Path Paved with Yellow Leaves

Yellow birch leaves are fluttering to earth, at times looking like soft yellow rain. My woodland path is paved with gold.

Every morning, i follow my personal "yellow brick road" to meditation at a neighbor's house. 

Meditation offers all sorts of obstacles--lack of determination (the scarecrow), tension and tightness (the tin man), and lack of heart (the lion). Yet we persevere, confident that our path will lead us to our natural state, which is not Kansas, but kindness.

Peter Rabbit in the Lettuce Patch

The retreat center has a large organic garden, thanks to the housekeeper Dawn, who is making sure that retreatants have probiotic kim chi and pickles, fresh lettuce salads, and, soon, fresh tomatoes from 100 heirloom tomato plants.

I saw Peter Rabbit in the lettuce patch yesterday. In a place like this, which deeply practices "doing no harm to any sentient being," the next challenge may be putting in a fence. The current fence is beautiful, hand-made from branches of pine and birch trees.

When we begin our meditation practice, we may take the 5 precepts sort of half-heartedly.

I intend to 

• do no harm to anyone
• take nothing that is not freely giving
• speak truthfully and helpfully
• use my sensual energy wisely, and
• keep my mind clear.

 We might interpret the precepts loosely, and, of course, we cheat a little, here and there. We keep the big no-nos out, but there are those cute little rascals--a little gossip, a third glass of wine, flirting with someone else's partner. Those things are fun. And they do bother our mind.

Eventually, we renounce those rascally behaviors, and keep the rabbits out of the lettuce patch with stronger determination.

Spring Cleaning the Flower Bed

There's a plant sale fundraiser in every little town around here this coming Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend. I'm busy dividing plants and potting them up, using the rich-looking soil from a compost bin.

Offering plants for the Garden Club plant sale is a great excuse to do some "spring cleaning" in my flowerbeds. A month ago, the plants looked small and well-spaced. Now they're buxom and crowding their neighbors like a metropolitan subway at rush hour.

Generosity is the first of the supreme qualities (paramis); renunciation (disguised as "spring cleaning") is the 3rd. By virtue of taking on this exercise, this intention, i also practice energy (#5) and determination (#8). And underlying all this digging, dividing, and driving the plants to the sale is a mild flavor of loving-kindness (#9). I love my flowers, i love my garden, and i love sharing it with others, one plant at a time.

Repairing the Garden Hoses

I spent 2 hours repairing hoses yesterday. Rarely do i experience such a combination of patience, diligence, and determination on the task at hand.

On the way home from giving a Dharma talk, i stopped at our fabulous hometown hardware store and bought 3 new female ends for hoses that i had already cut the worn, hole-y, or squirting ends off of. By using these lengths of old hose and not simply buying a brand-new hose, i was practicing the voluntary simplicity of "reduce, re-use, recycle." I had tried to recycle the hoses on Saturday at the Swap Shop at the landfill, but they didn't accept them. So now i am "re-using" them :) Sometimes i need just a short length of hose.

In this simple act of repairing hoses, i was practicing half (or more) of the 10 paramis (a.k.a. paramitas). These supreme qualities are the ones we need to perfect if we aspire to be a Bodhisattva or to live a life of service.

1. Generosity
2. Virtue, morality,integrity
3. Renunciation (voluntary simplicity)
4. Wisdom, insight
5. Energy, diligence, vigour, effort
6. Patience, tolerance, forbearance, acceptance, endurance
7. Truthfulness, honesty
8. Determination, resolution
9. Loving-kindness
10. Equanimity, serenity

 

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”