The grandson pondered a moment and asked, “Which wolf will win?” The grandfather simply replied, “The one you feed.”
The seeds of joy, compassion and loving-kindness are easily watered when we are truly present to others and celebrate their presence in our lives. Our crucial task is to visualize the people in our lives—even those who are just passing through—as a precious garden, to discover which seeds need watering and understand how exposure to negative elements can harm the budding sprouts if they are not tended properly.
To tend your spiritual and emotional garden, you’ll need a working set of tools or skills to support and help you nurture the soil of your consciousness and the seeds that have been planted during your lifetime. Mindfulness, or the practice of being aware of the present moment, can become the greatest tool in your gardening efforts.
At some point in our lives, many of us become acutely aware of how mindlessly we have lived and how easy it is to be swept up in busyness and an incessant preoccupation with the future. While this realization usually comes with age, with wisdom it can be achieved at any time of life. Using the practice of mindfulness, we can look deeply at the seeds that will change or enhance the quality of our relationships. Mindfulness offers us an opportunity to step away from the distractions of life and learn to be here now to develop true presence and to understand that love and happiness are grounded in the present moment.
Gradually we learn that love is a verb as well as a noun, and that loving self and others requires action, practice and ongoing growth. Living in the present moment and watering the seeds of love within ourselves and others is the heart of what it means to live fully. Reflecting on the impermanence of life can create anxiety or the inspiration and motivation to reach the end of our life’s journey with a resounding “Yes!” to the question, “Did I love well?”
At the heart of this book are the teachings of one of the most beloved Zen Masters in world, Thich Nhat Hanh. This honored Vietnamese master has popularized the concept of mindfulness in the West, and he reminds us that one need not be a Buddhist to practice mindfulness. Through his beautiful writings on the seeds of consciousness, I became inspired to look deeply at the seeds that were watered in my own life and how they have affected my own relationships. When I received the honor of being ordained as a dharma teacher, Thich Nhat Hahn encouraged me to make “watering the seeds of love” the focus of my future work and the heart of my teaching. This concept soon became a powerful way for me to deepen and transform my relationships. I became aware of what qualities contribute to the development of love, and I grew through the challenge of transforming seeds that could be harmful to others and myself. I discovered how mindfulness is central to the development of love and paramount to discovering which seeds need watering.
My hope is that you will gain insights and inspiration that prompt you to become a master gardener, transforming the seeds that need healing and watering the seeds that need nurturing so you, too, may grow in love. Through the master gardener program, offered at many land-grant universities, students learn how to garden and then how to support others in their own gardening efforts.
Once you discover your ability to nurture certain qualities, you will blossom like the most beautiful garden before turning your influence to those you love.
Join me on this journey of becoming the master gardener of your life and your relationships. May it yield a bountiful harvest – one that will outlive you and become your legacy.
“Whether you tend a garden or not, you are the gardener of your own being, the seed of your destiny.” —The Findhorn Community
“As is the gardener, such is the garden.” —Hebrew Proverb
The foundation for developing mindful and healthy relationships begins with ourselves. Three practices–Seeing, Renewing and Being–will support you as you become the master gardener of your life and your relationships.
In the first chapter, on Seeing, you will learn how to view each person with a “beginner’s mind,” how to be open and accepting, how to develop the qualities of faith and patience—all of which offer the foundation for a healthy relationship. The second chapter on Renewing offers you ways to renew yourself and your relationships through the Three S’s—silence, space, stopping. The final chapter focuses on the practice of Being or mindfulness as a means of being present in an openhearted way to what is occurring in us and around us. It is a way of seeing, a lens that will help us water the seeds of love in ourselves and others.
Chapter 1
Seeing: It All Begins with the Gardener
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” —Shunryu Suzuki
I take great pleasure in looking at my backyard garden through the year, and every time I do, I’m reminded of the many elements needed to promote its growth and vitality. Just the other day, my wife went to the nursery to choose a variety of annuals to place in more than fifteen pots on our patio. After patiently waiting several days for the rain to stop, she carefully arranged them by color and size, planting each with the right mix of fertilizer and compost soil. Pausing a moment to admire her artwork, she expressed her hopefulness and marveled at how the gardening process requires a certain attitude of openness and unconditional acceptance as to what will blossom.
Spring is the season of potential; new buds and tender shoots invite us to open ourselves to faith in possibilities. Summer is a season of growth and reward, as we see our labor come to fruition, pick the first tomato and zucchini and appreciate what several months of patience have brought. Fall, on the other hand, signifies harvest, a time for slowing down and preparing for a period of rest. Every season of the year offers us a mindset for contemplating the garden within our relationships and ourselves.
Just as the soil of the garden holds the seeds, bulbs and roots of the plants—including weeds—that we see above ground, so your heart holds the daily burdens, the stresses of life and the challenges that face us all—especially those that awaken us in the middle of the night. Use the garden metaphor as a starting point from which to expand and explore new ways of seeing yourself and your life. What would it be like to be open to life in a new way? To start accepting yourself rather than judging? To truly believe in yourself, so that you can thrive with faith and patience? Sometimes it takes us a while to realize certain behaviors or mindsets aren’t working and that we can’t solve yesterday’s problems with old ideas or actions. Start to see yourself with new possibilities and hear the whisper, “grow, grow.”
Beginner’s Mind (Openness)
As a university professor, I was expected to be an expert, and yet intuitively I always knew that having the mind of a beginner or of someone who has retained the natural curiosity of a child would be a greater asset to learning. I find truth in Suzuki’s belief that “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Learning to see others and life from a child’s perspective, with an open mind and heart, is the mindset of a beginner.
One of my former students was paraplegic and had visible deformities. He was a delight to have in class. He made his way around campus on a gurney-style cart, lying prone and navigating by moving a small ball with his mouth. I recall him sharing his story about how children would often approach him with questions and comments: “What happened to your legs?” or “Cool cart!” While the children, with their beginners’ minds, were openly curious and naturally accepting, their parents, on the other hand, were often embarrassed, fearful