Momentary Balance

The improvised cold frame where I hardened off my little seedlings is nearly empty. Most of them have now reside in their appointed positions in flower pots and the garden. At this moment, the petunias are the most showy of my successes.

I planted them in mid-March, then set them out in the cold frame in early May. In mid-May I risked a hard frost and set them out in containers. Now they are wildly blooming in the long plastic planters I set on top of the rails of the access ramp at the Temple. Just a few feet from where I sit, buddled up against the morning chill with my laptop and cup of tea that was warm just a few minutes ago.

The planters themselves are just resting on top of the railing. I put petunias in these pots, in this location every year. I really should secure them but I don’t. Twice, in heavy winds last year, one of the pots tumbled down to the garden below—a twenty-foot fall. The petunias were a little bruised and disturbed, but they survived both falls. Maybe this year I’ll secure them.

I’d like to know they’ll be OK.

I’d like to know that I’ll be OK. But who can say?

An ongoing joke with a close friend: ‘Will everything be OK?’ one of us asks. The other one replies, ‘Short-term or long-term?’ The joke is that in the short term most things will find a way to work themselves out so the answer is ‘Yes, everything will be OK.’ But in the long-term the answer has to be ‘No. Your extended prognosis is sickness, old-age and death.’ Not a pretty prospect.

When I began to seriously practice Zen in my late twenties, I was clear that part of my intention was to be able to ‘die well’. Even at that tender age, I was concerned with the certain end that no one talked about—you work hard and do something worthwhile, then it’s all taken away—not just what you possess, but your physical and mental capacities—even your memories eventually vanish.

You can hold out for some vision of heaven elsewhere—that we will be reunited with those we love and live in perfect peace forever. But I could never work out the details of this in a way that satisfied me. If you are married twice, do you live in perfect peace with your first partner or your second? Or all three of you? And what kind of life could possibly be interesting and satisfying for the rest of eternity?

How to meet our predicted and unavoidable death? How to meet the multiple deaths of each day? The plans that fall through. The friends and family that don’t always seem to take us into account or care and support us the way we would want them to. Parts of us are dying moment after moment.

There is no possibility of holding onto what we have or even who we think we are. The David of yesterday, and his whole world, has vanished. The memories are still strong, and much seems the same, but pausing and looking closer, I can notice that this particular morning has never happened before.

The petunias are solidly balanced on the railing. Their wine colored trumpet-like flowers are already too numerous to count. Maybe this is heaven? The miracle of delicate flowers emerging from the damp dirt of infinite possibility this cool morning. I can predict there will be more and different flowers for many weeks now. Who knows, maybe the planters will even one day be secured to the railing.

Maybe there’s a place to abide right here in the middle of it all.

Surrounded by uncertainty,
without doubt, flowers bloom.

Personal Practice: Take a moment to reflect on your prognosis of sickness, old age and death. This is your human birthright. What if it’s not some giant mistake of the part of the creator of the universe? What if the transience of our lives is part of what makes joy and appreciation possible? See if you can remember at various moments throughout the day how precious and miraculous this very life is in every moment.

Teachings of the Seasons

The crabapple tree is past its glory. The small white blossoms that lit up the tree just a few weeks ago now hang limp and brown. One might think the show is over, but the real work is just commencing. Now is the beginning of the fruition—literally.

Among my many teachers is a woman named White Eagle. She is a Native American teacher based in the high desert of New Mexico. I have only spent a few weeks with her but she, like so many others, gave me gifts that I carry with me.

Writing about the seasons of the crabapple tree, I recall the teachings of the medicine wheel. White Eagle taught us that, in her Native American tradition, the medicine wheel represents the sacred ground of the cosmos and all the beings of life. She led us through several different ceremonies within the medicine wheel she had constructed with a large circle of stones marking a carefully tended open space within. Entering into the medicine wheel, we were taught to acknowledge our sacred and primal kinship with all beings by pausing, offering a pinch of tobacco and saying ‘all my relations.’

‘All my relations’ is a way of naming the radical non-separation that is the truth of our human life. The truth we so often forget. A sense of separation is the norm for most human being. We feel cut off from the world around us, from each other and from ourselves and we suffer. In the distress that comes from our delusion of separation, we act out of greed, anger and ignorance—trying to get what we think we need to heal our pain and dis-ease.

Our human work is to try to remember—try to find our way back to the truth of our original connection. The medicine wheel is one of the tools some Native American traditions use to come home to the circle of the creation—through the veil of our persistent delusion of separation.

Within the medicine wheel, the four directions are honored as phases in the ongoing cycles of life. Each direction represents a season and an aspect of our human experience. These seasons happen within the calendar year, but also happen multiple times during each season and even each day. Each time is seen to be necessary and sacred. Each season is to be named and met with reverence and appreciation.

East is spring—the direction of new life. New life emerges from the cold and dar of winter. Things planted long ago sprout and blossom. Bees hum and birds sing. Life is full of new possibilities. This is the time of beginnings. Beginnings of projects—of new adventures—of new lives.

This is an exciting time and is also a time of careful planning. Sometimes it requires the hard work of cultivating the ground for what is to come. Things are vulnerable in this time; new life often requires our protection and nurturing.

South is summer—the direction of fullness of being. Summer is playing on the beach—is warmth and ease. Hot summer nights and the fullness of passion and desire. The south also represents this time of comfort and being nourished by the easy long days.

This is a joyous and restorative time—one we often forget. Lost in our plans and worries, some of us need to intentionally create the space to relax. We have gotten so attached to our busyness, that this aspect, of just sitting on the porch in the middle of the day for a few moments of doing nothing, often gets forgotten.

West is autumn—the fruition and the falling. Autumn is the time of harvest, when the work of spring and summer comes to completion. The fruits of our labors ripen and we celebrate what has been accomplished through us. It is also the time of letting go of the forms and functions of summer. Leaves fall and we have to let things fall away.

This is the time of naming and appreciating ourselves and others. This season also gets forgotten by many of us. We’re off to pursue our next plans or we feel we should be modest and so not notice the results of our hard work. Naming and celebrating our accomplishments is an important part of being able to move forward with resilience and renewed enthusiasm.

North is winter—the darkness, cold and death. While many of us approach this season of life with trepidation and fear, it is equally important. Each season supports and allows all the other seasons. Winter is falling back—letting ourselves rest in the darkness of not knowing. The bleeding heart plants that bloomed so gloriously in the Temple garden this spring, were, I believe, quite content through the winter when they were buried in the cold, dark ground.

Winter is a time of non-arising. Instead of busying ourselves with plans and activities, we rest in the bosom of the mysterious creation itself. Yes, there is sadness and loss, but this darkness is the rich humus that nourishes what is to come.

These seasons of our life follow the seasons of the world around us and also overlap and occur moment after moment. Each morning is a new spring. Each night is the winter of darkness.

The crabapple is moving from the extravagant joys of spring into the long easeful summer. The fruition of the fall is already present in the nascent fruit that has been set. Now we just wait.

Personal Practice: Be conscious of the seasons of your day. Notice the many beginnings each day has within it. Notice the many feelings and activities and interactions that sprout up, seemingly out of nowhere. Take some time for the ease of summer – even a few moments of just sitting in the sun or shade can be a whole season. Appreciate the things you do – the small accomplishments of the day are moments to notice and be grateful for. Notice too the things that fall apart, the endings, the losses. Remember that sometimes there is nothing that can be done—and that this too is part of life. Appreciate the seasons of this day.

Do Nothing

In the late 80’s, I attended one of the first conferences featuring women Zen teachers. It was at the Providence Zen Center and I don’t remember much about it except one particular moment. The late Zen teacher Maurine Stuart, one of the first western women to receive Zen teaching transmission, was speaking. She was going on and on in front of a group of about sixty or seventy of us about the great 9^th century Chinese Zen Master Linji (Rinzai in Japanese). I was moderately interested but was also thinking about my dinner plans when she paused.  She looked directly at me, one of the few men in the audience, and said, with a great smile on her face: ‘The great Zen Master Rinzai said: ‘Doooooooooooo…..nothing.’  She looked away and went on talking.

I have not forgotten.

For these past thirty some years, I have tried to understand what this wondrous injunction might mean. From the everyday perspective, it is clearly nonsense. We have to do things. We have obligations and necessities. We have wants and needs. We must constantly choose one thing over another. Do I have a cup of coffee now or do I wait till after meditation? Do I stay inside to begin to clear off the piles of papers teetering on my desk or do I go outside and plant the seedlings longing for a home in the garden?

This doing nothing found its way into Zen Buddhist teachings through China’s rich and subtle Taoist tradition. Lao Tze, the Taoist teacher who dates back to 6^th century BC, wrote of the wondrous possibilities of wei wu wei – doing not doing. The emphasis here, as it is with Linji, is in the active engagement required by this form of ‘not-doing’.

How do I actively ‘Dooooo…nothing?’ Is it possible, even when doing something to do nothing? My experience has taught me that it is.

Doing nothing is an invitation to abandon our great and complex plans and give ourselves to the activity of the moment. Doing nothing is an invitation to the intimacy of everyday life. Not transcendence or going beyond, but rather fully entering and participating with what is already here.

Usually, in our activity, we fix our focus on the outcomes we want. ‘I’ll do this so that will happen.’ This is important and useful thinking that allows us to pay our bills and plant our gardens. We might say it is necessary but not sufficient. A life that is filled with plans and obligations and effort is exhausting and ultimately disappointing.

But what if we did whatever we were doing without being so focused on what will happen next? What if we appreciated the activity of the moment without regard to the outcome? Of course, sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. Sometimes we are praised and sometimes we are blamed. What if that’s not a problem?

The active engagement is partly to begin to stop or limit the habit pattern of the mind’s leaping ahead. The default position that we have practiced all our lives is to be thinking ahead. Without clear intention, the horse of the mind usually gallops off into the future and drags us along with it.

The luxury of doing nothing is available to us all. Fingers dart and poke across the keyboard without thought. The light shines on the wet porch floor from last night’s rain. The trees, dressed now in their full summer leaves, watch as the uncut Temple lawn blooms with buttercups.

Personal Practice – Make it your job today to do nothing at some point. Don’t overdo it your first day. Start small. Pick a small task and give yourself to it. Make your bed, clean your desk, mow your lawn. Appreciate that there will come a time when you will not be able to do this simple activity. Lose yourself in the particularness of the doing.

Or take ten minutes to sit and stare out a window. Or walk through the garden without pulling one weed. Practice receiving what is already here.

GreenHouse Fantasy

I didn’t dally at the greenhouse. (I really didn’t.)

But one theory of the universe is that at every choice point two realities come into being—the world in which you took one path (not to dally) and the world in which you took the other (to dally). So I wonder what would have happen if…

I dallied at the greenhouse.

I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help myself. The plants were so enticing. Each one abiding in its orderly residence of a four-inch green pot. Each one eagerly awaiting its blooming life to come. And there I was—stuck with my two legs walking and arms swinging and eyes looking eagerly as I walked aimlessly up and down the aisles.

I meant to leave quickly to avoid the virus and to get back to business. I really meant to get back to business—to take care of all the important things that need to be taken care of—to ensure the continuing and orderly functioning of the universe continues unabated. But I was seduced by the house of green and the abundance of orderly four-inch pots. I couldn’t help but hide myself among the emerald-leaved life of pure possibility.

I lived easily among the plants for several days, then time started getting a little fuzzy. At first I had to be careful not to be spotted by the staff. But after a while, they got used to me hiding in the different pots and actually started giving me extra water when no one was looking. I suppose I must have turned a little green myself because at a certain point I realized that the sunlight, soil and water were all I seemed to need—indeed, all I had ever wanted.

I lived the good life through the summer—basking in the sun of the long hot days and marveling at the mysterious whisperings of the nights. (Yes, plants do talk to each other at night when no one is listening. I was never quite able to decipher their conversations, but the gentle hub-bub was all so pleasing and reassuring to my ears that I never really minded.)

Eventually the days got shorter and the autumn chill arrived. The chrysanthemums came and went. Finally, when the greenhouse was empty except for me, I realized it was time to go home.

I wrote a thank you note to the staff and left it in an envelope on the desk, along with a small donation to cover the costs of my water and fertilizer bill. My car was right where I left it and my chosen seedlings were still in the trunk.

I drove home. It was a fine spring day. I was happy to find my (real) life patiently waiting for me—as if no time at all had passed.

Personal Practice: Daydream today. Imagine you had taken some other path at some other point. Who would you be? What would you know? What realms would you wander through? Be specific.  Make up outrageous things.  Be who you are definitely not.  Enjoy the possibilities of the many worlds of imagination.

Gardening in the Pandemic

Summer has come right on schedule. Yesterday, the day after Memorial Day, our long cool spring vanished as temperatures in the mid-80’s swept into the region. I’ve been longing for warmer weather, but this was a little more than I bargained for. I spent an anxious half hour in the mid-afternoon watering my transplanted marigolds, sweet alyssum and black-eyed susan’s that had all swooned in the afternoon heat. In a week or so we’ll be fine—I’ll be used to my watering routine and they’ll be used to the heat, but yesterday was a near calamity.

Over the holiday weekend, it was all I could do to stay away from garden centers once I heard they were open again. One of our local places, Robinson’s Greenhouse, is a family owned business that usually has greenhouses filled with four-inch pots filled with begonias, petunias, coleus and all kinds of other wondrous annual and perennial plants and flowers. My yearly spring visit(s) to them are time of anticipation and joy.

I have learned to go alone because I love to walk slowly up and down the long aisles. I imagine the pots and places I want fill. I go to my old stand-bys and keep my eyes open for new recruits. Robinson’s takes wonderful care of their plants, both in the tending and the displaying so I love just being in the presence of so many lively little green beings. The light reflecting off of a greenhouse full of new leaves. The moist air that holds the smell of humus, plants and flowers is intoxicating to a life-long gardener like me.   So many of each variety, all the same and yet each one slightly different. I even enjoy making sure I get the best and brightest of each kind I choose.

But I broke down on Monday afternoon, figuring that all the conscientious gardeners had bought their plants on Saturday or Sunday, or at least by Monday morning, so there would be fewer people and less risk involved in the trip. I was right and when I arrived at three o’clock, there were only half a dozen cars in the lot that is often filled to overflowing. The grounds and the greenhouses were mostly open.

I put on my mask anyway.

It’s hard to judge the danger level these days. With the virus being invisible and infectious for ten days before displaying symptoms, anyone could have it. Catching the virus is related to vulnerability, proximity, length of exposure and concentration of the virus. So being a relatively healthy person, being outside for a short time at some distance from others should be quite safe. ‘Should be’ is the operative word here.

There’s an old saying: ‘It’s not wise to try to cross a river of an average depth of four feet.’ Averages, percentages and projections can be quite accurate, but as a particular individual I can never know which of the categories I will fall into. If I have only a 5% chance of catching caronavirus, that’s good news, but it doesn’t tell me if I’ll end up in the 5% group or in the 95% group. Caution is advisable, but how much? Life is a risk. But how much risk is acceptable? Or wise? Or necessary?

But I was in the middle of telling you about the greenhouse when the pandemic inserted itself and I’m determined to return to where I was (as safely as I can). The greenhouses themselves were about one third filled – whether this was from the amount they had sold over the weekend or because they did not grow as much as usual, I’m not sure. I hope it was the former as I dream of many more trips to Robinson’s in the future.

I didn’t dally at the greenhouse. I got a dozen or so plants to fill the pots I strategically place around to beautify Temple. I grew my own petunias this year, they’re already in their usual pots on the access ramp, but I didn’t know that the compact habit of the ones I buy from Robinson’s are the product of their expert pruning to encourage bushiness, so mine, though quite healthy, are a little leggy. Hopefully just an adolescent trait that they will outgrow in the warm weeks to come.

I know I should grow more vegetables, but I am hopelessly infatuated with flowers and leaves and beauty. Each flower, each plant, is a miracle beyond compare—an ongoing stream of energy in the universe. The annuals come into being each year to bloom in wondrous shapes and colors before dying completely. They will die completely by the first frost but will send their energy and wisdom forward to the next year in the tiny space capsules of their seed. I am delighted to be able to be a part of the miracle of it all.

Personal Practice: Help a plant today. We are surrounded by and utterly dependent on the green plants and trees of this world. Look around you today at the amazing variety of shapes, sizes, colors and smells of the plants in your immediate life. Take the time to do something to take care of one of these plants. It might be just brushing off the dust from the leaves of a houseplant—or moving a plant to a better location, inside or in the garden—or watering or making space for plants to grow. Whatever you do, enjoy the privilege of tending the growing world around you.

Dreaming of Life #2: Fulfillment Is Not A Fixed Point

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of touching some dream or vision that calls to you—about the power of your heart’s dream to transform your experience of the present and to move you into action around things that matter. Today I want to write about the second idea that changed my life from the coaching training* I did in 2003.

Fulfillment is not a fixed point.

The great misunderstanding about the function of dreams of the future is that they operate in linear time. It’s easy to think that I am here and my dream is there. When I get to my dream, then I’ll be fulfilled. Then I’ll be happy. While this how the mind works, it is not how life works.

You may have noticed this yourself. Whenever we say ‘I’ll be happy when….’ and we actually get there or get that thing we were longing for, we find that we’re not completely happy. Or we’re briefly happy, then we’re dreaming of some where, some thing or some one else.

Several studies of happiness have shown that when people achieve major life goals (getting married, getting a major promotion or getting a significant amount of money) they are happier for a short period, then fairly quickly come back to the level of happiness or satisfaction that they were at before the major change.

There was a time when I thought having an ipad Aire would change my life. I resisted buying one for many months, but filled my spare hours learning the models and the specifications – including the weight down to the ounce. Eventually I broke down, went to the Apple store and treated myself. What a gorgeous piece of machinery it indeed was. I was totally delighted for a couple days. Then I was pleased for a couple weeks. Now it sits in the bottom of my drawer and comes out once a week or so and I hardly notice it.

It turns out that fulfillment and happiness are not a destination we can reach and then retire. You can’t have enough money or enough power or enough admiration to quell that nagging sense of unease or that wild despair that sometimes arises. While there can be great satisfaction in using our skills to make a difference in the world—even this satisfaction is short-lived.

Fulfillment is a process not a destination. Fulfillment comes when we act in alignment with our deepest values. Fulfillment is not something that will happen to you at some other point.

This is bad news and good news.

The bad news is that there is nothing you can do or get that will make you permanently happy and fulfilled. Your life will always be the wondrous and frustrating mix of everything that it is right now. Of course there are changes we can make are important and perhaps even necessary.

But the good news is that it is in working toward the life we dream of, for ourselves and for others, we find our fulfillment and joy. When we align our actions with the things that are truly important to us, then we can work with joy and satisfaction right where we are.

This is not just about working toward or reaching goals, this is about being true to the kind of person we want to be in the world. If I value being kind and clear or giving to others, when I actually do these things, I am fulfilled. It doesn’t have to be about being thanked or recognized, the satisfaction is in the action itself.

Personal Practice: Take some time today to remember something important to you. It might be a quality you want to cultivate or it might be an important goal in some area of your life that you want to work toward. It might be some important change you want to make. Remember what’s important and then take one step in that direction today. Notice any resistance that arises. Notice what it’s like when you move in the direction of what you love.

Dreaming of Life

When I did my first life-coach training in 2003, most of the curriculum was common sense, but there were two teachings that shifted the course of my life. The first was the possibility of a 10. Let me explain.

The first exercise we did in my training group was called the ‘balance wheel.’ It’s a circle divided into eight pie wedges. Each wedge is labeled with an area of your life: career, finances, health, friends & family, significant other, personal/spiritual growth, fun & recreation and physical environment. In each of these areas, we were instructed to come up with a number based on our level of satisfaction with our life in that area.  1 means that it’s really terrible and hard to imagine it being any worse. 10 means that your life in this area is so wonderful that you can’t imagine anything better.

A 1 for career means you hate your job (if you have one) and can barely drag yourself out of bed each morning. A 10 means that you can’t believe you’re getting paid to do what you love.

I still do this exercise with each of my new clients. Just this part of the exercise is often illuminating. Looking around the wheel, you can see the balance, or unbalance, of your life. Are all the numbers quite low? Or high? Or is there significant variation—some aspects of your life that are going well and others that need a lot of improvement?

But it’s the next part of the exercise that was most revelatory for me personally. This begins with taking one of the areas and describing why you gave it the number you did. If career is a 7, what are the things that are good about your job that give you satisfaction? What parts of your job align with what you love? And what are the things about your career that are not working?

Then, the most powerful question—one that we are often taught not to ask: “What would a 10 look like?” What is your dream? Most of us have been carefully socialized to be ‘realistic’—to appreciate what we have and not ask for too much. Dreaming is often associated with daydreaming and is discouraged from a young age in favor of being realistic and staying on task. Especially if things are going well, we are encouraged to not rock the boat or want too much.

But exploring the matter of what a ‘ten’ would look like is a way to begin to move toward some mysterious deep purpose that human beings all seem to have. Articulating your dream for your career, or your relationship with your significant other, or for fun & recreation may seem unrealistic and selfish. Sometimes it may feel dangerous even to verbalize that things could be better.

In exploring what a ‘ten’ would look like, we may find it is all quite vague or it may be very specific. But to spend time dreaming into what vision calls to you has the capacity to touch some part of ourselves we had hardly noticed. I’m always amazed at how different each person’s dream is and the energy that can be awakened in the present moment when we allow ourselves to articulate that dream.

The final coaching question is: ‘What is one step you could take today to move from where you are toward that dream?’ There’s no guarantee that we will get exactly what we want. Life doesn’t work that way. But to articulate and feel the shape of some future that calls to you is a way to change the quality of your life in the present moment and lead you toward making steps in the direction of your love.

Personal Practice: Pick some aspect of your life and try this exercise. It could be quite specific: food and nutrition, or exercise, or my garden. Or it could be one of the ones on the ‘balance wheel.’ Pick an area you’re interested in and would like more information about. Then follow the steps above, jotting notes to yourself as you go. Where are you now?  What is good/bad about where you are?  What would a 10 look like?  What is one step you can take today or tomorrow?   Write it down and do it.

Extra credit: share your dream with a friend and tell them the step you are going to take. Have them check in with you to see what you learned from taking that step.

Tomorrow’s post: The Second Thing.

Not Much Going On

People keep saying these are unusual times. It’s true, but still some mornings I wake up and not much is going on. It could be any morning. Just the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.   Just the leaves of late May fluttering gently in the first breezes of the day. Unseen birds warble and hoot from all directions.

When we don’t divide up our life into narrative arcs, then there’s not so much drama. Sometimes this loosening of the story happens through our intentional efforts to return our awareness to the vividness of the present moment. Sometimes it’s as if the story itself gets tired, goes off for a break, leaving us free in the quiet of the moment. These moments of ease, because of their nature, often don’t get woven into the ongoing story of our lives. When the narrative function of the mind comes back from its break, it often tends to leave out the parts that don’t cohere as neatly with its ongoing story of danger and struggle.

I am clearly an older man now. I can’t quite bring my self to write ‘old man’ yet. Whether this is due to the fact that more and more of my friends are in their seventies, eighties and even nineties, or to an unwillingness on my part to speak the truth—I’m not really sure. But from the ripe age of 67 going on 68, I can look back on my life and see many chapters: childhood, adolescence, college student, potter, dancer, food coop manager, partner, teacher, father, Zen student, school head, Maine sea kayak guide, life-coach, Zen teacher… Some of these roles are clearly in the past and some persist but are dramatically transformed. I am still a father, but my little girl is now a full-grown woman and no longer sits in my lap transfixed by the story we have read scores of times together. I’m still a partner, but my wife is no longer a young woman, but appears now as a woman whose age has increased with mine.

Time and memory are much more elastic and creative than they appear.

I can look back and clearly ‘see’ these chapters; the different jobs, roles and locations of my life. I was once a little boy myself. I lived with my family where Mom kept us fed and clothed and watched over our various comings and goings while Dad was out in the world doing mysterious and important things. While my siblings would probably all agree to the large outlines, but when we compare memories of the specifics, it gets a little more fuzzy.

Our memories and our stories are all based on things that really happened, but they are also tales told by an unreliable narrator—like a movie where you see the world through one character’s eyes and it turns out to be quite different from how he was making it seem.

We live in worlds that we participate in creating. The past and future are stories we tell that shape the quality of our experience in the present.

A long-ago bumper sticker: It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. I assume this was created by some associations of psychologists who were drumming up business. But it is true that the work we do on ourselves has an impact on how we experience not only the present, but the past and future as well. While no one can change the past, how we hold the story of our past has a huge impact on the quality of our life in the present moment. Likewise, though the future is unknowable, the stories we tell about what is to come play themselves out in our lives of the present.

But some days, the multitude of stores about who I was, who I am and who I will be fade into the background. An ease arises and it’s a little disorienting. I know I should be worried about something, but I just can’t seem to remember what it was.

A wise teacher once said: ‘When it comes don’t try to avoid it and when it leaves, don’t go running after it.’ So this morning, I appreciate the ageless life of cool spring morning. I’ll have a cup of tea and meander around the garden—seeing and smelling and listening to this green world of now.

Personal Practice – Stay awake today for the times in between the stories you tell yourself about your life. Notice the moments that don’t really matter—where you’re not doing anything particular, where you’re not being productive, where the grip of your internal narrator has loosened. No need to do anything with these moments except to perhaps appreciate the subtle ease and freedom that weaves itself into everyday life, even in the midst of it all.

Lessons In The Garden

The other day in the Temple garden I was surprised by wonderful scent. At first, I suspected the one of the various late-blooming daffodils. But when I investigated up close, they were innocent of fragrance. Distracted by other garden tasks, I gave up the search, but later that day and the days after, the sweet smell came back again. This particular perfume was new to me. It wasn’t the subtle cinnamon smell the mighty katsura trees release, that only happens in the autumn. It wasn’t the petunias which have their own intense and slightly addictive odor, you have to get quite close to smell them. This aroma was floating easily through whole sections of the garden and besides, the petunias weren’t blooming yet. Where was it coming from?

I’ve been trying to teach my grandson how to smell flowers. He’s just fifteen months old now and has shown a great interest in moving vehicles, dirt and flowers. Melissa and I have been doing childcare for him a day or two a week since before the pandemic began. Our bubble of isolation is the two of us and our grandson and his parents. I feel slightly guilty about this arrangement, while we are clearly helping his parents both be able to continue their fulltime jobs, the pleasure of spending time with this growing bundle of life seems vaguely improper at a time of so much suffering and dislocation.

Our lessons include instruction in two basic types of flowers: those you can pick (dandelions, violets and buttercups these days) and those you can’t (daffodils, tulips, pansies and flowers in other people’s yards). He’s doing pretty well with dandelion recognition. On walks he will go right for their sunny yellow heads and with one hand and great glee detach the flower from the stem. He then happily clutches one or two or three heads in each hand as we walk down the sidewalk (to the corner to watch and listen to the cars passing by on the main street.)

I suspect it’s the urgent tone in my voice that calls him back from the pruning of the other flowers. I realize that for him, it’s all be totally arbitrary. The small pansies that you shouldn’t pick are no bigger than wild violets that are fair game. So far, he mostly seems willing to take my word for it.

The smelling lessons began with holding him near a pot of sweet smelling pansies and then swinging him away before he could make a grab for a fistful of them. I was generally able to appease his tactile desire by dead-heading one of the spent blossoms and giving it to him for holding. Then I would lean in and smell the blossoms myself, then put his face right near the fragrant flowers. He seemed to like it, but a grandfather’s eyes often see much more of the brilliance and perceptiveness in his grandson than could be an objective outside source.

Now we’re into advanced training. Yesterday, in the garden with him walking on his own, I crouched down to smell a daffodil. Its smell was subtle but interesting. He then went toward the daffodil on his own. I feared for the life of this still blooming garden flower, but since it was one of many and nearly spent anyway, I took the risk. He crouched down, hands on knees, put his nose close to the flower and made heavy breathing noises. As his tutor in residence, I took that as success and gave him full credit for the exercise.

But back to the mysterious scent in the Temple garden. For several days it mystified and delighted me. Finally, I located the culprit. The delicious aroma was coming from clusters small white bell-shaped flowers that hung off of three or four inch stalks growing close to the ground. The leaves are much larger than the flower stalks and nearly hide the fragrant delicate blossoms. Lily-of-the-valley was and is the sweet culprit.

This invasive ‘weed’ that I am currently campaigning against turns out to not only produce mats of roots that choke off competing plants, but also gives off, for a short period every year and most arresting fragrance. With such a successful propagation by root strategy, I’m not sure why the plant would put so much effort into producing a smell. To attract pollinators?   To appease gardeners like me who would otherwise and still may totally eradicate them? (Though just to be clear, at this point I have no hopes of ridding the garden of these sweet smelling nuisances, just to limit their field of conquest to minor patches.)

Mystery solved.

Maybe next I’ll uncover some endearing and useful quality of mosquitoes. Who knows?

Daily Practice – On your next outdoor excursion, pick a flower that no one pays attention to and carry it in your hand as you walk. Dandelions and violets are in full season and quite plentiful these days. Also notice the scores of tiny flowers and plants that no one cultivates, that are happy to appear in random patches of dirt and in unchemicalized lawns. Appreciate the inventiveness, determination and beauty of the mysterious life force that continues with our without human intervention.