Becoming Rain

the tears

i shed

yesterday

have become

rain

“In one of my former lives I was a cloud. The cloud had a nice time in the sky, travelling around and looking down. A cloud is sometimes transformed into rain, and when the rain comes, the cloud isn’t scared to death. The cloud knows that the rain is something very exciting too. So, instead of crying, the cloud begins to sing and becomes the rain falling on fields and into the rivers.”

“If we look deeply we see that the nature of a cloud is also the nature of no birth: The cloud does not come from nothing. It has come from the water in the river and ocean. It has come from the heat of the sunshine. You know that the birth of a cloud is a poetic image. The cloud is simply a new manifestation. Before being a cloud, the cloud has been many other things. Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. Birth and death are notions that cannot be applied to reality, because there is nothing that can be born from nothing, and there is nothing that can become nothing at all. The meditation practice of looking deeply will bring about insight. It will dissipate our fear and our despair.”

-Thich Nhat Hahn

*art by Omer Agam (digital artist and graphic designer)