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The Wordless Sermon
The Timeless Message of a Single Flower 2,500 Years Ago
As the story goes, 2,500 years ago, Buddha gave a wordless sermon to his disciples. All he did was hold up a single white flower — a lotus. That’s it. No words. Just a flower. All his disciples were mystified, except, that is, Mahakasyapa, a young monk who immediately smiled, signifying the direct transmission of wisdom from Master to student — a moment referred to in Buddhist literature as “tathagata”, the ineffable nature of suchness.
Something within Mahakasyapa instantly understood the non-verbal essence of what Buddha was communicating. He got it in a flash. No thought was necessary, no analysis, no intellectualization. It was, as if, a veil had lifted and he got to experience something profound that was previously inaccessible to him.
For want of a better phrase, let’s call the young monk’s recognition a “moment of truth”.
The good news for the rest of us is that we don’t need to be a monk in order to experience a moment of truth. Nor do all moments of truth need to be “spiritual”, historically significant, or worthy of inclusion in future scriptures. Moments of truth are not only for everyone, but they come in all varieties — small, medium, and large — spontaneously occurring, unplanned happenings that have, embedded within them, the…
