Good morning!
Have you been enjoying the spring season? Spring is the season for all to spring up – animals and plants. Yesterday I trimmed the hibiscus trees, which had self-seeded and spread from the hedge, or rather a forest 20 feet high, and were shading the evergreens next to the fence. They originally came from here, the only trees lining beyond the garage – the rest was only grassland. Their descendent are now making hedges here and there and spreading all around.
I saw that Fortune’s spindles or winter creepers, transplanted from here as ground cover, and also poison ivy, were climbing up trees, so I cut them down or dug them out. Good things may become bad things and bad things can become worse things. So, we must see far enough and serve early enough – seeding, planting, weeding, trimming, and eradicating for better gardening, farming, and living. Cultivation is verification. Practice makes perfect.
The Buddha taught us the Four Applications of decreasing and stopping bad karmas, starting and increasing good karmas. The fundamental bad karmas are the Triple Poisons of desire, divisiveness, and delusion. The essential good karmas are the Triple Learnings of morality, concentration, and prognosis (sīla, samādhi, prajňā), countering and ceasing them. Zen (jhāna) embrace them all in the realization of nirvana, unconditioned peace, or pure-land prior to plants.
Nirvana is the pure-land to awaken to the nature of plants and animals – karma-heirs, -owners, -machines, and -refuged – to wakefully manage and merit them. We can create the Garden of Eden or Paradise by cultivating the pure-land, planting and pruning with prognosis and perspiration. Our inner and outer worlds or hearts and home or Paradise and Purgatory correspond. So, let us continue our cultivation and verification or practice and perfection.
5/22/16
