Everything is the Buddha.
Even big green hornworms? Even big green hornworms.
Working in the garden, it is startling to come across huge green striped caterpillars, thick as your thumb, munching away on the bell pepper plants. But there they were, five of them over two days, stripping two of our dozen plants leafless.
A bag of reactions arose: dismay at the nakedness of the plants, curiosity about where the caterpillars had come from (were they little in the garden at some point or did they arrive here already a full-blown 3 inches?), admiration for how gorgeous they are, and amazement at the efficiency with which they can dispatch entire plants.
A marvelous, passionate farmer we know likes to say, “People always ask me what I do about pests. I don’t have pests. I have creatures who let me know that some of my plants aren’t as robust as they could be.”
I don’t know if our pepper plants were not as robust as they could be, but they certainly were indicating that they need protection now. The hornworms were doing what all of evolution has created them to do: eat, eat, eat. They are playing perfectly their part in Life. The peppers are playing theirs. At the moment, since we want peppers for the Monastery table, those roles are in conflict.
So we assisted the caterpillars to find a new place to munch, and saved the plants in time for them to grow peppers. Nothing was wrong. There just had to be some rearranging. Everything is the Buddha, even hornworms, and green pepper plants, and gardeners.
Gassho,
Penny