Our daughter Casey was nineteen when she died from leukemia. And I try very hard to remember that she's with me, that she's in every cell in my body, but still I feel waves of such deep sorrow and longing. I want to be with her. And I wonder, my question is how or is it possible to ever really truly be happy again?

The other day we spoke about a cloud in the sky. When the cloud transforms itself into the rain, it's hard for you to recognize your cloud in the rain. You need to have the kind of eyes, the wisdom of signlessness in order to recognize your beloved in her new form. She is there. If you know how to look deeply, she is still with you, she is around. And the fact is that it is impossible for her to die. She just manifests herself in new forms. Look around. If we are caught by our habit, we can only recognize her in her old form, appearance. And that is why we suffer.

But if we are open, if we can see our cloud in the rain, we can stop our suffering and we can restore our joy. Before giving birth to me, my mother miscarried my big brother. I learned that from my mother and I often asked the question when I was young, whether that boy that she miscarried is me or another boy. "It may be just me, but," I said to mother, "I don't want to come out yet, I want to wait." So she really did not miscarry anyone, because I had decided to wait.

It's like one winter, when I was doing walking meditation and I saw many buds of flowers of a kind of a tree called Japanese kōnashi. It was warm at that time. So the buds came out very beautifully. And I said, "Well, this new year, we will have flowers to decorate the Buddha's altar." Because you need to cut a few branches and bring it into the warm and they will blossom beautifully. But a few days later, before I can cut them, there was a wave of cold and all of them died. So I said that, "This new year, we will have no flowers to decorate our Buddha's altar." But after that, the warmth, the weather came again. And new buds appeared on the branches. So the old buds who have died, they have not really died. They come again.

That's life. It's very strong. Life is stronger than death. So the question is that: are they the same? So if we are mindful, we are concentrated, then we can recognize our beloved one right here and right now in her new form, and we can restore our joy and happiness. She is always there, not only in yourself. You have to recognize her in her new forms. And she may not be just one. She can be two, three, four, five. If you come with us and live a few months here with us, you can recognize her in this monastery. You have three, four, five daughters instead of one.