Snow, rain and low clouds on the Jura. The weather moves from Spring to Autumn, confusing the plants and the birds. A useful lesson for us in working with our inner changing moods:
High winds do not last all morning
Heavy rain does not last all day
Why is this? Heaven and Earth!
If heaven and earth cannot make things eternal
Why do we think it happens for us?
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Grateful seeing is the ability to look first for what is good and working in our lives without minimizing or denying the hardships or challenges that are also present. Many traditional societies hold the perspective, or world-view, that what has been given to us ultimately ignites growth and strengthens us. Individuals who are viewed as seers are highly respected, honored, and valued for their gifts of insight, vision, and grateful seeing. We, too, can learn to be seers — seers of the blessings, learnings, mercies, and protections that surround us everyday. In Spring, we open to the bounty and goodness that is present in our lives, any pockets of ingratitude that once seemed large in our imaginations become dwarfed — nearly nonexistent. It is important to remember that whatever we need to rectify in our lives is often small in proportion to all the benefits we have extended toward and received from others. All the good intentions, prayers, good deeds, and kind words we have offered others are still with us: they cannot be taken away, and this is a great source of encouragement.
Angeles Arrien
Earth teach me stillness
As the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me acceptance and readiness
As the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration
As the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
As melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
As dry fields weep with rain.
Prayer of the Ute people
If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will gradually become richer and more mature. If you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried. Spring comes, the grass grows by itself. Being in a hurry usually doesn’t help and it can create a great deal of suffering. Patience is an ever-present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or something for it. From the perspective of patience, things happen because other things happen. Nothing is separate and isolated
Jon Kabat Zinn, Wherever you go, There you are
Photo by Donald Macauley
Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas opening
into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground bulbs
for flour, how the settler’s hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?
And you — what of your rushed and
useful life? Imagine setting it all down—
papers, plans, appointments, everything,
leaving only a note: “Gone to the fields
to be lovely. Be back when I’m through
with blooming.”
Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake.
Of course, your work will always matter.
Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
Lynn Ungar, Camas Lilies
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Robert Frost
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