Our Mind is a Garden
A great mindfulness practice is to imagine our mind as a garden. If we leave our thoughts unattended for too long, they can grow wild and be hard to manage. When we meditate, we can use our concentration to plant seeds of happiness, strength, and ease. Just as we water a flower to help it grow, we water our mind with good thoughts and mindful actions. By spending some time each day tending to our undeveloped areas and working on untangling any overgrown feelings, we can cultivate a beautiful, abundant state of mind.
You have two gardens: your own garden and that of your beloved.
First, you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening.
In each one of us there are flowers, and there is also garbage.
The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us.
If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds.
If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds.
What you grow is up to you.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
First, you have to take care of your own garden and master the art of gardening.
In each one of us there are flowers, and there is also garbage.
The garbage is the anger, fear, discrimination, and jealousy within us.
If you water the garbage, you will strengthen the negative seeds.
If you water the flowers of compassion, understanding, and love, you will strengthen the positive seeds.
What you grow is up to you.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Essential Understanding: Mindfulness Seeds
Mindfulness and zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, uses the imagery of our emotions being “seeds” planted within us. This metaphor is so beautiful and supportive in transforming and balancing difficult emotions. Contemplating our mental seeds can help us trim back the intensity of our painful emotions and nourish our positive emotions into good health.
Each of us has many “seeds” planted deep within our consciousness. These seeds can be our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. The seeds that we water, or give attention to, are the ones that sprout into our consciousness. We have seeds that can spread into a happy flowering paradise, or we have seeds that can sprout into a negative nightmarish jungle. We are all capable of being understanding, compassionate, and joyful; but we only have so much attention to offer, so if we give all our attention to the negative things within us, our positive seeds will not be watered with any nourishment, and they will wither. Our negative focus can choke out our positive perspective, like weeds strangling plants in a garden. When we’re immersed in our suffering, we're neglecting to give proper attention to our positive qualities. We've all experienced a positive seed drought, where our mind is crowded with pessimistic thoughts, overgrown with frustration, tangled with anxiety, or thick with so many negative thoughts that we can't acknowledge the goodness, wonder, and an joy available to us in each moment.
We can practice balancing how we water our seeds, still giving attention to our feelings, but only for long enough to gain insight about why we’re feeling the way we do. Then, we redirect our attention to watering the wholesome, wonderful qualities in us by touching the positive qualities that are always available to us. We have all our seeds within us at all times. We have a seed of anger, a seed of anxiety, a seed of fear, and a seed of jealousy. We also have a seed of joy, a seed of love, a seed of compassion, and a seed of patience. We have seeds for all our our emotions. One way we can tend to our negative seeds is to invite a seed of the opposite nature to sprout. In one moment, our seed of despair may be very strong, causing us to feel unwell, but we can remember we also have a seed of mindfulness. We can bring our attention to the small seed of hope, resilience, or courage, and hold our attention on these seeds to make them grow bigger until they overpower the strength of the negative feeling we were suffering from. If we feel a seed of frustration beginning to sprout irritation in us, we remember our seed of patience and allow that seed to blossom into a flower of tolerance. As our patience and tolerance grows, the seed of frustration will shrink. If we feel a seed of self-doubt causing us to suffer, we can invite our seed of self-love to help us feel more empowered. When we concentrate on forgiveness, our seed of shame will lose power. Every one of us has the full variety of positive seeds. Some of us have watered them so rarely that they are very small within us, but they never die, they are there, however buried. If our feelings are too overwhelmingly negative and we feel as though we truly cannot access any of good seeds within ourselves, we can bring our attention to the unlimited conditions for happiness outside of our mind, such as a beautiful flower, dear friend, or loving animal - strengthening our seed of mindfulness.
The more we practice anything, the stronger we become; and this applies to our negative emotions, too. If we’re constantly upset, angry, afraid, or just filtering everything through a negative lens, we'll end up strengthening those qualities within, sometimes to the point of them manifesting outwardly. We can selectively water our good seeds and refrain from watering our negative seeds. We don’t have to fight our negative feelings or push them down deep inside, we simply allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to receive our attention and nourishment.
Each of us has many “seeds” planted deep within our consciousness. These seeds can be our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. The seeds that we water, or give attention to, are the ones that sprout into our consciousness. We have seeds that can spread into a happy flowering paradise, or we have seeds that can sprout into a negative nightmarish jungle. We are all capable of being understanding, compassionate, and joyful; but we only have so much attention to offer, so if we give all our attention to the negative things within us, our positive seeds will not be watered with any nourishment, and they will wither. Our negative focus can choke out our positive perspective, like weeds strangling plants in a garden. When we’re immersed in our suffering, we're neglecting to give proper attention to our positive qualities. We've all experienced a positive seed drought, where our mind is crowded with pessimistic thoughts, overgrown with frustration, tangled with anxiety, or thick with so many negative thoughts that we can't acknowledge the goodness, wonder, and an joy available to us in each moment.
We can practice balancing how we water our seeds, still giving attention to our feelings, but only for long enough to gain insight about why we’re feeling the way we do. Then, we redirect our attention to watering the wholesome, wonderful qualities in us by touching the positive qualities that are always available to us. We have all our seeds within us at all times. We have a seed of anger, a seed of anxiety, a seed of fear, and a seed of jealousy. We also have a seed of joy, a seed of love, a seed of compassion, and a seed of patience. We have seeds for all our our emotions. One way we can tend to our negative seeds is to invite a seed of the opposite nature to sprout. In one moment, our seed of despair may be very strong, causing us to feel unwell, but we can remember we also have a seed of mindfulness. We can bring our attention to the small seed of hope, resilience, or courage, and hold our attention on these seeds to make them grow bigger until they overpower the strength of the negative feeling we were suffering from. If we feel a seed of frustration beginning to sprout irritation in us, we remember our seed of patience and allow that seed to blossom into a flower of tolerance. As our patience and tolerance grows, the seed of frustration will shrink. If we feel a seed of self-doubt causing us to suffer, we can invite our seed of self-love to help us feel more empowered. When we concentrate on forgiveness, our seed of shame will lose power. Every one of us has the full variety of positive seeds. Some of us have watered them so rarely that they are very small within us, but they never die, they are there, however buried. If our feelings are too overwhelmingly negative and we feel as though we truly cannot access any of good seeds within ourselves, we can bring our attention to the unlimited conditions for happiness outside of our mind, such as a beautiful flower, dear friend, or loving animal - strengthening our seed of mindfulness.
The more we practice anything, the stronger we become; and this applies to our negative emotions, too. If we’re constantly upset, angry, afraid, or just filtering everything through a negative lens, we'll end up strengthening those qualities within, sometimes to the point of them manifesting outwardly. We can selectively water our good seeds and refrain from watering our negative seeds. We don’t have to fight our negative feelings or push them down deep inside, we simply allow the positive seeds that are naturally there to receive our attention and nourishment.
“The grass is greener where you water it.”