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| Peach blossoms in Thimphu |
Spring is the season of hope and rejuvenation. It’s the
time of the year when winter’s chill stings no more and the myriad birds sing.
They sing of profusion of blossoms, of rejuvenating nature, of blabbering
brooks and the whole new world.
The spring season, I think, is nature’s lesson on
impermanence and rejuvenation. It is beautiful but short-lived, it dies but
comes again.
The refreshing sights of peach blossoms around Thimphu always
remind me of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche’s film Travellers and Magicians. As the film ends, the monk tells the
dashing young civil servant, who separates from the beautiful girl he falls in loves with,
that peach blossoms are beautiful but their beauty is fleeting. They are
beautiful because they are fleeting. And in the same vein, they are fleeting
because they are beautiful. That seems to be the truth John Keats, that
fleeting beautiful soul, was referring to when he wrote “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty…” in his Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Had he lived longer, he would have written an ode to the beautiful spring
season. But, being a ‘beautiful’ human being that he was, he did not live long.
I do not intend to philosophize about the spring season. I
am so often moved by the beauty of the season that I try to find expression.
One night last week, I tried to recollect some of the vivid
descriptions of the spring season and vaguely remembered these lines by Robert
Browning.
The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven -
All's right with the world!
