I first encountered this koan in Mumonkan, or The Gateless Gate. This one and "Abandon Words and Speaking" (or however it's translated) appealed to me strongly.
I saw and felt that flower twirling. I heard those "birds sing among innumerable kinds of fragrant flowers."
It helped that I have forever been a nature photographer, and experience that every possible day.
Basically they deal with non-duality. However we express it, it is the connectedness of all things. So many of our troubles stem from the doctrine of duality, the faulty stories we tell ourselves.
The article leads to the Lotus Sutra, as my own wanderings led me.
I'll let the article speak more eloquently than I can, but to me, the Lotus Sutra transforms our purpose from victims to liberators, our differences from flaws to unique expressions of the life of the universe, enemies into friends, our stumbles and struggles into skillful means, and poison into medicine.
This sums it up
(People) enter deeply into erroneous views,
hoping to shed suffering through greater suffering.
For the sake of these living beings
I summon up a mind of great compassion.
Compassion is the beginning and "end" of enlightenment. They are one.
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