Waking Up in a Busy World: Grateful for Weeds

You should be grateful for the weeds in your mind, because eventually they will enrich your practice.

Shunryu Suzuki (page 17)

Why do we refer to a dandlion as a weed and not a flower?

Today I am going to talk about weeds. Now I have written about weeds before asking the question, "Why do we make such a big distinction between the dandelion and the rose? Both have the same purpose in life, don't they?"

I have had great appreciation for the dandelion for a long time. I noticed how bees and butterflies flocked to them every spring as they waited for the June frost to leave and the roses to bloom. They were their intermediate food source. The dandelion serves a very, very important function.

(Okay not a dandelion...but it is a weed lol)

Not Ugly; Not Beautiful

And I realized one day while I was shooting them, they are not "ugly" to anything but our collective conditioned mind that says, "These are weeds. They shouldn't be. Mow them down so the lawns are perfect and orderly looking!" Come on! Nature isn't orderly nor is she meant to be. Those dandelions are neither beautiful flowers or ugly weeds...they just are. They are meant to be on our lawn for a very important reason!

Resistance and "No Mow May"

I was so thrilled to hear of "No Mow May" in my parts. Environmentalists are encourging people not to mow their lawns in the month of May...to allow for dandelions to grow and hopefully feed our drastically dwindling bee populatoin. You do realize that without bees, the planet would not be pollinated...therefore there would be little food to sustain us humans? We are so dependent not only on our pollinators but on the "weeds" they get pollen from. Yet every year we resist with a vengeance and mow down, or worse add more poison to the earth, in our resistance of these weeds. Weeds that could enrich our planet and at the very least allow for its survival. Yet we judge them as "bad, wrong and shouldn't be" and we struggle to destroy them.

Even despite this plea from environmentalists, I am only one of a few households that have not mowed. Most people around me prefer a semblance of order to feeding bees. They remain unconscious. That is not a judgement of righteousness on my part. It is simply the way it is. I do not blame my neighbours for that or fight with them for that. It is just the way it is. All I can do is focus on my yard and that which I have control.

Weeds in the Mind

Just like I can only focus on what is growing in my mind. There are a lot of weeds up there, let me tell ya. I used to think when I began practicing in my quest for serenity, that I need to struggle against, kill or mow down all the weeds I had in my mind...all the negative thoughts, all the nasty feelings. I still operated under the conditioned belief that many of us do. "Cling to good...get rid of the bad". In order to do that we had to first look to others to have them help us determine what ws good and what was bad. Positive thoughts, circumstances and feelings were like the roses, negative thoughts, circumstances and feelings were like the dandelions. In our attempt to create orderly mind-lawns many of us beleive we really have to get rid of mental weeds.

Those weeds in our mind, just as the dandelions on our lawns do, serve a very important purpose. They really do not differ from the roses and the petunias...in anything but our judgement of them. They can help nourish us. Simply allowing and accepting the so called "negative" can help pollinate a life of serenity for all of us. Resisting them and fighting against them, pulling them out with force, just keeps us from the peace we long for. Even if we pull them out...we must do so gently and effortlessly and then we leave them where they are to nourish the soil of our life expereince.

What we resist persists

What I notice about thoughts and feelings we resist ...is that they just persist more. I notice too, when I look out at the yards that do not adhere to "No Mow May", the dandelions just grow back more ferociously. What we resist persists.

Anyway, I am learning to be grateful for the weeds on my lawn and the weeds in my mind.