Ixora

Ixora is blooming right outside the front door of our Airbnb condo. Due to its evergreen leaves and constant blooms, ixora is used often and everywhere in the tropical landscape.

The one blooming outside our front door is a beautiful sunset color. The young blooms are yellow; the middle aged blooms have streaks of pinky-orange; and the old blooms become almost completely salmon-colored. Sort of like an aging sunset, which begins sunny yellow and morphs into a pink-orange sky.

We too age and our skin changes color. Our skin starts off clear and unblemished, then becomes splotchy and more colored as we age.

In our culture, our eyes prefer the "young" color and fail to see the beauty of the "old" color.

Can we look without judgment? Can we see nonjudgmentally?

Monarch on a Zinnia Throne

I saw a monarch butterfly this afternoon, sipping nectar from a zinnia, not far from a stand of milkweed.

Yesterday, i found 2 monarch caterpillars on the underside of a milkweed leaf. Although i've heard that there aren't enough milkweed, i have plenty growing in my cutting flower beds.

When is a weed a weed? And when is a flower a flower? It's all in the eye of the beholder. It all rests with your personal judgment. Every judgment is a judgment, dividing the world into good and bad, yes and no.

Or we could practice non-judgmental awareness. "Oh. It's like this."

Opinions About Rain

It's raining today. Raining steadily. The forecast for the coming week is cloudy and rainy. I'm hearing lots of complaints. We want Spring! We want May! We want blooming flowers. We want to be outdoors in the garden.

Do you notice how we resist the present moment? This wet present moment.

The rain may be unpleasant--it's chilly; it's wet; it's raw. Not liking it only adds to our suffering and increases our stress.

We don't need to have any opinion at all. Imagine that! It's raining. Period. No opinion. No judgment. Only the feeling of unpleasantness.

I gaze out the window with a cup of tea in my hand. Raindrops dying in quick succession.

Rain Garden

My favorite rain garden is the cloverleaf where i often enter onto the interstate. In the center of that single cloverleaf is a low spot, lower than the entrance ramp curving around it on 3 sides, and much lower than the traffic whizzing by on the interstate on the fourth "side." This drainage area is, right now, filled with blue lupines, happy daisies, and red clover (Vermont's state flower.)

When it rains, the water is held in this area, this "rain garden," so that stormwater runoff can percolate into the soil or slowly be released into the stream that drains this area.

This is what rain gardens do: they withstand the extremes of wetness and absorb the high nitrogen and phosphorous that is often found in runoff. A rain garden also guards against erosion that can be caused by a downpour.

How can we hold the challenges of our life when stress and distress rain down upon us? How can we hold difficult situations without resisting them?

Our mindfulness practice prepares us for the non-judgmental awareness to notice. "Oh, this." and "Just this." We don't have to have an opinion. We don't have to have a judgment. We don't have to launch into ain't-it-awful.

We simply hold the "too much" that may be storming through our lives. Let it infiltrate us. Feel the pain, the splats, and all the other unpleasantnesses. The mind wants so badly to make up a story about it. The story--whatever it is--guards us against feeling the present moment.

And after the storm, after all the thunder and lightning, the sun shines and daisies bloom.

Gardening & Non-Gardening

My friend Cassandra reports she was visiting her friend Andrea. Andrea and her husband were busy harvesting their garden: washing their just-dug potatoes, blanching green beans for freezing, cutting up cukes for pickles, getting ready to can tomatoes and freeze blueberries. Their kitchen was a veritable beehive of food preparation.

"How's your garden?" Andrea asked.
"Well, i have a few flowers," Cassandra replied, "but even that is pretty minimal. I don't have a vegetable garden."
Andrea stopped in her tracks. "You don't have a vegetable garden?"

Cassandra felt compelled to justify herself. "Well, i have gardening neighbors. And i drive by a farm stand every day on my way home from work."

Some people are following different paths than we are. Whether that's a spiritual path or a non-gardening path, who are we to judge?

Of course, judging is what the mind does so well. Sorting the world into good and bad, holy and secular, right and wrong. Etcetera, etcetera.



Sit back into non-judgmental awareness and watch the judging mind at work. Back and forth it goes, a volley that never ends. "They're so wrong, and i'm so right." Or "They must be right, and therefore i'm doing it wrong." Etcetera, etcetera.

Often it feels like the judging mind is just going around and around. It can even give us a literal headache.

Andrea gardens. Cassandra doesn't.
Really, that's all that is happening.
Free of anyone's opinions.
Free.