“Energy is not created or destroyed of its own accord; it changes from one form into another, or passes from one body into another.”
This piece belongs to a series of 100 posts written in memory of Thom's grandmother, published on her Facebook.
Today I was reading a book about how leaves change colour with the seasons. Besides chlorophyll, leaves also hold carotenoids, the pigments that run from red through orange to yellow. They assist photosynthesis and help protect the structures inside the leaf. During the growing season, the presence of chlorophyll can hide the presence of the carotenoids. When chlorophyll breaks down and is not replaced in autumn, because the days are short and the nights long and there is little time for photosynthesis, the carotenoid pigments become visible to the naked eye. Which means the carotenoids were there all along; it is only that we could not see them.
All the laws of nature — human beings are not outside them either.
Here is a passage the poet Trần Đăng Khoa wrote about Thích Nhất Hạnh; it was also one of the first pieces I read when I began learning about him.
“Where do the dead go? I am very fond of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s way of explaining it. He begins the story with a raindrop. A raindrop falls onto a slab of stone. We see that drop of water clearly. It glitters. Then it darkens slowly into a brown spot. We doze off, we turn back, and it is no longer there. And we think the raindrop has died. That it has vanished from the earth. But no! The raindrop has not died. Nor has it vanished. It is still here. Only it exists now in another form. It has become a cloud that shades us. And from the cloud it turns into rain again, and waters the whole earth.
“It is the same when our parents die: our parents have not been lost at all. They still exist, only in another form. They are still always within us, in every cell of our body. There is no need for a DNA test; we need only stand before a mirror. Faintly, behind our own face, is the face of our parents, the face of our grandparents, and further back still our great-grandparents, our ancestors. The ancestors are always present right here inside us. So then, how must we live, how must we cultivate ourselves, so that our face is always bright and good? If our face is bright and good, if our soul is bright and good, then the faces of our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors are bright and good too.
“To be able to speak of it like that is very deep indeed!”
Those two weeks in their house were the loveliest thing I had in Athens.
The only thing I want to do with them: read together.
She told me that only that English video really worked, and that she has been able to go back to work.