Quoted from the ThichNhatHanh book No Death, No Fear, Comforting Wisdom for Life Parallax Press 2002 ISBN 1-57322-221-6
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- Ask a cloud: "What is your date of birth?" Before you were born, where were you?"
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- If you ask the cloud, "How old are you? Can you give me your date of birth?" you can listen deeply and you may hear a reply. You can imagine the cloud being born. Before being born it was the water on the ocean's surface. Or it was in the river and then it became vapor. It was also the sun because the sun makes the vapor. The wind is there too, helping the water to become a cloud. The cloud does not come from nothing; there has been only a change in form. It is not a birth of something out of nothing.
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- Sooner or later the cloud will change into rain or snow or ice. If you look deeply into the rain, you can see the cloud. The cloud is not lost; it is transformed into rain, and the rain is transformed into grass and the grass into cows and then to milk and then into the ice cream you eat. Today if you eat an ice cream, give yourself time to look at the ice cream and say:
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- "Hello, cloud! I recognize you."
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- By doing that, you have insight and understanding into the real nature of the ice cream and the cloud. You can also see the ocean, the river, the heat, the sun, the grass and the cow in the ice cream.
Discussion of PhysicsAndMathematicsAsAbstractionOrReality moved to its own page.
This page reminds me of the "Clouds in my coffee" lyric in the song You're so vain by Carly Simon. Which still works if the cream is just applied to the coffee instead of being made into ice cream.
See DefinitionOfLife, WhatIsaDistinction? and ObjectIdentity
Clouds In My Ice Cream