Courage, remembered

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

'For The Fallen', by Laurence Binyon

Image by daliscar

Back to Beginnings

The first promising days of Spring are here. Our hardened, light-starved souls perk up naturally with the arrival of the sun and the departure of the cold biting wind. So, we made it through another winter, we made it through to another beautiful Spring. Let us be thankful and remember to enjoy it.
There exists a very special book which I have had it in the back of my mind to tell you about for some time. And thinking about Spring brought it to mind because the seasons are a central theme of its wisdom. The book is called ‘Back to Beginnings – Reflections on the Tao’ by Huanchu Daoren, translated by Thomas Cleary. You probably never heard of him, and I only know him by the sheer luck of falling on his book in a second-hand bookstore. But I am here to tell you that there is more concentrated wisdom in this little book than in any other I know.

As soon as the plants and trees have withered, they show sprouts at the roots. Even though the order of the seasons brings freezing cold, eventually it brings back sunny energy. In the midst of purging and killing, the sense of continually renewing life is always in control. Thereby one can see the heart of heaven and earth.

The book was written around 1600 by a retired Chinese scholar and civil servant named Hong Yingming who took the Taoist name of Huanchu Daoren, which means ‘A Wayfarer Back to Beginnings’. The book is in the form of a collection of meditations on the seasons of life, on serenity, on discerning truth in a complex society and on practical ways to live in harmony with the Tao.

Wealth, status, honour, and praise that come from enlightened qualities are like flowers in the mountains, growing and blossoming naturally. Those that come from achievements in one’s career are like flowers in pots, being moved about, removed, replanted. Those that are gained by temporal power are like flowers in vases, without roots, soon to wilt.

The teachings are a synthesis of several Chinese schools of thought. In his introduction to the book, Thomas Cleary says:

In it can be seen a form of lay Taoism dating many centuries further back into history, in which the historical and sociological insights of pristine Confucianism were combined with the advanced educational and psychological knowledges and methodologies of Buddhism and Taoism.

Here is a passage supporting that assertion, and we should not be surprised to see the importance attached to sincerity, should we?

There is a true Buddha in family life; there is a real Tao in everyday activities. If people can be sincere and harmonious, promoting communication with a cheerful demeanour and friendly words, that is much better than formal meditation practice.

Perhaps the hand of the translator has something to do with it, but there is a direct, simple, easy to grasp message in each of the meditations. There is nothing obtuse or requiring extensive footnotes here. The language is plain and pertinent as if the author were living today.

The learned should be vigorous and diligent, but they should also be free-spirited. If they are too rigorous and austere, they have the death-dealing quality of autumn but lack the life-giving quality of spring. How can they develop people then?

There was a period when I carried this book around with me. Just reading one or two of the quotes in a spare minute several times a day is a sure way to keep your day in perspective. It is like taking a step back to observe events through the eyes of the ‘observer within’. Through the eyes of this great wisdom, you can see things for what they really are.

In adversity, everything that surrounds you is a kind of medicine that helps you refine your conduct, yet you are unaware of it. In pleasant situations, you are faced with weapons that will tear you apart, yet you do not realize it.

Reading these quotes again is like meeting an old friend. A wise and knowledgeable friend whose ‘adoption is tried’ and who I should ‘grapple to my soul with hoops of steel’. Now I have introduced him to you and I encourage you to do the same.

Be deferential in dealing with the world; deference is the starting line of progress. Be generous in your treatment of others; helping others is really the basis on which you help yourself.

Open a cool eye in the midst of intense activity, and you save yourself that much bitter thought. Keep an enthusiastic attitude in hard times, and you gain that much true enjoyment.

Those who turn things around by themselves do not rejoice at gain or grieve over loss; the whole world is the range they roam. Those who are themselves used by things hate it when events go against them and love it when they go their way; the slightest thing can create binding entanglements.

Whatever meets the eye is the realm of immortals for the contented, the realm of mortals for the discontented. All the bases of activity in society have life-giving potential if used well and death-dealing potential if not used well.

Flower quotations

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A flower's appeal is in its contradictions - so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect. Adabella Radici

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. Lydia M. Child

The actual flower is the plant's highest fulfilment, and are not here exclusively for herbaria, county floras and plant geography: they are here first of all for delight. John Ruskin

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. Jean Giraudoux

A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it. Vita Sackville-West

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. The Koran

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers. Heinrich Heine

In joy or sadness, flowers are our constant friends. Kozuko Okakura

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know flowers? Maurice Maeterlinck

In the cherry blossom's shade
There's no such thing
As a stranger. Kobayashi Issa

What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven. A.J. Balfour

Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature, open to the glories of the stars, the beauty of the flowers, and the mystery of life. R. Search

If you pass by the colour purple in a field and don't notice it, God gets real pissed off. Alice Walker

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars? G.K. Chesterton

Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses. Ovid

Flowers bring to a liberall and gentlemanly minde the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse and all kindes of virtues. John Gerard

Where flowers bloom so does hope. Lady Bird Johnson

Little flower - but if I could understand, what you are, root and all in all, I should know what God and man is. Alfred, Lord Tennyson

For a vast and beautiful collection of flower quotations and poems (some of which I have ‘picked’ for you here), visit Flowers – Quotes and poems for gardeners

Flowers - a world aflame with desire

While ‘digging’ for some uplifting quotations about flowers, I was astonished to discover the full significance of flowers in the spiritual world (not to mention the material world). I am a gardener of sorts. I am a practitioner of what I call ‘extreme gardening’: I have transported truckloads of soil in a day; I have transformed an asphalt wasteland of driveway into a cedar hedge-lined garden oasis; I have planted 6 trees and innumerable shrubs and plants around my house. But I was not aware of the full extent of the moral significance of the flower, or that there is a vast knowledge out there of the healing properties of flower essences and aromas.
I think we all love flowers in a natural, subconscious way: how often have we been overcome by the scent of a flower and felt the weight of stress fall away from our shoulders, felt ourselves being whisked away to peaceful childhood memories of innocence and happiness? But quotations like this one, opened my eyes further:

A flower's fragrance declares to all the world that it is fertile, available, and desirable, its sex organs oozing with nectar. Its smell reminds us in vestigial ways of fertility, vigour, life-force, all the optimism, expectancy, and passionate bloom of youth. We inhale its ardent aroma and, no matter what our ages, we feel young and nubile in a world aflame with desire. Diane Ackerman

And this:

Who can estimate the elevating and refining influences and moral value of flowers with all their graceful forms, bewitching shades and combinations of colours and exquisitely varied perfumes? These silent influences are unconsciously felt even by those who do not appreciate them consciously and thus with better and still better fruits, nuts, grains, vegetables and flowers, will the earth be transformed, man's thought refined, and turned from the base destructive forces into nobler production. One which will lift him to high planes of action toward the happy day when the Creator of all this beautiful work is more acknowledged and loved, and where man shall offer his brother man, not bullets and bayonets, but richer grains, better fruit and fairer flowers from the bounty of this earth. Father George Schoener

These quotations and others can be found at the worthy Michael P. Garafalo’s site: Flowers – Quotes and poems for gardeners

I have also provided in the links some healing flower essence sites that I came across.

So, I don’t know about you, but I am now filled with a ‘growing’ desire to install some full spectrum lamps in my dimly lit living room. I will not go without flowers any longer. Of course, first I will have to clean that desk…

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Photo by Claudia Meyer

Are there flowers in what you feel?

Flowers and stories of flowers crop up (is that a pun?) everywhere when one studies philosophy. Flowers represent the fleeting, impermanent, transcendent beauty of this life. They have no purpose but to be beautiful. (Yes, I know about pollen, but do they have to be that beautiful to get the job done?) Flowers, like cats, are proof that not everything in this world is useful. Beauty is purpose enough.


In this world
We walk on the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers

Kobayashi Issa seems to say that even though we are walking on the roof of hell, even though we are a thin 2-inch plank away from death and evil, gazing at flowers makes it all worthwhile; ‘gazing at flowers’ is what it’s all about.

The following text expands upon this admirably. I came across it in Horst Hammitzsch’s ‘Zen in the Art of the Tea Ceremony’. It is a passage from Matsuo Basho’s travelling diary U-tatsuo-kiki. Matsuo Basho was the most famous poet of the Edo period of Japan. Here is his description of ‘the Way’:

In my body there lives a certain ‘something’. Let us tentatively give it a name and call it ‘a little monk in his wind-torn robe’. But do we really mean the tearing of a thin robe in the wind? For a long time this fellow loved to compose short poems. In fact, he finally made it his life’s task. Sometimes, however, he regrets it and would like to give it up: sometimes he is overcome with enthusiasm and experiences the ambition to do better than others at it. Now this, now that, the emotions are at war in his heart, and as a result he is left restless. For a while he was keen to get a job for himself in the outside world, but this ‘something’ restrained him from doing so. At another time he nurtured the wish to take up the study of the Zen teachings and to enlighten his ignorance, but here, too, the ‘something’ caused him to give up the idea. And so he has remained unskilled and incompetent, apart from the fact that he has remained constantly bound to a Way. It is the self-same Way sought by Saigyo in his poems, by Sogi in his linked-verse, by Sesshu in his ink-paintings and by Rikyu in his Tea Ceremony – the one, single Way that is operative in all their works. And whoever loves this Way follows the laws of nature and becomes the friend of the seasons. Whatever he sees turns out to be flowers. Whatever he feels turns out to be the moon. When there are no flowers in what he does, he is like a barbarian. When there are no flowers in what he feels, he is like a wild beast. Forsake the barbaric, cast aside the brutish, follow nature’s laws, return to her again.

What flowers like

I read an article some years ago that stated it had been proven that plants grow better when we talk to them (nicely of course), which many gardeners knew already. Not only that (said the article) but if a plant is harmed – say, by burning a leaf - the other plants in the room can ‘feel’ it. And, believe it or not, the plants can even sense who harmed them and they can recognize that person again when he or she walks into the room. I find that pretty amazing. What will they be telling us next? That the love and care we lavish on our plants is reciprocated by them in mysterious ways that have a subtle influence on our health and well-being? Some gardeners would probably say that that is certainly true.

Be that as it may, gardening does tune us into the beauty and the cycles of nature, and implies and expresses a love and respect for living things, all of which can only do us good. And there is no room, be it ever so humble, that cannot be transformed by a plant or two; no spirit so worn that it cannot be lifted by the sight of flowers.
Having read this article about the incredible sensitivity of flowers, I was not in the least surprised to find Lin Yutang (quoting from a treatise by Yuan Chunglang) talking about ‘conditions that please flowers’ in his book ‘The Importance of Living’:

Conditions that please flowers:

A clear window
A clean room
Antique tripods
Sung ink-stones
“Pine waves” and river sounds
The owner loving hobbies and poetry
Visiting monk understands tea
A native of Chichow arrives with wine
Guests in the room are exquisite
Many flowers in bloom
A carefree friend has arrived
Copying books on flower cultivation
Kettle sings deep at night
Wife and concubines editing stories of flowers

Lin Yutang goes on to quote 24 ‘conditions humiliating to flowers’, of which I list a selection:

Conditions humiliating to flowers:

The owner constantly seeing guests
A stupid servant constantly putting in branches, upsetting the arrangement
Common monks talking zen
Dogs fighting before the window
Ugly women plucking flowers and decorating their hair with them
Discussing people’s official promotion and demotion
False expressions of love
Poems written for courtesy
Flowers in full bloom before one has paid his debts
The family asking for accounts
Writing poems by consulting rhyming dictionaries
Books in bad condition lying about
Trailing marks of slime left by snails
Servants lying about
Wine runs out after one begins to play wine games
Being neighbour to wine shops
A piece of writing with phrases like the “purple morning air” (common in imperial eulogies) on the desk

From these lists we can see that flowers are not only sensitive but have very good taste, if we will only listen to their wisdom, as the ancients listened. Of course, we may ask is it the flowers’ wisdom or is it our wisdom? Perhaps it is a bit of both?