…This is simply waking up to discover experimentally that there is no where but now, there never was and there never will be, as Emerson put it in his essay on I think compensation these roses under my window do not ask whether they are better than last…

…don't bother to predict, they're never in a state of anxiety and yet they survive. Now we who look before and after, as Emerson says, and predict and are always concerned whether this generation is going to be better or worse than the one that came…

…the development of mankind. And I have an idea that history is a disease. At least I'm going to entertain this possibility that as Emerson put it in one of his essays, these roses under my window do not meditate as to whether they are worse or better…

…End of quote. And I know a Zen master he's, I'm afraid deceased who told me that it was reading that passage in Emerson that enabled him to penetrate the meaning of the first koan that his teacher gave him. So history is this tremendous preoccupation…

…is it worth looking at? Why certainly. But it's not achieving any great mission in life. It's just being a tree, as Emerson said in his essay I think, on compensation, these roses under my window are not concerned whether they are better than last…