Wilfred and the flowers
Flowers are relatively new in the history of Earth. Evolutionary biologists believe the first flower didn’t appear until 114 million years ago, meaning the planet spun around the sun for 4.4 billion years before that first unlikely bloom one primordial dawn. This flowering would spread across the globe, and by the time human beings appeared 200,000 years ago, flowers held a rare and special place for them: they were the only plant life beloved not for any sense of utility, but for beauty alone. Our spiritual leaders have urged us to look at flowers ever since. “Consider how the wild flowers grow,” Jesus told his disciples. “They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” About 500 years earlier, Buddha was likewise looking towards the flowers. In his famed “silent sermon,” he held up a flower and gazed at it. Finally, one of his adherents, a monk named Mahakasyapa, understood the teaching. He simply smiled, and handed down his understanding of that sermon to 28 successive masters in what would be the founding of Zen Buddhism. Wilfred Sarr isn’t precisely such a Buddhist, but he is of this flowering lineage. He started…
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