“On a warm summer day the movement of water through a large tree is rapid. As much water is being evaporated from its leaves as a strong man with two buckets and a ladder and working as hard as possible, could carry from a ground level up to the very top of the tree.”

“In the adrenal glands we have organs of complex character long recognized, but only recently known to many other similar organs which are scattered chiefly along the course of the chains of sympathetic ganglia, and known as the chromaffine bodies. These chromaffine bodies are of the same character as the medulla of the adrenal glands, which is itself enveloped in a cortical covering of very different nature. In children the so-called Zuckerkandl organ is a mass of medullary or chromaffine substance situated near the bifurcation of the aorta. The carotid glands are said to have the same chromaffine quality, absorbing chrome salts and thereby stained brown, but it is not known that they actually belong to this system.”

Things shouldn’t be understood too quickly.

I learned this from poet, scholar, and Shingon Buddhist Kenneth Rexroth.

At the same Santa Barbara lecture, he said, “Camphor doesn’t leave any ashes. It’s the perfect incense for worship.”

He referred to the “net of Indra,” a representation of reality as “only an abyss without limits” and “the compound infinity of infinities.”

He stressed that there was no shakti (power) in Buddhism.

Shingon means “true words.”