In this hectic world of trying and controlling, hard work and effort, it’s worth remembering the words of one of my favourite poems, taken from a collection of zen poems and writings called the Zenrin Kushu:

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Try all you like, but you cannot make anything grow. All we can really do is create the circumstances for growth and then let the growth happen of its own accord. This is obvious with plant life, we can weed to keep the plants we wish to grow from having to compete too much for nutrients, we can add natural fertilizers like horse manure to improve the quality of the soil, we can water the plants when they need it, and we can create shade if those plants need shielding from the hottest rays of the sun. We can aerate the soil, we can make and spread compost and we can attract the bugs that will eat up any insects that might harm our plants.

We can do all this, but we cannot make the plants to grow, we do not have that power. We can only tend to our garden, and ensure that soil is fertile for what we want to grow. This is the same with our lives and our minds. We cannot force ourselves to be a certain way, we can only tend to our soil and create the conditions for what we want to happen.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 12:28 pm and is filed under abarefootman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.