Spinoza and Buddha - definitely buddies

As I walk by the lake Mälaren I hear a noise from the water. It's a female gooser who makes warning sounds, and she and her chicks are paddling away in the water. Some of the kids are on her back. Another gooser answers from another shore, as to say; come here, come here!
I have frightened her - I sit down on the outcrops by the waters and are thinking about the scenery. Are the birds really frightened or is it just instinct?
I'm sure she feels something for her chicks, I'm not sure what, but it's not plain instinct.
I'm sure we have much in common with the animals.


But perhaps also with, for instance, flowers.
This wonderful poem shows it:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 
It's quite clear why William Wordsworth titled the poem "Daffodils". The word itself is dancing, is full of rhythm and joy.  The poet loses himself in the sight of the flowers. He gazes but thinks not - It's a moment of mindfulness. These rare moments of bliss that we all share. 
And later, when he is in a bad mood, he can get relief by the daffodils inside himself. Not merely as memories,  they have become a part of him, his heart dances with them. 

 The Norwegian writer and philosopher Arne Naess, who had a little house in the mountains wrote; "I don't make any big difference between myself, the hut and the vegetation, especially the flowers." 
He was deeply influenced by Spinoza, the philosopher from Holland, born 1632. 

 I will come back to them.... 




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