lightly the night before. As I glanced up to see what was glistening I spotted a spider’s web masterfully
created, nestled delicately against the pink new petals of the crab apple tree. As the morning sun shined
down on the tree, it made the rain droplets that hung to the spider’s web and that laid on the petals sparkle
in an almost ethereal way. In that moment, everything in the world became beautiful to me because the
glistening spider’s web was everything. I felt as though nothing outside that single damp spider’s web
mattered and nothing existed outside of it, not even myself, because everything that existed was already
within that one spider’s web.

The moment was achingly brief, but it was real and even the memory of it, though I am sure the scene
I recall is faded in comparison, still has the power to make my heart clench at how insignificant humans are
when a common spider’s web can humble us. It was not until years later I understood what had happened in
that moment. Without knowledge of it or any training in Buddhism, I had somehow experienced the Zen
Buddhism mystery of becoming-being and being-becoming. This mystery exemplifies the Zen Buddhism
philosophy that all is one and one is all, wherein the universe is the all and a single entity is the one, and
whether that one was the sparkling spider’s web or whether it was me, does not matter at all, for the
spider’s web was me and I was the spider’s web in that one moment. This mystery is implied in several
places within haikus as well as other Japanese art forms. I don’t know if I will ever feel that sort of sincere
peace again, I can only hope that one day something seemingly insignificant will catch my attention once
more and become the universe in my eye.

22