The sun is out. It warms the birds and encourages leaves and flowers to come out. Spring has arrived with the promise of an end to the cold. At night, near our house, cats mate and their screams sound like a mixture of pain and ecstasy. I wonder if they too are encouraged by the warming weather.

Nature has its own process of deteriorating and rejuvenating itself. Winter leaves the landscape barren, regardless of what spring and summer have done. When I read about Buddhism, it says the Dao is all there is and that the land and time are the way they are because that’s just how it is. Maybe I’m not getting the point, but the logic seems a bit circular, and I struggle to understand.

I also struggle with watching the winter and summer mix with each other to define the temperature and weather conditions of the day. I watch leaves and flowers struggle to know whether or not it’s time to reveal themselves. There have been many springs when the flowers prematurely bloom only to be frozen by a last winter snap. Timing is everything, but on whose time?

Perhaps there’s just enough winter and summer and good and bad out there that it all evens itself out. With every flower that blooms a thorn must grow, a reminder of the pain and pleasure that the stem represents. No matter how cloudy the skies get, light will pierce its way through to remind us that it’s sunny above the clouds even on the darkest day. There are no one-sided mountains and all of this pleasure and pain will be washed out in the end.

The screaming cats outside my window in spring are lost somewhere between pleasure and pain.