In bragging with a friend and fellow gardener, I shared that my tomato plants did great this year, that many are still flowering like it was august.
She then gave me this great gardening advice: At this point in the season I should be pinching off any new flowers on my tomato and pepper plants. It is way too late for the plant to produce viable fruit, and that energy could go into maturing the existing fruit.
My reply: “Yes, I know, but I umm, leave them for the bees.” By her blank look it seemed she didn’t get it.
Perspecive… can you take a step back and see the bigger picture? Can you see through the eyes of a bee, in a race against the coming frost to gather the stores that will help his colony survive? What if everyone picked the flowers?
Small acts, could change everything, if more of us did them.
There are over twenty millon people practicing Yoga postures in our country,
What if more of them embraced the foundational Yoga teachings of non violence, non-greediness, and living in service to others?
Doing my small part, and hoping that in some way, the world will be a better place for my having lived…
Even if that’s just a few more bees surviving the winter.
It’s really simple. try your best to live our closing Sanskrit mantra: Om Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu.
Which means: May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and deeds of my own life, contribute in some way to that happiness and that freedom for all.
Even if that means that your tomatoes are a little smaller.
Om Shanti, I’ll see you in class.
-j
I guess I should have said small acts, and small non-acts. Sometimes it’s best to leave things alone…
The bees thank you! Always amazed at how big your heart is……
Just a mirror of how big your Daughter’s heart is….
Sending love and light.
-j
Recently we had an infestation of flies in my home. My housemates and I pondered about what to do about them. On the one hand, they were G!d’s beautiful Beings, no less deserving of life than we. On the other hand, they inadvertently (at least that’s what I imagine) carried germs, there were many of them, and they were all over the place, from the kitty litter to the food.
I begged them to leave. I sang “goodbye” songs to them – in my mind, that is – I’m nutty, but not that nutty. I meditated on flies OUTside of the house. I researched humane ways of ridding the house of flies. One of my housemates – nearly as nutty as I – invented a “have-a-heart trap for them, and released them outside.
Alas, all to no avail. We finally bought fly paper. As I’ve been told about Native Americans, I thanked the flies for sacrificing their lives so that we humans, who shared this house with them, might be healthy and I asked their forgiveness. Then my Honey hung the fly paper in our bedroom.
Now there are only a couple of flies left alive. The fly paper is full of tiny carcasses, and I am sadder than I had been.
I have an awesome responsibility to leave this planet a bit happier than it was when we arrived here. I have that responsibility at least partially because I can. OK, so I’m getting a bit preachy now, so please stop reading if you don’t like preachy. As a meditator, I have been given the gift to slow my mind, and to extend loving kindness to all sentient Beings. How arrogant it seems for me to decide what a sentient Being is? Are trees (I call them “tree-people”) and even rocks (likewise “rock-people”) sentient? I don’t think it is my decision. I just like to act as if they are. I believe that flies are as sentient as I.
I would love to hear what you think about this quandary. What would you have done?