like the sprout that moves through the seed

I used to train very hard in meditation, as if it were a sport. Lately I've come to see meditation as more like a garden.

In a garden you create the conditions for growth.

You might work hard to create those conditions. You might dig out rocks and roots, fold compost into the dirt, put up a fence to curb the deer and rabbits.

You'll make sure there's water and sunlight. You'll weed, of course, and then weed some more and some more and some more.

You'll plant good seeds.

What you won't do is actually grow anything. Things will grow, yes, but you don't do that growing.

The growing grows itself. A seed springs into life. Life expresses itself through that seed.

You sustain the growth, protect the growth, you nurture it.

You participate in cultivation, a word whose root means, "to care for," "to worship," and "to inhabit, practice, and offer respect." Also, "to sojourn, to dwell."

This meditation is a kind of dwelling, a sojourn.

For me it has become an offering, too, a kind of worship of the mystery of what is growing here, knowing it is not mine, not me, but life expressing itself, like the sprout that moves through the seed.

lots of love,
nico hase

p.s. I sat down with Durita Holm recently and we talked about some of these themes around emergence. Check it out on apple or spotify if you like.

nico hase