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.

Onion Seedlings

I ordered onion seedlings online last year because my usual local sources were sold out. This year, i have already ordered on-line onion seedlings--slated to arrive the third week of April.

Where is the center of an onion? Where is the center of the so-called self that we say we are "centering"?

We have layers and layers of habit patterns. Oh, those habits are hard to see, let alone peel away. Some of those thought habit patterns bring us to tears. That's how we know we are on the right track to uncovering them.

Today, i am looking at the thought pattern "I'm right." I've nicknamed it I.M. Wright. Ms. I.M. Wright is sometimes wrong. Sometimes, the price Ms. Wright pays for being right is disconnection from friends--she's that insistent of being right. 

Ms. I.M. Wright is closely connected to the thought habit of you-don't-understand-me--UDUM, for short. When those two get together, i just want to cry with frustration.

I watch them pal up during meditation. I listen to each one, over and over. And then they each fall silent.

The mind relaxes. The body relaxes. No one is right. No one is wrong. Life is, and that is all.

Neighbor Possum

A possum lives under our front step. From there, it's a short trip to the grocery store, otherwise known as our compost pile. Once in a while, if we take the kitchen scraps out after dark, we can find her dining out.

My neighbors and i have decided we like possums because they eat ticks, mice, and rats. My neighbor who has a chicken coop feels lucky to have a possum living underneath the coop.

Mindfulness eats our pesky thoughts, simply by watching and feeling them. Here and gone. I don't have to believe that thought, after all. Sometimes, i watch the same thought come and go a dozen times. Why does the mind need to keep giving me the same message over and over? Because the mind isn't listening to the silence of truth.

The possum waddles off into the dark.

Invasive

I took a walk in the woods yesterday and found a hundred yards of myrtle. No house could be seen, but i was walking on an old logging road, probably now used once a year for sugaring. Perhaps that dip near the road was an old cellar hole? Someone lived here once upon a time, but all traces of human habitation have disappeared. Except for rampant myrtle.

In Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, myrtle is an invasive species. Our local garden club, Perennial Swappers, forbids gardeners bringing myrtle to give away. We know what it's going to look like a hundred years from now.

Karma is like this. We indulge in just a little bit of unskillful action--gossip, one drink too many, taking something when no one is looking.

Thoughts become words.

Words become deeds.

Deeds develop into habits.

Habits harden into character.

Watch the mind and its ways with care, born out of concern for all beings.

Our unskillful thoughts, words, and behaviors follow us past death. Old cemeteries here in New England are often surrounded by myrtle (Vinca).

Robin Reflection

This morning during meditation i heard a robin repeatedly throwing himself at the kitchen window. This happens every spring during mating season as the robin sees his reflection in the glass and tries to scare off the "other" bird.

People do this all the time, every day, but it's hidden under the psychological defense called "projection." We "see" ourselves--our actions, our behavior, our mental thoughts--in the outside world, and if we have not been acting wholesomely, we pin our own unease on the other person.

For instance, if i can't find the keys to my car, i often think Bill! and blame him for my missing keys. They are lost, and i'm sure I didn't lose them. Then i find them in my coat pocket.

One of my recent discoveries was a judgment i was laying at the feet of a couple who were pillars of the church i used to attend. What hypocrites! i used to think. I believed this thought for decades. Last week, i reexamined this thought and the situation that gave rise to it. In my mind's eye, i saw myself acting hypocritically--shaking their hands, passing the peace to them, and smiling while thinking They are such hypocrits. I was the one who was a hypocrit in that situation: I didn't want to shake their hands; I did not want to pass the peace to them; and my smile was forced. They were simply a mirror for my own internal thoughts and emotions.

Oh, it is way past time to let that old, old grudge sink into the love and peace that they were sending my way. It's time to send them some love and peace, even though they are both deceased. It's time to send that girl Cheryl some love for her innocence and her misguided projections. It's time to make amends to her.

Deer in the Yard

It's snowing today, and a beautiful buck visited my garden.

What a collision of thoughts and feelings!

• Bambi!
• deer ticks
• So beautiful.
• Lyme disease
• Wow! A deer!
• Is he eating my garden?
• Way too many deer in the neighborhood
• It's hunting season.
• He knows he's safe in our yard.

All these thoughts cause a variety of emotions: happiness, irritation, anger (at the ticks), fear (at Lyme disease), anxiety, desire for him to stick around, sadness when he leaves.

It's not that one thought or one feeling is right and the other(s) is wrong. The challenge is to feel them all and keep breathing.

Veronicastrum

Veronicastrum is blooming now. It's one of the late summer plants that add color and interest to the garden when most other summer flowers are fading.

Its spikes of white racemes point heavenward, but i am always fascinated by the whorl of 5 leaves around the stem.

This 5-pointed star of leaves reminds me of the 5 precepts--the guiding star of my daily thoughts, words, and deeds.

The first precept is to do no harm--to anyone or to any being.

The second precept is to refrain from taking that which is not offered. Yes, that means not stealing, but it is also a more nuanced guidance.

The third precept is to refrain from sexual and sensual misconduct. This instruction too can be deepened to refraining from flirting, and thereby acting as a trustworthy person.

The fourth precept is to speak truthfully and helpfully--gently and straightforwardly.

And finally, keeping the mind clear, which is no small task nowadays.

I take these precepts every morning to remind myself to act honorably in the world. And what do you know? When the mind isn't bothered by little, tiny misconducts, the mind settles easily into meditation and flowers.

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.

Bear in the Compost Pile

The last time i looked, it was full to the brim. Hmmmm.

I'm pretty sure the bear finally got into my compost pile. My square 4-pallet bin was filled to the top with garden debris--dead leaves and last year's stems--plus a few kitchen scraps--onion skins, banana peels, grapefruit rinds, and coffee filters.

Earlier this week, i really looked at my compost pile, and it was a foot below the top. Someone had smashed it down. Not me. And, at first glance, i couldn't see any kitchen scraps at all, not even a teabag.

Somebody's been in my compost bin.

So, now i'm dividing our kitchen scraps into 2 buckets: one marked "for the bear" and one marked "for the chickens." The bear gets the onion skins, coffee grounds, and teabags. My neighbor's chickens get the vegetable matter.

The Buddha recommends dividing your thoughts and actions into 2 piles: wholesome and unwholesome.
Try it. For a few minutes or a few hours.

This exercise is a great way to become aware of those bugbear thoughts, the thoughtless zingers that trip off our tongue, and our kind and unkind actions.

It's time to stop feeding the bear!

Green Beans and Kindness

Here comes the summer garden. I picked my first batch of green beans, and the cherry tomatoes are ripening. I stop by the farmstand on my way home every day, and buy 2 ears of corn for dinner. For the time being, i'm buying tomatoes too so i can have tomato sandwiches for breakfast, for lunch, and, well, for dinner too when i don't get home until 9:30 p.m. Let's eat summer.

Now, we can see the direct connection of food to plate because we're going out to our gardens and harvesting the food that appears on our dinner table, maybe less than an hour later. We know where that plant came from, perhaps we even know where the seed came from. We know the soil, and we know where that soil came from--last year's compost, perhaps.

The source of our thoughts, our actions, our habits, indeed, our personality is lost in the mists of time. Just for today, we watch our thoughts with care. When we have a stressful thought, we substitute the opposite, which is often loving-kindness. Loving-kindness for ourselves, first of all.

Serve yourself a nice green helping of goodwill and kindness toward yourself. Now.

Geum. Yes. No.

Geum makes a good edging plant: it colonizes and forms a definite border between lawn and garden. Usually, geum is orange, but i like the Prairie Smoke variety.

The bloom time for geum is about 2 weeks. Then it becomes a mass of green leaves, growing next to other green leaves and green grass. Geum just doesn't provide enough bang for the buck, not enough bloom for the bed. So i'm digging out geum and replacing it with variegated hosta. I do like variegated leaves, which 

provide visual interest from spring to fall.

Once upon a time, my inner botanist wanted one of every kind of flower. But now, my gardener-self prevails and decides to focus on good-looking flowerbeds close to the house.

Notice how "pleasant" changes. First, one thing is pleasant--like geum. Then geum becomes unpleasant, and another thing is pleasant--like absence of geum. Pleasant or unpleasant has nothing to do with geum itself. Pleasant and unpleasant simply reflect my inner thoughts. Changing. Changing. Changing.

To Squash? Or Not to Squash?

I picked my first summer squash yesterday. I love them sauteed in butter and fresh garlic with a dash of tamari.

Even though the noun "squash" looks like the verb "to squash," the noun comes from an Algonquin word in which the -ash is the plural.

Plural is definitely the word to use when it comes to summer squash and zucchini. Fortunately, i picked these squash while they were only 6 inches long. But i even love the ones that get away, the ones i don't discover till they are a foot (or 2!) long. These i grate in the food processor and freeze in baggies to use in blond brownies.

In meditation, we can watch the plural ways of our mind wandering off. We don't squash that thought. We simply recognize it; labeling is very effective right here.

You can "pick" some thoughts while they are young and short, but others will get away from you and develop into great long stories. "Pick" that long thought by labeling it. Then settle back in to watch the mind grow.

Photo from klesickfamilyfarm.com

Stickiness

It's raining so much that every morning we have warm fog as the moisture slowly evaporates into the 87% humid air.

As the day's temperature increases, the humidity decreases--until the next thunderstorm this afternoon. Our climate feels and smells like the tropics.

Doors and windows swell and stick. The slightest exertion, and i feel sticky too.

When thoughts stick to us, that's a clue that we are feeling stress. This is what stickiness feels like" inescapable, no way out.

Air-condition your mind by accepting what is.

Ask yourself: Is this thought any of my business? Or is it someone else's?

Even if a thought seems to be about "me" and "mine," it might be none of our business. Maybe we just have to wait for outer events and conditions to unfold.

Notice what a sticky mind feels like in the body. Notice where it "rubs" and "grabs" the body.
Then notice that the sticky thought is a thought.
It's just a thought.
And you can't hold onto that thought no matter how hard you try.

The door opens on the next thought.

 

Photos from stickyquotes.com and depositphotos.com

The Compost of our Thoughts

A local company (that uses a LOT of paper products) always has a pile of pallets to give away. So, once a year, i drive my truck over there and load up, because pallets are easy-to-assemble compost bins in disguise.

Stand 4 pallets up on their sides in a square and tie them together with rope at the corners. Voila! Compost bin.

I line 3 bins up beside each other--1 for adding to; 1 is resting; and 1 i am "subtracting from," using the compost to plant plants or as fill. Now that growing season is over, November is a good time to cover flower or vegetable beds with compost (and get a head start on spring).

When the "subtract from" bin is totally empty, the pallets that surrounded it look quite decrepit. After 2 or 3 years of containing compost, the pallets have also rotted. I haul them off to a brush pile and erect the new pallets. The now empty bin becomes the new "add to" pile, the old "resting" heap becomes the "subtract from" pile, and the former "add to" agglomeration can now "rest."

Today's thoughts, words, and deeds become the compost for the rest of our lives. That's why we aim to add wholesome thoughts to our inner "compost."

The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.

So watch the thoughts and its ways with care,
and let them spring from love
born out of concern for all beings.

The Buddha

Garden Path

I drove my truck to a nearby sawmill yesterday to get a load of wood chips. I use wood chips for paths, and this works particularly neatly in the vegetable garden. I subscribe to the theory that repeated walking--as one does in the veggie garden--packs down the soil. So my paths in the vegetable garden remain the same year after year, between beds.

New wood chips give a fresh, clean look to the paths and keep the weeds down.

The spiritual path we are walking begins with Right View. Right View understands 2 things:
(1) You reap what you sow--in thoughts, words, and actions.
(aka karma) and

(2) The 3 characteristics of all experience.

• The garden is ever-changing

• Discontent happens in the garden (e.g., bugs, weather, disease, and death)

• Our "garden" is a slow-moving verb, a process that flows on from moment to moment, and as such, has no inherent existence. (Don't worry if you don't understand this mind-bender. Just let it flow away. Gone!)

All sorts of weedy thoughts can pop up in the garden of our mind. We stick to our path of mindfulness, beginning with viewing the garden as it really is. We start with Right View, and this helps us keep the mind-weeds down.