One of my very favorite experiences, along with stumbling/tripping, is coming across a word I’ve never seen before and then encountering it in pretty much everything I read from then on. What? How is this possible? Was that word always appearing in everything I read and I didn’t see it? What was I doing? Where was I? For those having spent time at the Monastery it’s the equivalent of arriving back at one’s accommodations in one’s kitchen slippers. Here is hard, irrefutable evidence that nobody was home.
Many bright spots can occur even during a root canal, and one of those for me was being introduced to a little magazine called “Birds and Blooms.” After commenting on the gorgeous photographs visible from across the counter, I was given a pull-out page with instructions for subscribing. That’s always a dicey moment for me. Beautiful, chock full of information on birds, butterflies, bees, and plants, but a cause of trees being turned into paper. Perhaps recycling them will contribute to recycled toilet tissue and discourage the clearcutting of old growth Canadian forests to create more toilet tissue? Who can say, but I decided to simply accept the karma and order the publication.
It did not disappoint! So many great tips along with the gorgeous photos and an article on Mason bees. I’ve debated for years about raising bees and always came to the same conclusion as raising chickens or any other creatures. Just didn’t want that karma. Too much opportunity for unintentional harm. And, then, along came Mason bees.
Now, again, I suspect that I’m one of the last to learn about these items, but that doesn’t diminish my gratitude one whit. What extraordinary little creatures. They don’t live in hives, they don’t have just one queen, there’s no human maintenance required for them to do their brilliant work of pollinating. Plus, apparently the only way a Mason bee can be driven to sting is if they’re stepped on or squeezed. Having no intention of doing either of those, I am very excited to make their acquaintance and offer a home.
Here’s the best part: It’s possible to “rent” them. They arrive in the mail and pick good locations for their future. Human sends back the container they came in, and the little folks go from renters to owners. (Lots of information and videos online.)
That seeing a word I’ve never seen before experience is one I’ve just had with Mason bees. I had never heard of them, had no idea renting bees was a thing, didn’t know there were bees that do great work with no downside, and then there on the front page of the little local newspaper was an advertisement for picking up your Mason bees at a garden center in Port Angeles. What else am I missing?
What a thrilling question.
Which brings me to moles. (Of course) At the ZMPC we were plagued by gophers. We always kid that there are few things as pathetic as a Buddhist with ants. Can’t live with them, can’t kill them. Add to that flies, mice, and gophers. After a couple of years of planting a garden only to have it wither as underground gardeners munched the roots, we dug giant troughs, lined them with poultry netting, filled them back in, and planted inside our gopher-proof containers.
When I saw the mounds of fresh dirt making their way across the yard, my heart sank. Oh, dear. More troughs, more poultry netting? Time to find out about moles. Turns out that while it could be argued that they are not overly attractive, they are both helpful and harmless. True, they are the victims of a bad reputation, but when one gets away from “pest eradication” sites and on to “friends of the earth,” one learns that a mole will harm a plant only by inadvertence. Plus, they are a great assistance in providing fresh, well-stirred soil for planters. I did get some advice to move all of their “contributions” before time to mow as those mounds would be hard on mower blades.
In an earlier posting I was extolling the virtues of change. Life here could inspire me to be on that campaign all day every day, the extraordinary variability of the weather if nothing else. Change is good. Change is our friend. Change is on our side, assisting us to get HERE—if we choose it. Every day I find myself more grateful for change. “Same” feeds ego. Supports ego. Helps ego be comfortable and justifies a great deal of ego’s complaining. The first dictionary definition of change is to make or become different. In that case, change is a synonym for Life. We can only think change is a real, concrete, stationary thing if we let conditioned mind compare “now” with “before,” a pursuit only ego wants to engage in! We can never “know” now. To “know” now would require the distance from now that creates the imaginary person who can “see” now, “see” the past, and compare the two. All nonsense because, once that distance occurs, that now is in the past and this now is still unknowable.
The “now” that we call “change” is as much an illusion as are the past and the future. All these are simply notions in the mind that we could call silly if they didn’t initiate such misery. However, if we realize that all these notions are the equivalent of that finger pointing at the moon—should we choose to use them as such—then we can let it all go, even if only for a moment, and just enjoy the exquisite energy of THIS. The THIS that is the THAT we’ve been exploring in the yearlong retreat.
No deciding, no figuring anything out, no understanding it, no one even to make an attempt at those. Just the quiet oh or ah accompanied by the draining of tension from the body and a smile spreading across the face.
Gasshō,
ch