Taking Over the Garden

When one neighbor got married 21 years ago, a friend put in a small garden near the front door as a wedding present. Neither of the couple gardens, and they have spent a number of years on international assignments. Today all that remains in that garden is houttuniya. It covers an area as large as 2 children's swimming pools.

I once toyed with buying houttuniya for its beautiful cream, red, and green variegated heart-shaped leaves. Now i see very few of the multi-colored leaves because the plant reverted to plain green leaves and began to gallop. Only the lawn mower keeps it in check.

Sometimes we toy with unskillful behaviors--a white lie, a little cheat, the "borrowing" of something we never return, wine with dinner after we've promised ourselves to abstain. "It won't hurt anyone," we tell ourselves. These behaviors may even look quite attractive, like the variegated houttuniya.

When those behaviors become habitual, the flowers and fruits of the spiritual life are overrun. Our bad habits run over our best intentions. In my friends' garden, one lone cranesbill geranium pokes its pink head above the mass of houttuniya.

Allergic to Mindfulness

My sweetie has been taking a spoonful of local bee pollen since March in an effort to mow down his summer allergies. So far, it's working. He doesn't really like the taste of the bee pollen, which he chases with a glass of fruit juice.

I have to confess that for many years, decades even, i was allergic to mindfulness. On the one hand i could see that it was good medicine for the ills of daily life, but as long as i was feeling good, mindfulness seemed, well, SO boring.

Besides, i loved the way my mind worked. My particular mind is very good at problem-solving, and its form of creativity gives insights into how people and the world work. Oh! How i love that playground. Why rein the mind in to the narrow constriction of mindfulness?

Now i see that i was chafing against the subject-object duality of noting practice. If hearing was happening, there must be a hearer. If walking was happening, the walker should notice walking. (Yawn.)

Letting the mind run loose was so much more fun and interesting than keeping it fenced in with boring old mindfulness.

Then a teacher introduced me to contemplations, and my meditation practice bloomed. Contemplations interest my mind, but the way to get to them is to walk down the path of mindfulness. Now i begin to intuit the non-duality that lies behind this facade of mindfulness--the key i need to open the gate to the secret garden.

Gardening Clothes

This morning, as i do almost every morning, i get out of bed and throw on my gardening clothes. "Throw on" doesn't sound very mindful, but today i was deeply appreciating my 22-year old shorts. In 1988, short-shorts were in fashion, and i still prefer short-shorts, even though my body, as well as these shabby black shorts, are 22 years older.

Shantideva suggests wearing old clothes until they are rags to remind ourselves that the body itself becomes raggedy and patched together as it ages. Today's "patches" are pretty nifty and almost seamless--hip and knee replacements for instance. Yet the deeper lesson remains: the Earth element of the body--the bones and teeth, for example, are aging and sometimes becoming painful.

Meanwhile i wear my faded old shorts and body out to the garden happily.

Dry and Hot

July is dry and hot. Sometimes our meditation practice feels dry too. The same thing. Again. Boring.

Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to refresh our practice. He's been teaching the same things for decades yet always finds a new and beautiful way to say it.

To refresh your practice, read one page from The Meditative Gardener. Or stroll through your garden, after meditation, perhaps with a cup of tea in hand. Notice one thing. Feel one feeling. Hear one sound.

Simple be present for just one thing.

Harmless Toads

I caught a toad in desert camo out in my white garden this morning, which is, come to think of it, the best place for camouflage if you're a white toad with a few brown and gray markings. My amphibian book tells me this is Fowler's toad, and that it croaks like a bleating sheep with a cold.

Catching a toad requires mindfulness and intention. There's no time for sissy reactions of "Eew" nor for the pseudo-compassion of "Poor thing, I don't want to hurt him."

Toad-catching requires a warrior's complete attention and intention. The Buddha himself was of the warrior class and brought these qualities to the practice of harmlessness in all aspects of life. A naga (a cobra-looking serpent) visited and protected the Buddha in the fourth week after his enlightenment. Compared to that, a toad seems pretty harmless.

Cultivating Beauty

A neighbor's daughter is having her wedding in my meadow next week, and i've been prissing up the strip beds near the vegetable garden all spring. These beds are simply 3-foot wide strips of flowers separated by 3 feet of grass that my sweetie can mow in one pass on his riding mower.

Usually i use these 17 strip beds for cutting flowers; they're filled with reseeding annuals that volunteer every year to prettify the meadow. This year i'm out there every day, dead-heading and weeding.

These reseeding annuals are not so different from the effect of meditation on our lives. We cultivate beautiful states of mind such as kindness, compassion, generosity, and patience. The seeds of these divine qualities flower and reseed themselves in our lives, sometimes showing up in unexpected places.

A Chilly Start to July

The first day of July was cooler than the first day of May, and even, this year, chillier than the first day of April. Sometimes this loss of heat happens in the middle of our lives or the life of someone we know. The body systems cool into some debilitating disease. The heat we generate by running around in our lives begins to dissipate.

Wait! That's not how it's supposed to be, we protest. As if our small minds know better than life how to live it.

Seeing things the way they are. This is the purpose and the challenge of meditation.

This summer day is cool, even downright chilly. Life reminding us that our energies too may cool at any time. That's the reason to take advantage of our good fortune right now and meditate. Today and every day.