In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Mahmud Shabestari entitled “The Mirror of This World.”  I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

Seen and Imagined

Every particle of the world is a mirror,
In each atom lies the blazing light
            of a thousand suns.
Cleave the heart of a raindrop,
            a hundred pure oceans will flow forth.
Look closely at a grain of sand,
            The seed of a thousand beings can be seen.
—Mahmud Shabestari

If you look at every particle of the world and see yourself, you will have penetrated only part of the mystery.

If you study an atom through a microscope and see the universe, you will have seen more clearly.

If you let a raindrop fall upon your tongue and feel its connection to every body of water, you will have some sense of the grand design.

If you study a grain of sand and feel it pulsing with energy and think, this is the light we all are made of, you will have caught a glimpse of the origin of things.

Will you look at a particle, an atom, a raindrop, a grain of sand?  Will you see what is to be seen and what is to be imagined?

Will you look at yourself in the mirror and know yourself as the picture of a particle?

Will you gaze at the stars and say, I have seen an atom?

Will you dip your toes in the ocean and recognize the raindrop?

Will every being you encounter remind you of a grain of sand, a ray of light?

Will you walk through the world with eyes of wonder seeing the small in the large, the large in the very small?

And at what point will you say, I have seen God?

I have seen God in the particle, God in the mirror, God in each atom, God in the stars, God in the raindrop, God in the oceans, God in the grain of sand, God in every being.

Everywhere I look, there’s God.

And that is both fact and mystery, the whole that can only be seen in the part.