Pulling Water Chestnut

This morning i joined 6 other volunteers to pull water chestnut out of the Connecticut River.  We were instructed by a staff person from the Connecticut River Watershed Council and 2 interns.

Kayaking on the river was a lovely way to spend a beautiful morning. We found and pulled about 2 dozen plants in 3 hours, down from 10 dozen last year, and 50 dozen two years ago.

We purify our own minds by recognizing our own bad habits, and, if we can, pulling them out by the roots. Even if we don't get our bad habit out by the roots, we can delay its growth and delay its "going to seed" with the simple mindfulness of recognizing an unskillful mind state.

And like this patch of water chestnut, over time, we find our unskillful mind states arising less and less frequently.

Pulling Water Chestnut

This morning i joined 6 other volunteers to pull water chestnut out of the Connecticut River.  We were instructed by a staff person from the Connecticut River Watershed Council and 2 interns.

Kayaking on the river was a lovely way to spend a beautiful morning. We found and pulled about 2 dozen plants in 3 hours, down from 10 dozen last year, and 50 dozen two years ago.

We purify our own minds by recognizing our own bad habits, and, if we can, pulling them out by the roots. Even if we don't get our bad habit out by the roots, we can delay its growth and delay its "going to seed" with the simple mindfulness of recognizing an unskillful mind state.

And like this patch of water chestnut, over time, we find our unskillful mind states arising less and less frequently.

Cleaning Up

As i mentioned yesterday, i have too much lead, one of the earth's elements, in my body. Really, due to our industrial society, we probably all have some sort of body burden--an excess of some element or other in our bodies.

Chelation is the method of removing heavy metals from the body. I'm using green clay, another earth element, to chelate the lead, to draw it out of the body.

Green clay looks like powdered wasabi; just add water and smear it onto the body. In this way, eventually, the body can be purified of the toxic elements.

Our minds, too, can be purified of toxins by practicing qualities of kindness, compassion, joy, generosity, and the cure-all, patience.

Choose your poison. I'm sure you already know your very familiar poisoner of the mind--a grudge, impatience, anger, wishy-washiness, greed.
Then choose the antidote. (Message me if you need some help with this.)

Let's clean up our act. Clean up our body, but even more importantly, clean up our mind.