Paying Attention

Yesterday and today were easy work days in the garden, watering, weeding, tying up and pinching. And this forms my first commentary on the post of a couple of days ago: while it's true that if you want to harvest, say, carrots, you must plant carrots and not lettuce. But if you want to harvest carrots it's not enough simply to plant them: you must also attend to their needs on a daily basis. This means keeping the little seeds moist enough for them to germinate (and carrots can take a long time to germinate), keeping the seedlings with their shallow little roots moist, weeding around the carrots so they have room to grow, thinning the carrots so they don't crowd each other out. So it is with our minds. It's not enough to plant a seed -- think a kind thought or perform a compassionate deed. We must pay attention to our minds, moment by moment, cultivating awareness of the living complex of thoughts and feelings that comprise our karma, learning when to keep it all to ourselves and when to share.