Vitamin M

I just returned from a one-week retreat in the Colorado Rockies. At 8,500 feet, we were still below snowline, although one morning i did wake up to a dusting of snow.

Every day i took a walk after lunch. Rosehips grew along the roadside, so i picked them and ate them "for dessert." Their red flesh was almost sweet. And then there were all those inedible seeds. Perhaps it doesn't seem worth it--several seconds of juicy flesh followed by a couple of minutes of spitting out tiny seeds.

I rationalized the rosehips by thinking of all the Vitamin C i was getting, in its raw form. As well as the Vitamin D directly from that hot Colorado sunshine.

Sometimes our meditation practice can seem like rosehips: a few moments of sweet tranquility followed by minutes of spitting out the seeds of wayward thoughts. Sigh. Is meditation really worth it?

Yet those few minutes of solitude provide us with our daily dose, our minimum daily requirement, of Vitamin M (for meditation.)