Wildflower Walk

I offered a Wildflower Walk to our sangha on Sunday. No one came to the windy parking lot where we were supposed to meet, so i sighed, and drove myself to the nearby dead-end road. Another car was just parking. Mary and Mary were there for the wildflower walk!

Our walk on the trail beyond the dead-end went along a brook on one side and a steep hillside on the other, absolutely loaded with trillium, dutchmen's breeches, and wild leeks. We saw a few hepatica, some tiny saxifrage, and the occasional blue cohosh.

Mary was an Environmental Studies major, so we had a great time identifying wildflowers and trading names with each other. She was a birder as well.

This is a form of happiness:

• wildflowers--pleasant, pleasant, pleasant.
• naming them--pleasant, pleasant
• taking a walk in the woods--pleasant

These worldly forms of happiness are sense pleasures--seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, thinking.
These sense pleasures come and go, which puts us in the uncomfortable position of wanting more or wanting the pleasant to continue. Wanting. Wanting.

The Buddha offers us the possibility of a deep happiness that we can abide in, no matter the outer circumstances. Sort of like having our eye on the bigger picture. Knowing, in our bones, that everything changes, we float in the river of life content with the constantly changing scenery.