For most of the winter I forget the garden. I leave it alone, then when the warm weather eventually comes I venture out to perform the springtime rituals of pruning and clearing away the dead leaves from the borders. I should add here that my garden is more or less all border-a sixty foot narrow strip of land with a concrete path running straight down the middle, more of a planted corridor really. A fairly typical London garden. It's at this time of year that I get my box of seeds out from under the sink, an old Havana cigar box. I always feel tremendous hope and excitement as I inspect these little packets. There's something miraculous about the potential life held in such tiny forms. With the right conditions and care they will reward me well with beautiful flowers, foliage and food. Each little seed is also a dharma teacher providing lessons in interconnectedness.
I'm reading Thich Nhat Hanh's 'Transformation at the base'. It was required reading on my psychotherapy training , though I never read the book cover to cover preferring to dip in here and there. The book consists of fifty short verses on the nature of consciousness and each verse is followed by an essay. In a nutshell/seed he argues we are all have a store consciousness and stored in this consciousness are an infinite variety of seeds, some of which are innate, handed down by ancestors, or sown while we were in the womb or when we were children. These seeds are by their nature individual and collective, and the quality of our consciousness depends on the quality of the seeds deep in our consciousness. Like any gardener we can chose to water the good or the bad seeds. Here mindfulness is the key.
"If we can recognise when a harmful seed has manifested in our mind consciousness, we will be able to avoid being caught by it."
"If we water the seeds of happiness, love, loyalty, and reconciliation every day, we will feel joyful, and this will encourage these seeds to stay longer, to strengthen."
I like this view of ethics, its pragmatic appeal to kindliness and enlightened self-interest. Do good to feel good. I wish this was taught in our schools alongside those early experiments with mustard and cress seeds and blotting paper. This may all sound deceptively simple but this is also a complex book, which will take you deep into the heart of the dharma if you let it. I think the best way to read it is to probably take a chapter/verse at a time, maybe one a week and contemplate it's meaning deeply before moving on to the next.
(Thich Nhat Hanh is a poet, Zen master, and peacemaker. He lives in Plum Village, a practice centre in southwestern France.)
