Sometimes Clouds Go

My practice, whether on a canvas or in the stillness of morning meditation, echoes the journey of the great nomads in the sky.

Clouds drift, never clinging to yesterday’s outline, refusing the comfort of a fixed position. Their shape-shifting freedom inspires my brush to glide without rehearsal, trusting the stroke that appears and disappears in the same breath. Clouds merging stir my heart to absorb the ever-changing states of mind that greet me as I sit silently in the zendo.

Still, every cloud is also an inheritance. A ridge beckons moist air upward, and a change in temperature folds unseen currents into towers of light. What seems weightless depends entirely on the ground it never touches.

Clouds help me realize that my path is at once solitary and inseparable. I can move freely, yet I bow to the conditions that allow movement at all.