Fibonacci ensos.

Interesting how quickly they get out of control.  Or maybe that’s just my perception because I am limited by the space of the paper and my own ability to sustain attention on the sequenced growth of the radius of each circle. 

Turkeys are easier.

Though I suspect they are pretty much out of my control too as they proliferate through the woods behind the house.  Frank thinks they are living in the ravine though I tend to see them up in the north field munching on the soya beans.  Perhaps they are vegetarian.  These two were cropped from a series of pictures of the flock of 7 or 8 which wandered across the front lawn (a “lawn” is perhaps presumptuous as there is no discernible grass and the green is courtesy of a variety of seeds dropped by birds flying over).

I’m just emerging from a long week of intense, focused work which flowed directly into the weekend retreat to train a gaggle of new MBSR teachers.  There too I felt the effects of this Fibonacci Sequence – the exponential growth from a few single digit numbers to interlocking lines and clusters that’s become a community quietly spread out through the region.  Of course, I’ve been oblivious to this, limited by the space I give myself to feel value in anything I do.

At the end of the training retreat, someone said, “Wow, this is hard-core Buddhism!”  Well, really it isn’t.  It’s just skillful means in translating the Dharma into understandable and user-friendly terms.  It’s also sneaky.  We teach in health care situations in a way that makes it accessible.  The Dharma needs no evidence-based studies to prove its efficacy; it’s a model of how the cause and effect sequence unfolds.  The evidence is in the tomes of psychology and medicine couched in other language – the language of cause and effect, reinforcement and sensitization, addiction, aggression, and willful blindness.  Two streams.  Proliferating a Fibonacci of the Dharma, each in its own way.

I’m really proud of this group of graduates from our program.  In two and half days, we drove home the fundamentals of suffering, its causes, and the practices of liberation.  Nothing fancy.  It reminds me that practice needs nothing fancy either.  Start one.  Add one more.  Add them together and then again, and again…  Before you know it, you’re off the page and off the grid of clinging, rejection, and delusion.

… and talking turkey…