Pulling Garlic Mustard

Garlic mustard, a biennial invasive, is blooming its tiny white flowers this week. Last evening, while waiting to meet a friend for dinner, i spent 5 minutes pulling garlic mustard on the nearby rail trail. Someone stopped to ask me what i was doing. "Practicing random acts of gardening," i said.

It's a small thing. Pulling garlic mustard on the roadside for 5 minutes. Today, i pulled Japanese knotweed near a stream for 10 minutes.

Yet this is what we do when we pull the weed of impatience for a minute as we sit at a stoplight patiently. We weed an unkind thought and replace it with kindness.

What would you weed? Irritation? Desire? Resentment? Envy?

Simply being mindful of these unskillful mind states leaves us, for a moment, with the spaciousness of mindfulness.