Tag Archives: Thich Nhat Hanh

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pulling up roots

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Our neighbour came over with his backhoe to pull a few stumps of the scrub maples we had cut down last year and earlier this Spring.  Dave wields the backhoe like a Japanese chef in a teppanyaki steakhouse.  These roots ran well under the septic bed causing some momentary concern as they were being dragged out.

I always thought of the mental roots of defilements to be somewhat more graceful.  Little tendrils that wound around the nerve centers of self-control and appetite.  Seeing these roots lying naked, shaved from the friction of being pulled through the earth, I felt a deep clutching in my belly as I realized that some of my “seeds of delusion” may have flourished with roots much larger, deeper, and more entangled through necessary areas of desire than I had believed possible.  It explains why I find myself constantly tripping up on these vast networks that run through the underground in my survival brain.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Understanding Our Mind:

Seeds of delusion give rise
to the internal formations of craving and afflictions.
These forces animate our consciousness
as mind and body manifest themselves.

…(O)ne of the names given to the store consciousness is “store for the attachment to a self.”  This has to do with Manas.  Manas is the energy of ignorance, thirst, and craving.  It arises from the store consciousness and turns back to grasp a part of the store consciousness….  Manas grasps on to the image it has created and clings to it as its object.  That portion of store consciousness that is grasped by manas loses its freedom.  Our mind is enslaved when it is picked up and embraced as a “self” by manas…  It is a kind of love affair.  In fact, manas is described as “love of self.”  It is really attachment to self.  Manas is “the lover,” store consciousness is the beloved, the nature of their love is attachment – and suffering is the result.

This weekend was a case study of a love affair with deeply-rooted afflictions.  Somewhere along the way, I was seduced by the delusion that the back-breaking work in the gardens was pointless and the world would drive by never knowing such great beauty lay just beyond the trees.  It became a menage `a million with a few other things about me, you, the universe, cats, dogs, and grain beetles.  But I must be more skilled with my internal backhoe than I think because the roots let go fairly quickly and lust for the image of pointlessness shut off like a TV screen in a thunderstorm.

We went out and built the Welcome Well which I’ve been wanting for years, cleaned up the vegetable boxes for next weekend’s planting, weeded the woodland and rose gardens, and mowed the yard – twice.  I got to play with my chainsaw – a traditional Mother’s Day gift that I got a bit late this year… and oh, it slices sweet with a tigress purr.

So much for suffering… unless you count the hundred of tiny thorn-tips embedded in my hands.

Here’s a little slide show of the gardens as they look this week.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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shining the light

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I like things to fit in boxes, neat tidy and organized boxes.  Along with the promise of higher than usual yields in smaller space, the appeal of Square Foot Gardening was the wonderful geometric effect that is so sensual.

This picture on the left is of my first year of obsession with matrix layouts.  Green beans all in little 1′ x 1′ subplots.  If my practice life were this easy to design, I’d be giving away dharmic fruit by the truckloads!

The picture on the right is this year’s efforts at reclaiming my SqFG from two years of bad weather and neglect.  It is a good thing I have so much practice trying to salvages relationships which don’t lend themselves to clear cut boundaries or soft rich ground that gives up the tangle growth of weeds, twigs and (ugh) cat poop.  The two hours it took to clean up these two boxes gave me a good run at reflecting on how much I demand of relationships – in the beginning, the middle and the ending.

In the commentary of The Diamond that Cuts Through Illusion: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Diamond Sutra Thich Nhat Hanh writes,

When there is a mature relationship between people, there is always compassion and forgiveness.  In our life, we need others to see and recognize us so we feel supported.  How much more do we need the Buddha to see us!  On our path of service, there are moments of pain and loneliness but when we know that the Buddha sees and knows us, we feel a great surge of energy and firm determination to carry on.

The Buddha who sees me is my own wisdom vision shining the light on my true nature.  It always brings me back to what is really in need of letting go – ideas and concepts of how I want it to be.  When relationships fracture, I find myself waiting for the “fruit of practice” by which I mean I am waiting for the other to see me with compassion and to forgive my unskillfulness. Ah, there’s that waiting again!

If I shine the light on my actions, it does seem I am making the other responsible for easing my suffering.  In some cases, this may even be a way I have of avoiding doing my own work of embodying compassion and forgiveness.  Perhaps I wait for compassion and forgiveness to appear like the Beloved robed in glowing white because that is my idiosyncratic concept of what it should look like.  And while occupied with my narrow vision, I miss the true nature of compassion and forgiveness: doing what I must do in this moment with no thought given to the limited time, space, and form.

“Why? Because that kind of person is not caught up in the idea of a self, a person, a living being, or a life span.  They are not caught up in the idea of a dharma or the idea of a non-dharma.  They are not caught up in the notion that this is a sign and that is not a sign.  Why?  If you are caught up in the idea of a dharma, you are also caught up in the ideas of a self, a person, a living being, and a life span.  If you are caught up in the idea that there is no dharma, you are still caught up in the ideas of a self, a person, a living being, and a life span.”

The garden (real and metaphoric of my demands of relationships) is a morass of concepts and ideas after a year of neglect.  Although I see it as magnificent in Ultimate Reality, in this Historical reality, it is a tangled mess.  So, good tools for digging deep help.  Frank calls these my Ninja trowels.  Why would my relationship with my gardens be any different from other relationships?  When so much has been neglected, so many weeds given free rein, it is going to take determination, steadiness and a new vision to clear the path.

So as I wait for the Beloved to appear, I show up each day, tools in hand, ready to do what I must do.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju