Caterpillars
Caterpillars eat voraciously and quickly grow in weight and size. They accumulate resources within their body and
then spin a cocoon, using these inner resources. All they need is a square inch of space above their heads for
spinning.
Once in the cocoon the process of transformation begins, a transformation through which a butterfly emerges. A
butterfly is in total contrast to the caterpillar – it's delicate, moves a lot, lives globally, embraces the sun,
destroys very little and is nature's partner in creation, yet it is encapsulated within the caterpillar and yet it
will further give birth to another caterpillar, another cocoon and another butterfly. Is the caterpillar
internally sad, that is why it eats too much and becomes fat? Since caterpillars have never seen themselves in a
mirror, is it that they tease each other to no end about their fatness, depressing each other out, pushing
themselves to the brink of suicide in which they abandon their 100 legs, their ability to breathe through the
skin, suspend themselves from a thin strings on lousy branches risking plunging to death, get eaten or boiled and
respun into non-functional cocoons for another creature that can swim, slide, creep and crawl, sit and walk, yet
does not fly.
Is the butterfly eternally liberated, that's why the burst of colors, colors that serve no functional purpose –
flowers are colored to attract pollinators, animals are colored to distract predators, but butterflies – well they
just are, in a trillion forms, colors and patterns.
This feels like a karmic transformation, a dharmic transformation, a transformation worthy of emulation.
Is it?