Caribbean Milkweed

Here in the Caribbean, they grow BIG milkweed--about six feet tall with leaves as big as my hand. The purple-and-white star flowers are about an inch across, which is big for a milkweed.

Interesting that this toxic plant is named after the Greek god of medicine--Asclepius.

Sometimes we take a little bit of poison for a cure or as a prevention. Radiation and chemotherapy for instance. Or the blood thinner Coumadin, which is rat poison.

Several of my friends who have refused radiation have since sailed out into the ocean of life and death. Sometimes, Nature simply takes it course.

Heliconia

One of the aspects about being in the tropics that i love (besides sun, warmth, beach, and swimming in the ocean) is the tropical flora.

I test myself, trying to remember names of commonly seen landscape plants. Here at our yoga-villa is a heliconia. Yay! I remembered its name. (Pleasant.)

I love knowing the names of plants. Most of the Latin names (some derived from Greek) are descriptive of some aspect of the plant. Heliconia comes directly from the Greek word helikonios.

I also enjoy the Sanskrit or Pali names that are used in English. Although English has a gazillion words for the material world, the vocabulary for the inner world turns out to be quite limited.

In English, we have the word consciousness. In Buddhism, consciousness is delineated much more precisely: eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, touch-consciousness, taste-consciousness, smell-consciousness, and mental-consciousness. Come to think of it, when we are conscious, we are conscious of something. Hmmm. Maybe the Pali language is on to something here.

Karma and Dharma have already migrated into English. The next words to migrate will be metta (loving-kindness) and dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, stress, suffering).

Today i am visually conscious of the heliconia and mentally conscious of how much i love knowing its name.