A two-thousand-year old feeling

This morning it rained for three hours, and I turned (returned?) to an almost-ancient text, to an especially pleasing passage :

This beneficent cloud is laden with moisture,
the brightening gleams and flashes,
and the sound of thunder reverberates afar,
causing the multitude to rejoice.

The sun's rays are veiled and hidden,
a clear coolness comes over the land;
masses of darkness descend and spread—
you can almost touch them.

The rain falls everywhere,
coming down on all four sides.
Its flow and saturation are measureless,
reaching in every area of the earth,
to the ravines and valleys of the mountains and streams,
to the remote and secluded places where grow
plants, bushes, medicinal herbs,
trees large and small,
a hundred grains, rice seedlings,
sugar cane, grape vines.
The rain moistens them all,
none fails to receive its full share.

The parched ground is everywhere watered,
herbs and trees alike grow lush.
What falls from the cloud
is water of a single flavor,
but the plants and trees, thickets and groves,
each accept the moisture that is appropriate to its portion.

All the various trees,
whether superior, middling or inferior,
take what is fitting for large or small
and each is enabled to sprout and grow.

Root, stem, limb, leaf,
the glow and hue of flower and fruit—
one rain extends to them
and all are able to become fresh and glossy.

Whether their allotment
of substance, form and nature is large or small,
the moistening they receive is one,
but each grows and flourishes in its own way.

            (The Parable of the Medicinal Herbs, Lotus Sutra, Chapter 5)