Portulaca Pot

My friend Nancy, in Olympia, Washington, has a flower pot that goes around the umbrella in the middle of her patio table. Very cute. She has filled the flower pot with portulaca.

The terracotta pot is actually 2 pots, each going halfway around the umbrella stick. By tying the 2 halves together, there's the illusion that one pot goes completely around.

How often do we see something beautiful, only to later recognize its "brokenness," its unsatisfactoriness?

The portulaca pot is beautiful, but it's not quite as it seems. The illusion certainly fooled me.

Goodbye, Dear Hemlock

For years, i've been parking my car under a hemlock tree. I call it my "hemlock garage" because its evergreen branches keep the snow off my car in the winter and the sun off my car in the summer.

Today a logger is coming to cut down the hemlock (and 10 other trees), in preparation for building an actual garage.

Goodbye dear hemlock.

Change is difficult, even when we bring it upon ourselves. We want, and we don't want. On the horns of this dilemma, the mind fights a civil war with itself, and peace is nowhere to be found.

Change is happening every minute, every second. When we recognize this truth, we begin to break through the illusion that we call "reality." We begin to break out of the dream state we walk around in.

I'm going outdoors now to wrap my arms around my dear hemlock tree.

The Ever-Changing Garden

A Thai friend who has beautiful gardens and who arranges flowers and leaves so artfully has received her third diagnosis of cancer.

I emailed her a note of sympathy, and she responded:
"No birth. No death. It's the anatta [not-self]. I am not holding on to the notion of existence. Life itself is an illusion. We are passing, evolving, changing, and transforming away from the illusion."

Just like our gardens that evolve, change, and transform from day to day, from hour to hour, and, if we can apply the microscope of our attention, from minute to minute.

A noun is simply a slow-moving verb. The noun "garden," for instance.

We may like or dislike the changes, but what's the use of liking/disliking? The changes simply happen. The garden, the elements of the garden, move on.

Pronouns are faster-changing verbs. "I," "me," "mine" change from moment to moment. The in-breath is completely different molecules from the out-breath (CO2). The "I" is born minute after minute, second after second. Pay attention. Notice moments of not-I, maybe when you are quite relaxed. Those "not-I" moments are moments of no birth, no death either. When we hold on to the notion of existence, we perish.

Just life unfolding.