Thinking like a flower/living like a Tree

I am in the middle of reading the Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. This lovely book reminds us that the world is larger than we humans and our concerns.Our fellow earth inhabitants, plants, animals and maybe even the earth itself, can share with us a perspective on the world quite different from our own. They teach us to stop and look, and reflect.

I am spending a lot of time walking around the island on which I live and observing nature coming into and through spring. This has served as a calming elixir to the pandemic panic surrounding us and forces me to listen to something deeper and more vibrant than the media storms. So I thought I would share a series of images with meditation invitations.

How can a tree struggle so much and yet persist?

Wisteria is a vine that can strangle but it can also fill one’s heart with joy. Pain and pleasure can be so close together

Blue, white, green, yellow: the colors of one’s thoughts in spring?

Can trees dance with shadows? Can you?

Pansies faces amid scattered cherry blossoms: when are we happy?

Life flourishes in difficult places — like in sand, buffeted by the wind. And yet blooms happen.

A compansion can help us seem more. Follow your dog and look more carefully at the world with joy.

We are all docked at home now but the open sea awaits us and invites us to dream. Of what?

We all long for normalcy and now treasure the mundane and seemingly unexciting life of moving around our neighborhoods, towns, the world around us. But take a moment to breathe and look. This apocryphal story about the Buddha might ring for us today:

My friend, what are you? Are you a celestial being or a god?

No
said the Buddha

Well, then, are you some kind of magician or wizard?

again the Buddha answered
No

Are you a man?

No

Well, my friend, then what are you?

the Buddha replied
I am awake