No cicadas singing, but the first sun rises again.
In the clamor of time: get up, catch the bus, run, fill the stomach…
For several days in a row, I could not sleep soundly. Listening to the early birds, I suddenly thought of the cicadas.
It has been many years since I saw cicadas singing. I vaguely remember that a cicada always screeched at the top of its lungs in one continuous stretch. It always made such a racket that you could not nap properly or concentrate in class. When I could not stand it any longer, I ran to the tree, gave it a kick, or picked up a stone and took a swing. Startled, it darted from this tree to that one, or simply shut up…
Startled cicada, and the cicada is already gone without a trace.
In those days of the year, I never imagined I would become nostalgic. Old things: startling cicadas, pulling weeds, raising rabbits, being chased after stealing fruit… Sometimes I would also go and tug the old ox’s tail; it would turn its head disdainfully and swing its tail with style. Life goes on like this. The old ox has become a memory, the fruit can no longer be stolen, the rabbits have long since not been raised, and there is no cicada left to startle… I sigh that what we chase after may have become the branches and leaves pushed along by the times: either hang yourself dead on one tree, or be crushed to death by the foliage of the forest.
In the end, fallen leaves are also emptiness, turning into silt, no different. What we enjoy is the process; what difference does the root outcome make? Is it not the process that we choose, and within the process there is yet another process. A process without an outcome already has an outcome. A completed outcome does not have a perfect outcome. As the Buddha said, it is accomplished when the time comes. Control the mind in anxious moments, and in momentum you have long since emptied your eyes of everything.
I am still me, and I am no longer me.
