have left it, and not interferred with its life, but I know I have saved it from death at human hands. And then I saw it. The very same Cicada, on the road. Noiseless and void of movement. I approached it , and saw that it had been killed by a car. The side of its shell cracked open like that of a egg, contents splayed onto the hot black road.

From this, I understood. We are all at the door of death. We live our lives like this. We continue on, and live and grow like anything else, but in the end, death is our reward.

So I took थे Cicada. If it was on the road, ants may stream onto the road, and be killed again by human feet or wheels. I put it at the roots of a bush, hoping that the plant and insects could benefit from the body of the Cicada. The Cicada is not dead. It now lives on in the world.

Even if I can still hope to end the intervention of human hands, and act as if humans are seperate from the circle of life. We are not. The Cicada may be washed from the roots of the bush in rain which threatens even now, and the ants may find it there and again travel into the human realm at a risk of their life. But there is no individual life. Death is as much a part of life as birth is. In fact, they are one in the same. This is the circle.

The two forces in the universe, I shall call them yin and yang, are the same. But there is a third force, a non-force. It encompasses neither and both equally. This is life. It is the yin in yang, and the yang in yin. We live our lives in duality, but our lives are made up of this non-duality. This being, this beauty is life.

So with the truth of this in mind, I ask you this: What are you saving the Cicada from?


This is the circle.