Spring into the earth of the season. Join in for a workshop in NYC. To start, strengthen, or sustain a creative writing or meditation practice, reply to schedule a virtual 1:1 session. As always, listen to these essays here, share with a friend, upgrade, or pair your creative practice with a journal from Odette Press.
“Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. The house has a shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized. What then, is that which dwells within this house, this lotus of the heart? Even so large as the universe outside is the universe within the heart. Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the lightning and all the stars. Whatever is in macrocosm is in this microcosm”
— The Thirteen Principal Upanishads
Bright pink morning. Dogwood, tender and floral, waves a blush in glimpse of breeze against the blue ground of sky. Spring, unfolding richness, colors the skyline: suddenly magnolia, bright then whisper pink; suddenly first signs of rose form from the pressures of life warming; suddenly flush of tulip pulses in fuchsia and bright red orange pushing up from the soil along the sidewalks.
Along the hard periphery of cement streets and ground grow leaves and peach, fig and cherry and pear buds form, and as I walk, I find the sturdy purple unfolding of hellebore, and I feel the muscles of my face soften. Watching, I feel how hurrying through the city often closes me off; how overexerting takes me into the space beyond extension; how often it is earth, breath, sky, light, wonder and water I need, both fast and slow, to embody Spring, to soften to petal, and learn to unfurl again.
To unfold and grow, I sit, and soften, and breathe, and run, and watch sky mornings, finding steadiness along the shifting ground of days feeling breath, air, earth of body, sensation in mediation. Eyes open to the day, I learn to read the dialogue of that which is seen and felt: pressures that build internally, as in bud, and then petal, opening to the waves of life as I learn to steady, recalling that which warms, waters, and softens. Sun warming, petals form their shapes and exhale open across the horizon, and you have that which warms you to open and that which you harden and close and tighten around, and both exhale and grip are a dialogue of your life as you are living. Growing is a journey: you start with where you are, there is the path you travel down, then what you learn, and all the places where you pause and land and hopefully learn and arrive on the way. A path denotes some onwardness: an action, or actions, amassing toward some continuity. An aspiration. In Buddhism: ground, path, fruition.
In the mornings, my practice is simple. Rhythm of breath and body are the grounds I return to, and my eyes bloom and close in dialogue between bringing in all color, light, sound, and texture of the external world, and turning inward toward the solace and still, focusing on the inward vibrant quiet and sound of mind and body terrain. Rooting, I feel myself steady into the the wooden city park bench painted deep evergreen, softened over the weather of seasons. Both practice and the place I return to give ground. I find the places of steadiness in sitting, locating the rhythm of breathing. Watching experience, I feel breath and follow as it rises along the stem of spine, imagining breath moving up to bloom inside the lotus of the heart. Inspiration rises, as lungs fill, and breath shifts from heart toward the sky of mind and wisdom. Exhale is rain or shorelines, water cascading down and out, rolling off of leaf, dripping down stem or bird wing, falling to meet dirt. Sitting, we learn to meet and find the places that are ember, wonder, thunder within our experiences; unearthing our whole embodied cosmology, as body becomes ground for all parts of experience, arising to find holding.
Imagine that which you are creating is a flower. Intention is the earth is the ground you draw up from to start and steady, while aspiration is the sun you grow toward in the sky overhead, years’ worth of light in the distance. There is the seed you plant, the ground in which it space to settle, meeting with the ingredients of time, warmth, and sunlight it takes for a plant to form. You could be rose, be oak, be hellebore, be the rising and falling starlight that guides the day. You start as an idea, or start an idea somewhere, no matter how small, then find the path or action by which to tend to your idea and bring it forward. Meditation is a sensing and feeling of the world, and breath is the connecting point between what is self and what is earth, and as you sit, you begin to notice the distinction between self and earth dissipates in the dialogue between breath as a constant. You grow, and sunlight shines down and brings you upward into form, and then you bloom, in the rooting of coming to ground into your own understanding.
What takes care of the ground of your life? To write this, I drop rosewater in my glass of water, chop up garlic, almonds. Dogwood flowers in the park. I sip lemon balm, dose motherwort, and thank hypericum for arriving me through the colder stillness of a mind and body living in the city in winter. Garlic, sliced thin and fanned out as if birds’ wing, hums in a pool of olive oil. Outside, the plum trees brush soft and white petals and moss green buds cascade in the breeze into the warming air. Inside, the sound is sizzling as allium, rosewater, almond, all fragrant, bloom into the slow heat of the kitchen. Attention, softening from the cold, becomes soft petal on the current of wind, I see it flying by, and return to the root of breathing. I close my eyes and eyelids are thin petals of almond skin. Opening, spoon from flame, taste the fragrant hints of floral, fragrant olive oil.
Ground, path, fruition. Ground is the earth of where you are: your root in the present tense, the essence of possibility, your seed of potential. The path is the practice, or the actions that keep you steady and bring you forward. Fruition is the aspiration -- the ultimate aim, off along a distant horizon, lightyears away; a goal. Noticing where you are, you turn towards a point at which you aim, sensing direction as if a plant pushing up toward a source of light, understanding there is some inner pressure, some budding seed, some creative insistence, some insistent life within you. Path is persistence, is that which you choose repeatedly, is the breath, the word, the color forming, the petal unfolding, the action and momentum, the stem that holds the flower, the form that informs your practice. Fruition is that which is actualized, realized. In Buddhist terms, we say enlightenment. An aspiration: practice, flower, a bloom for all to form.
How does a petal form? Through cells coalescing, finding their forms, meeting pressure, and expanding in a dance between light, temperature, and nutrient. Seed becomes stem, and stem branches out, and leaves, responding to the pressure of cells into petal and becomes leaf, fruit, berry, an by which mouth or ground comes to taste its sweetness, later returning to Earth. , our petals open and close based on inner levels of pressure. It takes at least a season and insistence and environment and days of rain and sun and gallons of water, for fruit to form, and a lotus forms in the mud, which is to say the challenges in life can serve as silt and an opportunity to learn from. Heart, body, mind as flower. How many heartbeats, actions, breaths, or days does it take for you to be and become you?
Running, I watch how buds form blooms. Walking, I see how smiles form. Writing, we may follow an idea as it flows like breath and season: rising, peaking, and fading away. Grounding, what do you sense? Root into the ground of your seat, and feel your breathing. Feel the stem of your spine, watch as sensations rise. Breathing into the lotus of your heart, notice what keeps you upright, notice sunlight, and notice where you bloom. Keep blooming.
From a Past Season:
Nourished by, Nourishing:
Delighted to share I have a new piece over at
— a rich, insightful interview with Buddhist teacher and former monk Scott Tusa. Read through below for Scott’s reflections on leaving the familiar, the nature of Buddhist practice, and interacting with life in an open, compassionate way. Subscribe to deepen your plant wisdom connection with herbalism wisdom from