I asked: "All beings suffer. How can they find liberation?"
The monk replied:
"What suffering do all beings endure?"
I said:
"Why must we be born into this world after ten months of confinement in the womb?
Having spent half a life creating karma, how do we face old age?
As all forms cycle, how do we resist illness and pain?
Since we have love, why must we part?
When encountering dislike, where do we place our resentment?
In seeking high and low, why do we not find what we seek?
When fate reaches its end, what awaits us in death?"
The monk said:
"Like a flower born from the earth, dying into the earth, between blooming and falling, that is its whole life. Do you think it's suffering?
Form, sensations, perception, mental formations, and consciousness the five aggregates are inherently empty. Thus, there is no suffering in birth, aging, illness, death, no separation from loved ones, no undesirable associations, nor unfulfilled desires.
Perhaps because of your life's hardships, you feel that the flower suffers, that all beings suffer, unable to find liberation from suffering."
I sighed: "Falling flowers return to the dust, but alas, my life has no place to return."
The monk laughed and said: "When you lament the falling of flowers, your heart grieves with them; but when you see the flower as just a flower, only then can you transcend suffering."
Recorded at Lingyin Temple, on April 17th, in the second year of Yuanfu.