Beauty is ever alive, because for it there is no past, no future, but the present. You hesitate, turn your head, and it is no more.The morning-glory must be admired at its first awakening as the sun rises; so it is with the lotus. This is the way the Japanese people have learned from Zen teaching how to love Nature, how to be in touch with the life running through all objects including human beings.
The pine tree lives for a thousand years;
The morning-glory but for a single day;
Yet both have fulfilled their destiny.
There is no fatalism in this. Each moment pulsates with life both in the pine tree and the morning-glory. The worth of this moment is not measured by the one thousand years of the one and the single day of the other, but by the moment itself. For this is absolute in each of them. Therefore, beauty is not to be spoiled by the thought of fatalism or evanescence.
---from 'Zen and Japanese Culture' by D.T. Suzuki
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