Icicle Moon

A fingernail of the waning moon hangs in the sky at dawn, flirting with a small pink cloud, which drifts away as the sliver of moon rises into the day and disappears. A nearby icicle watches all of this, frozen as it is on a freezing day.

The moon disappears though we "know" it is still there. Sort of like Awareness, there but invisible to ordinary eyes. Our ordinary eyes focus on icicles, freezing the ever-changing movement of Now into things. And we play with these things as if they are real. As one teacher says, "Nouns are just slow-moving verbs." Nouns make us think that things exist. Nouns delude us into everyday reality.

We catch glimpses of Awareness, just as we catch glimpses of the fingernail moon. Awareness is always there--quietly saying nothing.

Undone Projects

It has snowed 3 times in the past week--all before Thanksgiving. I keep thinking, Oh, it will melt, but temperatures here are dropping into the teens. The ground will freeze, and that's the definite end of gardening season.

Oh, the projects left undone. Things not put away. Stalks and stems not cut down. Bulbs not planted. Sigh.

We thought we had a future, but the future turns out differently than we expected. The future was a figment of our imagination. And now we are disappointed that reality doesn't match imagination?

The future is always in the imagination. The future is only in the imagination.

We live and breathe in the present moment, and every new moment is a surprise.

Forest Skyline

A few years ago, I bought a cup on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands in Washington state. This is my favorite cup, though its colors are not my usual colors.

And then, this week, I "saw" for the first time that this cup is the same colors as the sky and the forest. In fact, its abstract edginess even looks like the forest skyline.

This is what perception does: enables us to re-cognize something familiar, something with which we have associations. In reality, the cup is about sky and forest as much as a cloud looks like a camel. Perception comes and goes and enables us to get along in the world, but when you look closely has no real reality.

Never mind. I still love this smallish cup of green and blue.

Window of Opportunity

We are staying at the National Park lodge in Big Bend, tucked into an old volcanic crater called "the basin," surrounded by the Chisos Mountains. Like all craters, this one has a low point called "The Window." Looking out the windows of the lodge dining room, we have a fantastic view of The Window, which offers a view of the world beyond this fortress of mountains with high peaks all around us.

When we are surrounded by so-called reality of family, work, and home, and the virtual reality of cyberspace, it's quite difficult to see the view beyond our ordinary daily lives. Meditation offers us the calmness, the space, the solitude in which to notice this larger view.

Ghost Town

We are in Terlingua, Texas, a ghost town, staying at an Airbnb mining ruin. This miner's hut has been artfully refurbished with all the modern conveniences. Nearby stand ruins of other rock huts--two-room falling-down houses without their roofs.

The Buddha refers to our six senses as a ghost town. Specifically he is referring to our internal senses, which I would call the virtual reality of our thoughts. We see/hear/feel our thoughts and take them to be reality. But when you look more closely, you find only empty huts of seeing thoughts, empty huts of hearing thoughts, empty huts of feeling thoughts. All here and gone in a flash. But continuous enough to feel real, to feel that we ourselves have some reality.

But really, it's all a ghost town.

Resistance: Another Name for Stress

A friend said she bought an amaryllis bulb for Christmas. Its leaves grew, but no flower appeared. So she threw it out.

I cringe when i hear a story like that. I offer her some covert advice. "Last year, my amaryllis all bloomed in March and early April." In other words, Don't give up on the non-blooming amaryllis.

But she has already given up; she's already thrown it away. If the amaryllis doesn't bloom at Christmas, like it's "supposed to," then what's the use of keeping it?

A lot of us don't bloom like we're "supposed to." One friend is still single at 38; her 14-year-old niece has had a boyfriend for longer than the 38-year-old has ever had a boyfriend. We can fight against reality. (And then we lose. But only 100% of the time.) We can want something we don't have.

Fighting against reality is called stress. Or some people call it "control" (another disguise of stress).

My friend was solving her stress (of no blooms) by getting rid of the offender.
I was trying to solve my stress (But, but, but....... Things could be different.) by offering advice.

Stress has a million difference disguises, but we can trace them all back to resisting the present moment.  Resistance: another name for stress.

Repotting Brand-New Houseplants

While i had my potting soil within easy reach, i repotted some plants i recently bought.

• Two  little cyclamen looked like they were crammed into their little plastic pot; they were difficult to water. 
• A little poinsettia, as i suspected, had its roots constrained by a tiny 2" peat pot. I peeled the peat pot off to let the roots spread out. 
• A little anthurium had thick roots and was very nearly root-bound.

These brand-new plants looked so beautiful at the garden center. They had been pruned and fertilized to maximum growth. They looked ideal. And therein lie the seeds of suffering.

Once these plants arrive at my house, they come face to face with the reality of dry air, sporadic watering, and no fertilizing.

We compare ourselves--or our plants--to some imaginary ideal. I should look like.... And my plants should look like they did when i bought them. If they start to look pale and wan and lose leaves, it must be my fault. I'm not as good a gardener as some imagined ideal gardener. Oh! If only i were perfect.

Reality is that plants live, wilt, peter out, and die. When we can accept things as they are and simply watch life as it unfolds, there we can find peace.

Acceptance doesn't mean that we just roll over. I rolled my plants into bigger pots and hope that more room to grow enables them to live a better life.