a philosophy of rainbows

The sky put on a magic show for me last night, to seduce me from my storylines back to the ground. First, lightning. Then an arch of colors so perfect that 10 cars full of awed people gathered on the side of the highway. Then clouds that shook the most guarded bones on the front range.

I couldn’t help but think that’s it. Maybe it’s worth our time to consider that there are just mountains and grass and windshield wipers and the sun and clouds it’s casting over.

I’ve been blessed with a digger in my life; an archeologist searching for the root of suffering. When she goes, she leaves the shovel with me and I’m not used to the blisters yet, but I’m trying. Once, I wrote on a sheet of paper that, like the moth who by night continually seeks the comfort of day in lanterns and campfires, I’m constantly looking for comforts that don’t exist in the fire of the moment. I through it in a fire. I’ve given more saltwater to my cheeks this summer than I have in years.

There are two types of sadness. The first is when you look at a beautiful flower and you wish you could be the flower. It is so Beautiful. The second is that nobody else understands that flower. It’s so beautiful, utterly beautiful, so magnificent. Nobody understands that. In spite of that beauty, people are killing each other. They’re destroying each other. They go to the bar and get drunk instead of thinking of that beautiful flower.

That sadness is a key point, ladies and gentlemen. In the back of your head, you hear a flute playing, because you are so sad. At the same time, the melody cheers you up… In spite of being sad and devastated, there is somthing lovely taking place. There is some smile, some beauty… There is no suicidal sadness involved at all. Rather, there is a sense of big, open mind in dealing with others, which is beautiful, wonderful.

We find ourselves shedding tears at the same time that we are smiling. We are crying and laughing at once… Isn’t it wonderful? A flower needs sunshine together with raindrops to blossom so beautifully. For that matter, a rainbow is made of the tears falling from our eyes, mixed with a shot of sunshine. That is how a rainbow becomes a rainbow–sunshine mixed with tears.

-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche