Birds' Nests

Now that the leaves have fallen off the trees, i am suddenly seeing birds' nests. All at once, the nests are in plain sight. That means i've been walking by them all summer and never even noticed.

This "not-noticing" is an aspect of delusion, which is one of the 3 roots of stress and suffering. Mindfulness is all about noticing--noticing the foreground and noticing the background.

When we don't notice our life, we are running on automatic pilot. We proceed based on our assumptions, which usually works out well enough for us.

But the unexpected always happens eventually, and then we are shocked by the change. Living on automatic pilot is so much more comfortable than actually noticing moment-to-moment change.

Change. The season has changed. The tree leaves have changed. The weather has changed. We are changing.

And birds are flying south.

The long strands are shreds of plastic.

Money Plant Going to Seed

Money plant is fading and going to seed. Since the daffodils ended, i rely on money plant to hold the color in the gardens--2 dozen white ones in the white garden and probably a hundred pinky-purples in the bulb garden.

Now i pull out the ones in the foreground that have gone green in order to better see the blooming iris or geranium behind.

This is what we do in meditation: bring our meditation object to the foreground and allow other sense impressions to fade to the background. We choose whatever meditation object interests us the most--hearing, breath, sensations of the body, loving-kindness.

Yesterday, during a 7-minute introductory meditation in a high school class, 3 students reported fixing their attention on the breath so that they didn't even hear sounds in the hallway or outdoors. (I had the windows open for hearing meditation.) Attention on the foreground is the beginning of concentration.

I'm concentrating on "weeding" my flowerbeds, so that the natural beauty can come to the foreground, and i can pay attention to that.

Photo from foodiesuntie.blogspot.com