Barred Owls Calling

Barred owls have been calling, not only at night, but during the day as well. I assumed they were teaching their babies how to sing: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?," but apparently the raucous caterwauling is just part of their repertoire.

When we are new to the Dharma, we begin to learn a new language, a new way of looking at life. We've spent so much time trying to arrange outer conditions to our own personal liking, that it comes as an astounding surprise that we can be happy despite outer conditions. Our happiness depends on our view.

The barred owls sit high in the trees with a clear view of happiness.

The Little Spring Bulbs

Pink Chionodoxa and Pushkinia

I have always wanted a flower garden with all the early spring little bulbs.  Finally, i have a lightly strewn carpet of pale pinks and pale blues.

It didn't happen overnight. It's taken four years to fill up a small flower bed with miniature daffodils, chionodoxa, squill, pushkinia, and small wild tulips. What has worked is to buy the bulbs in the fall, start them in flowerpots in my garage, and then place them in the flowerbed in early April when i can see what else is blooming where.

We start filling up our daily routine with mindfulness--a little mindfulness here, a little mindfulness there, and pretty soon, we have a whole garden, a whole hour, a whole day guided by mindfulness.

Cyclamen: Warm & Chilly

On the left: Kept in the kitchen. On the right: Kept in a chilly room.

In December, i gave a talk on holiday plants. I encouraged people to keep their cyclamen in a cool spot. Joanna did an experiment. She bought 2 cyclamens at the same time.She placed one cyclamen in her kitchen, near the wood stove. The other one she put in her study, which is too chilly for her to use in the winter. Three months later, here are the results. The leggy cyclamen with no flowers is the warm one. The compact fabulously blooming cyclamen has been living at 50 degrees.

It's counter-intuitive that warmth would lead to legginess and no blooms at all, and that chilly leads to continued blooming. It's almost as though too much pleasantness leads to a "lazy" plant. Resilience comes from a seemingly difficult climate.

This conforms to my experience. My siblings and i have a high level of resilience, perhaps partly due to a slightly chilly upbringing. Children who are accustomed to having everything provided for them lose their vigor. Uber-protection can lead to a lack of resilience.

Resilience is a key factor in happiness--happiness despite outer conditions.

A Dog Who Loves Flowers

Luke
a poem by Mary Oliver


I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen

hovered -
and easily
she adored
every blossom

not in the serious
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or don't praise -
the way we love
or don't love -
but the way

we long to be -
that happy
in the heaven of earth -
that wild, that loving.

Hostess Gift: A Bottle of....

We went over to a friend's home for Easter dinner. Although my sweetie and our host couple drink wine, i do not, and i don't feel quite right about bringing a bottle of wine to dinner. I finally solved my little problem: I now take a bottle of olive oil. The bottle sometimes looks like a bottle of wine, and yesterday's olive oil came from a company that also sells wine.

I can't tell you how happy i am to have put this niggling not-quite-rightness to rest.

As we go through our day, we have all sorts of trifling little ruffles of our conscience. We may breeze over most of them. No one else may even notice, but in our hearts, we know something is not quite right.

Living a skillful life calls on us to be true to ourselves, whether or not anyone else notices.

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.

All Snow is Impermanent

Raking Around the Snow

Big piles of snowplowed snow are disappearing fast--evaporating from the top and melting on the bottom. This means the ground is rather soggy. Squish, squish, squish. Add in yesterday's April showers, and i am surrounded by various forms of water--in the air, on the ground in puddles, and in the ground as mud. Fortunately, there's more air than water, so i can breathe comfortably. (And my west Texas dry skin has softened considerably now that i'm home in the North Country; my lips are no longer chapped.)    

                     

All things are impermanent. I've been learning this chant, and applying it to many events in my life. All snow is impermanent. All mud puddles are impermanent. All the gold fish in my pond are impermanent--20 of them have disappeared, leaving only one. All lives are impermanent. All bodies are impermanent. I hum this chant throughout the day. 

All things are impermanent, including me.