The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the

Hearken, O children of the earth, to the words of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the voyager of skies and witness of the wild, who confessed with a voice both humble and radiant: “The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.” In this testimony lies the wisdom of ages—that man, though crowned with reason and invention, still bends before the creatures of the field and learns from their silence.

For what did the lions teach him? Not the mechanics of the lens, nor the craft of the camera, but virtues deeper still: patience and beauty. Patience, that mighty strength of waiting, without which no art may ripen; beauty, not as a shallow adornment, but as a force that pierces the soul, seizing the heart with awe. In the stillness of the savanna, where lions moved with the rhythm of eternity, Arthus-Bertrand found his true teachers. Their unhurried majesty instructed him to wait, to watch, to listen—to surrender the restless hunger of haste and discover what the eyes alone cannot command.

Think on this, O listener, and recall the tale of the great Japanese painter Sesshū Tōyō. It is told that when he was a boy, his master punished him by tying him to a post. In his captivity, Sesshū wept, and his tears mingled with dust on the floor. With his toes, he traced the form of a mouse so lifelike that his master, upon seeing it, was struck with wonder. The boy, forced to wait and denied all tools, had found art in patience, in stillness, in surrender. Just as Sesshū’s tears carved beauty from dust, so did the lions carve wisdom into the heart of the photographer.

In the presence of lions, Arthus-Bertrand felt a beauty that penetrates. This is no common beauty—the shallow shine of ornaments or the fleeting grace of polished stone—but the kind that pierces through flesh and bone, touching the eternal self within. It is the beauty of life unveiled: the primal dignity of the lion, the silent law of the wild, the sacred bond between predator and earth. To behold such beauty is not to consume it, but to be consumed by it, to be remade in the image of reverence.

Thus we see that the wild teaches not only the poet and the painter, but all who are willing to sit at its feet. The lions do not instruct with words, but with their being. Their patience is their sermon; their presence is their gospel. And those who open their hearts may find that the creatures of the earth reveal truths too vast for human tongues.

What, then, shall we take from this teaching? That in our own striving, we must learn to wait. We must look upon the world not as a possession to be seized, but as a wonder to be received. To cultivate patience is to allow beauty to approach us in its own time, like a lion rising from the tall grass—not summoned, but revealed.

Let each of us, then, practice the art of waiting. Walk into nature not with conquest in mind, but with reverence. Lay aside your urgency; instead, let the world show itself to you. In work, in love, in creation, do not force, but attend. And when beauty at last pierces you, do not flee from it, but let it transform you. For as the lions taught Arthus-Bertrand, so too they teach us: that to live fully is to see, to wait, and to be penetrated by the fierce and gentle beauty of life itself.