Seeds

 

I am thinking about seeds today. 

Seeds? 

Well it it is spring and in some parts of the world ( not in mine...we have to wait until June to plant because of frost), people may already be planting seeds into the earth for future harvest. That is such a cool thing, isn't it?  To plant a tiny seed into the earth and watch  it make its long arduous way from below the soil to the surface as it forms into something amazing, beautiful, and /or useful. Hmm!  Have you ever pondered the fact that the same thing goes on  in our minds?

I am also thinking of the seeds we have planted  in our subconscious minds  or what some would refer to as "store consciousness".  Within us are so, so many seeds...so many mental formations waiting to be.  There is the seed for Love, the seed for anger, fear, and blame.   The seed for kindness and compassion;  and the seed for selfishness and greed. The seed for enthusiasm, and the seed for sloth and torpor.  The seed for peace, and the seed for anxiety , restlessness and worry. These are just a few of the possibilities.  So, so many seeds deep in the soil of our minds waiting to be watered and nourished with the sunlight of our attention.  Hmm!

Seeds Grow Into  Mental Formations

Already on the surface of mind consciousness, we have mental formations...a host of different emotions growing and blossoming, getting  tangled up with the 60,000 thoughts a day scientists are saying we generate. Your mind may look a bit the way I assume mine does...like a messy, unattended garden. 

The Messy Garden

Do you know what is in your mind, right now?  Can you distinguish the different plants, feel them, name them? More importantly can you see each emotional energy as the harmless seed it once was?  Do you know how it got from store consciousness to where it is in your mental and life experience right now? 

A Gardener Who Buries Weeds?

Hmmm!  You might want to say that he made you mad, or she broke your heart. You might want to say that Life did this or Life did that and that is why you feel the way you do right now...that is why your mental garden is  such a mess. I hear ya!  I have been telling myself those things for as long as I can remember.  I have learned the hard way, however, that I am the gardener of my own mind, my own Life. 

You may also be doing what many of us do in response to the less than pleasant emotional energies that form into the many mental formations we experience.  You may be doing whatever you can to push them back down through the soil, burying them with your defense mechanisms so you do not have to see them or deal with them. Yucky!  Right?  That requires so much energy, so much work on your part but have you ever noticed what happens anyway?  Do those weeds or unwholesome plants  just find their way through the soil again and again into your mental garden ?  We really cannot get rid of our painful emotional energies by stuffing, denying, avoiding and numbing can,  we?  The seed, the plant once watered and nourished  continues to grow and grow. And if attention is the sunlight...the more we try to get rid of them, the more attention we are putting on them and the more they grow. 

Another Way to Tend Our Gardens 

Buddhist psychology teaches that there is another way of dealing with mental formations.  We can become aware, first of all, of the fact that we have all these seeds deep within our minds...seeds, harmless seeds that have yet to grow.  We can consciously choose to water and nourish the seeds we want to grow, that we want to see break through the soil and into our conscious garden  of living. We water the seeds that will lead to wholesome mental formations, skillful ways of being. We water and nourish the seeds of peace, kindness, serenity, compassion, joy and Love for example.  The seeds of clarity, wisdom, sincerity and faith also deserve our attention/our sunlight. Most importantly, we water the seeds of concentration and mindfulness so we know at all times what is growing in our garden.  So we are very much aware. 

How Do We Get Rid of the Unwanted? 

What about those less than wholesome or skillful formations that have already grown up into our minds and into our physical realities because we were not conscious enough? What do we do about them if we are not supposed to bury them or stuff them down again? 

We watered mindfulness, concentration, peace and compassion right? We watered joy and Love?  Well we check to make sure they have blossomed within us.  Do you feel, joy, love, compassion?  Are you mindful enough to see these wholesome emotions and feel them within you?  If so,  then we use them to wrap  each unwholesome thought, feeling or energy that is growing in our minds  in an embrace of pure awareness.  We see the unruly plant, name it, accept it, allow it in our garden, feel it,  embrace it and love it like a mother would love the child she gave birth to. We put all of this type of attention on it and before long, it will gratefully and gracefully shrivel up and return to the seed it once was in our store consciousness.  We process through each emotional energy until the energy is spent.  And all a awhile we continue to be mindful of what seeds we want to grow and what mental formations we have already  in our gardens. We choose what type of Life to live by the seeds we allow to grow.

All is well in my world/ in my garden. 

Plum Village App (August, 2020) Our Mind and Mental Formations/ Thich Nhat Hanh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-copiRlX1s.