State of the Garden


It was beautiful today at the Arboretum, and I was glad to be there. I also noticed, along with other signs of impending drought, how low are the water levels for this time of year. I have been working on making my garden more water efficient.


I communicate with the Murtis when I am out on the garden and also with the plants and other living beings. The volunteer squash are outrageously happy at the moment. On the balcony, Crow has discovered the strawberries and the fig tree.
My friend Dan just posted on his blog a great Gary Snyder quote on the need to do maintenance (of the self) in order to be most creative. The idea that we need to maintain our tools and toolbox, as it were, in order to be most creative, is exactly what we are taught about the tantric yoga sadhana — practice. With our yoga practice, diet, lifestyle, work, consumption, participation in community, we seek to live progressively more in alignment with the undulating fabric of space, time, and apparent world so that we have maximum well-being best to serve ourselves and others with delight. In our sadhana, we include both study and experience (experience includes meditation, asana, and pranayama). As both John Friend and Paul Muller-Ortega teach, we engage in the practices and studies to learn with ever expanding insight how to see and experience the highest first and live from that place. Living and practicing with such an intention is, I think, the maintenance done so we can live out all of our lives as a reverential and creative act.
Dan–I look forward to reading the sermon.