Your Mind is a Garden

"Your mind is a garden;

your thoughts are the seeds."

So are you growing flowers? Or weeds?

I recently taught a class on the Noble Eightfold Path. One of the first investigations we did was to divide our thoughts into wholesome and unwholesome. Do this for 3 minutes during your next meditation.

Once you become aware of the unwholesome, the unskillful, the "weeds," you can apply the antidotes.

Loving-kindness and patience antidote just about everything.

You can practice loving-kindness during meditation or on a walk or while you are driving or while you are washing the dishes. You can grow flowers in your mind all day every day.

Bluebirds are Back

Bluebirds are here! It's time to clean out your bluebird boxes so that Mama and Papa Bluebird can choose a house to raise their babies in.

If you want to bluebirds of happiness to nest in your mind, then you have to clean out last year's detritus. Replace regrets and resentments with kindness and patience--toward yourself, of course.

Let those old thoughts come. Tell them "Thank you for coming. I don't need you any more. You can go now." Yes, be kind even toward those negative thoughts that traipse around in your mind.

Notice the quiet incubation of calm.

The bluebirds of happiness will be hatching soon.

Deer Eating My Shrubs

Well, well, well. Look who came to visit this morning in between my 6:00 meditation and my 7:00 sit. Four deer, all decked out in their heavy winter coats, were taste-testing my shrubs.

Daintily, one nibbled the leaves off the PJM rhododendron. Another one tried the leaves of the swamp azalea, whose pink flowers smell so deeply of cinnamon in June. Another one munched on the fuzzy buds of the star magnolia, and someone else tried the twig ends of hobblebush.

When i went out to the deck to take a picture of the cute Bambis, they fled.

A beautiful meditation state can nibble our body. Oh, look! At which point, it runs off into the woods and disappears. 

Patience my dear. Patience if you are stealthily stalking the beautiful mind. And patience if you want to see the cute deer.

How Low Can You Go?

Temperatures are dropping into the 20s at night. Still, the sorrel limps along--almost the only old green lady remaining in the garden. 

I've only just discovered a sorrel sauce for salmon. My sweetie can't eat citrus, so i pureed the (briefly) cooked sorrel, added maple syrup and tamari. Wow! The lemon-y sweet-sour sauce is delicious.

Sorrel is sour, so a touch of maple syrup makes it tangy and tasty.

Our sour mind states--such as irritation, frustration, impatience--can be antidoted with a bit of sweetness toward ourselves. Kindness and patience cure almost every negative mind state.

Just when you feel you want to go low, remember your long-term intention to take the high road. Go high by practicing kindness. Toward yourself first of all.

Spike Garden

My spike garden is blooming--full of foxglove and 2 varieties of mullein.

I particularly like the white mullein, which i grew from seed i collected from some escapees from the local Putney Wildflower Nursery. The nursery is long gone, but a patch of white mullein and another patch of yellow thermopsis remain.

Speaking of which, i want to go collect thermopsis seeds for my spike-y garden.

What are the seeds you collect? Particularly those from your admirable, honorable friends. Kindness? Compassion? Patience?

I have one neighbor who is infinitely patient with the computer--which i am not. She offers her services to sit beside older people and assist them with getting what they want from their computer. I want to model myself after her.

The spike garden may sound sharp, but there's a lot of love out there.

Vanity

Young Beauty and Old Beauty

Walking toward a protest on the Common downtown last Friday, i was following two elderly couples walking at a relaxed pace. Both women limped slightly, though in different ways.

Get out of my way! i thought. I'm in a hurry. Then i realized i knew all four of those people, and they are my age!

When we are young and our bodies work like they are supposed to, we don't have much patience for ambling, limping bodies that have lost their beauty and flexibility. It's a form of vanity. It's a form of self-hatred toward our future selves, our very own future ambling, limping bodies.

Tulips in Flowerpots

In December, i planted tulip bulbs in flowerpots and set them in the garage. Now, they are six inches tall, so i'm bringing some inside to hurry up their blooms. The others are sitting in the waiting room of the front step.

Some of us bloom early, some late. Some of us zoom through school and hurry into adulthood. Some of us lag behind. Some careers take off, and some don't. Some bodies die faster than others.

Patience is the name of the game. Trust that Life (or whatever you may call it) is taking care of us.

Even the outdoor tulips will bloom eventually.

Hungarian Bread Seed Poppies

This year i have a flower bed full of Hungarian bread seed poppies. The blue-black poppy seeds are used in baking Hungarian poppy seed rolls and strudels.

The flowers are a stunning purple that i've been trying to grow for years. Year after year i buy a packet of seeds. Finally! Success! These annual poppies reseeded themselves from last year's poppies.

We try to grow wholesome qualities in our mind. Sometimes, we plant the intention--for generosity, for patience, for compassion--over and over again. And then--It blooms, perhaps unexpectedly, in some situation.

We can't really say that those previous attempts were failures. We have faith that by re-setting our intention for a skillful quality of mind, that beautiful mind state will eventually show up.

The purple poppies proliferate.


Photo credit: https://www.selectseeds.com/annuals/poppy-seeds-plants/poppy_hungarian_blue_seeds.aspx

Thorny Raspberries

Giraffes eat thorny acacia trees. Here on this continent, deer are eating my raspberry bushes--thorns and leaves.

Giraffes have very big hearts--weighing 26 pounds. For this reason, they often symbolize of love. And deer? Well, we all read Bambi or saw the movie when we were children, so we have a soft spot in our hearts for innocent deer.

How about a big heart when it comes to dealing with the thorny issues of our lives? It's called self-compassion--being kind to ourselves when things go awry.

If the deer and the giraffe can eat thorns and digest them, then we can practice self-compassion. Right now, i'm practicing patience and compassion toward the critters who are eating my raspberry stalks.

The Upside-Down Birds

The nuthatch parents are busy feeding 4 fledgling nuthatches. The whole family comes to the bird branch I have installed on my deck. My sweetie can't remember the name of this bird, so he calls it “the upside-down bird.” Even the very young birds think nothing of perching upside-down or hopping downwards on the bird branch, head-first.

Every once in a while, I put a handful of sunflower hearts (the plain seed without a shell) on the railing. The parents grab one or a beakful of the seeds to feed the nearby child who is crying hungrily.

The nuthatch teenagers are slightly larger than their parents now, with roundish bodies and Asian eyes. They shudder their wings and call plaintively to their parents, “Feed me. Feed me.” Food is inches away from them, but they do not recognize sunflower seeds as food yet. The parents patiently pick up a seed and drop it into a nearby open mouth.

I feel impatient with the young birds, but the parent nuthatches seem to know the developmental stage of their children.

Impatience is such a useless emotion. Life is unfolding as it is unfolding. I cannot hurry the process or the person (or the nuthatch) along.

Patience my dear. The nuthatches are a joy to watch.

Ring Bell

My sister sent me a doormat for my birthday. What a chuckle to have at the front door!

Isn't this what we do? Busy ourselves with a distraction rather than wait patiently. Waiting patiently seems like a waste of time. Waiting patiently is being mindful of the present moment.

Oh, i do pull weeds when i'm waiting--at the car dealership for my car to be serviced, in the food coop parking lot, or just walking down the street. Pulling weeds seems like a very useful activity. It keeps me active.

On the other hand, a mindfulness bell has rung. I could take a moment to be mindful of now.
Then i'll pull some weeds.

Multiplying Mums

Notice the roots in the vase.

As i was unloading mums from the trunk of my car earlier this month, a few flower stems broke off. I put the stems in water, and went on vacation. Three weeks later, the stems have sprouted. Now I'm planting the mums in a nursery bed to see if they will over-winter.

I do love taking cuttings, though usually i am trying to root houseplants.

We try to "root" wholesome qualities in our lives--patience, generosity, and kindness, to name just a few.

Some root and some don't, but we keep trying because these wholesome qualities are stress-free as opposed to their stressful opposites: frustration instead of patience, for instance, or tight-fistedness instead of generosity.

What one wholesome quality would you like to plant in your "inner garden" today?

I'm planting kindness toward all beings--even the grouchy ones.

Flowering Twice

My favorite October shrub is "blooming" right now. Actually, heptacodium (seven-son flower) blooms white in September. This month the red sepals of those gone-by flowers make it look like it's blooming again. I love this late bloomer, partly because it's the only shrub that is blooming this late in the season.

It's never too late to begin meditation practice. Some of us discover meditation at a young age; others when we are older. I recently saw a 90-year-old friend at a retreat. What an inspiration!

Mindfulness practice helps us bloom with kindness, patience, and acceptance. Better late than never.

April Showering

Siberian Squill

It's April showering out there in the garden right now. The May flowers are arriving daily as i notice early delivery on blooming daffodils, bloodroot, and hyacinth. Spring is truly sprung.

And how do we shower ourselves with kindness and patience?

Spring starts with the little bulbs blooming--snowdrops, cobalt blue squill, dainty white and light blue striped pushkinia.

We start with little doses of wishing well for ourselves.
May i abide in the well-being of the garden.
We befriend ourselves, just like we befriend our flowers.

Sowing Alyssum

Today, i strolled along my walkways and garden steps, sowing tiny
alyssum seeds as i went.

Strewing the seeds is so much easier than any of the alternatives--buying the plants or growing the teeny-tiny plants myself. These seeds will be blooming by the second week of June.

Now is the time to plant the seeds of your intentions. One meditation teacher practices the paramis every day (generosity, integrity, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity). Whew! That's quite a list.

Another teacher friend focuses on the five precepts a.k.a integrity (do no harm, take nothing that is not freely given, speak truthfully and helpfully, use sexual energy wisely, and keep the mind clear from intoxicants).

Choose your own list--which might be just one quality. Loving-kindness is always a good place to start.

Sow that beautiful quality and watch it grow in your life.

Lemon Verbena Sprouts Indoors

In October, on a whim, i potted up the 3-foot tall lemon verbena that had been growing in the herb garden all summer. Its leaves immediately died, due to transplant shock, so i pruned the stems down to 3 inches, and waited.

Now, 2 months later, the bare stalks are sprouting new growth.

Patience is a cure-all quality, good for just about every situation.

Now that my indoors herb garden is growing, i can add lemon verbena the next time i cook chicken.

Allegheny Pachysandra

I'm ripping apart one flower bed that is covered with 2 ground covers.  The lamium is easy to rip out and throw in the compost. But now i am face to face with Allegheny pachysandra. I have it in another bed, where it has slowly colonized, but it has suburbanized this shady bed.

I thought that Allegheny pachysandra would be good because it is native to the North American continent. But it's still pachysandra!

Now is the time to remember my long-term goal: once i know a wildflower can survive, i can dare to transplant the colony into the woods. I have a long-term construction project with the Allegheny pachysandra. There's enough that I can landscape most of my woodland trails with it.

Now is the time to remember my long-term spiritual goal. Landscape my life with kindness, mindfulness, and patience.

Pulling Garlic Mustard

Garlic mustard, a biennial invasive, is blooming its tiny white flowers this week. Last evening, while waiting to meet a friend for dinner, i spent 5 minutes pulling garlic mustard on the nearby rail trail. Someone stopped to ask me what i was doing. "Practicing random acts of gardening," i said.

It's a small thing. Pulling garlic mustard on the roadside for 5 minutes. Today, i pulled Japanese knotweed near a stream for 10 minutes.

Yet this is what we do when we pull the weed of impatience for a minute as we sit at a stoplight patiently. We weed an unkind thought and replace it with kindness.

What would you weed? Irritation? Desire? Resentment? Envy?

Simply being mindful of these unskillful mind states leaves us, for a moment, with the spaciousness of mindfulness.

Letting Hate Be

I've received a couple of pieces of hate mail recently. Ouch! That hurts!

The mind wants to get going on a story and all sorts of rebuttals about the other person's point of view. I hate to be blamed. Yet blame is inevitable. Someone will not see things the way i see them. Someone will lash out. This is life. I much prefer praise, but you can't have one (praise) without the other (blame).

So where do i find happiness despite the outer conditions of ugly letters? I've been practicing forgiveness, toward myself, first of all. I forgive myself for not understanding this situation before i got into it.

I seek refuge in the Dharma--in patience and kindness, toward myself first of all.

And i notice the pain of remembering the letters. Can i just sink into that pain and watch it release?

The sender of the hate mail is living in a mental hell realm. By creating their own false story and then sticking to it, i can practically see the narrowed mind, the mind closed to relationship and to additional facts.

Oh, well. My job is to let the story go. Let it be as it is. To sink into the truth of silence. And feel compassionate toward all the political people who are receiving much worse hate mail from more people.

Here's a verse from the Dhammapada:

Those who are contentious 

have forgotten that we all die;

for the wise, who reflect on this fact,

there are no quarrels.

Weed-Free Garden

I recently gave a talk about how to have a weed-free garden: Mulch! Now!

Now, while there's nice bare ground. But don't let that bare ground fool you. There are thousands of weed seeds per square foot of dirt, just waiting for the right conditions to spring up. Apply mulch now, and then they will remain dormant.

We do the same thing with our mind. There are all sorts of unskillful thoughts waiting to spring up. We mulch our mind with meditation. We create the right conditions for kindness, friendliness, and
patience to grow in our minds and in our actions.

Mulch your flower beds soon. Enjoy the flowers without those pesky weeds.