Reading Archive (Gardening)
Business Lessons from A Quiet Gardener
William Rosenzweig
The people who know me best know that at heart I am just a quiet gardener. My garden has probably taught me the most about how things grow - and thrive in a vibrant and sustainable manner. These lesso...
Working With Soil, Attending To Soul
Gunilla Norris
A garden tends to get inside us. If we go there to accomplish something or to get something, the garden soon becomes a burden. With expectations that it must look good or that it has to produce no mat...
Conscious Simplicity
Duane Elgin
Here are three major ways that I see the idea of simplicity presented in today’s popular media: 1) Crude or Regressive Simplicity: The mainstream media often shows simplicity as a path o...
Embracing the Mystery of Uncertainty
Alan Briskin
A Zen parable captures the mysterious connection between attending to our own consciousness and the external events that enfold us. A respected teacher was asked by members of a village if he co...
The Only True Voyage
James P. Carse
A garden is a place where growth is found. It has its own source of change. One does not bring change to a garden, but comes to a garden prepared for change, and therefore prepared to change. It is po...
Small Graces
Kent Neburn
Night is closing in. It is time for sleep. I have walked a quiet path today. I have done no great good, no great harm. I might have wished for more — some dramatic occurrence, something memor...
Action Without Desire Of Outcomes
Vinoba Bhave
To protect self-interest individuals exploit others, nations go to war, and businesses undercut each other, because people in those situations see a conflict between self-interest and the interest of ...
Restoring Balance and Meaning in Ourselves
Alan Briskin
During a time of great drought, a Taoist master was asked by members of a village if he could help bring rain to their dry fields. They confessed trying many other approaches before reaching out to hi...
Intentions Are Seeds
Gil Fronsdal
While our activities have consequences in both the external and internal world, happiness and freedom belong to the inner world of our intentions and dispositions. [...] Mindfulness places us where o...
Uniform Corn-Rows In High-Tech Isolation
Robin Wall Kimmerer
I live in the lush green farm country of upstate New York, in a town that likely has more cows than people. Most everyone I know grows something: apples, hops, grapes, potatoes, berries, and lots of c...
Bringing Attention to Intention
Gil Fronsdal
The greater our awareness of intentions, the greater our freedom to choose. People who do not see their choices do not believe they have choices. They tend to respond automatically, blindly influenced...
The Rabbit And The Garden
Mark Nepo
In the movie Phenomenon, John Travolta's character has done everything he can think of to keep this pesky rabbit out of his garden. He's even put in fencing that goes three feet underground, and sti...
Action without result
Author Unknown
An anonymous reader of these reminders was inspired to write the following after reading some essays by Paramhansa Yogananda: Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces I would sti...
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness is considered the heart of meditation but its essence is universal and of deep practical benefit to all. In essence, mindfulness is about wakefulness. Our minds are such that we are ...
Fifteen Minutes to Live
Author Unknown
The students of an enlightened monk walked up to him as he was working in his garden and asked, "If you knew you had only only 15 minutes left to live, what would you do?" The monk smiled, said "Thi...