Garden Path

I drove my truck to a nearby sawmill yesterday to get a load of wood chips. I use wood chips for paths, and this works particularly neatly in the vegetable garden. I subscribe to the theory that repeated walking--as one does in the veggie garden--packs down the soil. So my paths in the vegetable garden remain the same year after year, between beds.

New wood chips give a fresh, clean look to the paths and keep the weeds down.

The spiritual path we are walking begins with Right View. Right View understands 2 things:
(1) You reap what you sow--in thoughts, words, and actions.
(aka karma) and

(2) The 3 characteristics of all experience.

• The garden is ever-changing

• Discontent happens in the garden (e.g., bugs, weather, disease, and death)

• Our "garden" is a slow-moving verb, a process that flows on from moment to moment, and as such, has no inherent existence. (Don't worry if you don't understand this mind-bender. Just let it flow away. Gone!)

All sorts of weedy thoughts can pop up in the garden of our mind. We stick to our path of mindfulness, beginning with viewing the garden as it really is. We start with Right View, and this helps us keep the mind-weeds down.