In A Single Leaf: Interdependence, No–Self
She smiled and raised her eyes to see a leaf outlined against the blue background of the sky, fluttering in the breeze, as if signaling to her. Looking intensely at this leaf, she saw in it the presence of the sun. Indeed, without sunlight and warmth, this leaf could not exist. This exists because of that, and that exists because of this. At the same time, she saw the presence of the clouds in this leaf. Without clouds, no rain, and without rain, no tree. With this same intensity, she saw the Earth in this leaf, and saw that it also contained space, time, and mind. Its very essence was a wonder and a miracle…

Though it is our habit to think that leaves are born in the spring, she realized that this leaf had always existed, implicit in the sunlight, in the clouds, and in the tree itself. Hence this leaf had never really been born at all. Seeing this, she saw that her being, too, had no origin. Like the leaf, she simply manifested through a temporary form, which had its origin in time. Yet neither she nor the leaf had ever been born, and hence they could never die. In this realization, all concepts of birth, death, appearance, and disappearance dissolved. Her own true nature, as well as that of the leaf, revealed itself directly. Then she saw how the how the existence of one phenomenon makes all the other phenomena possible, through interdependence. One single manifestation contains all others. In truth, they are all one…

The leaf and this body we one, since neither possessed a separate self existing independently of the rest of the universe. Perceiving the interdependent nature of all phenomena, she also realized this: nothing that exists is endowed with any sort of self separate from other things. And she understood that the key to freedom is in these two principles: interdependence and no–self.