Early this morning as I was leaving my house to start my day, (Tuesday 22 October 2019 in Columbus, Ohio)), I was thinking about my work and how it was unfolding! The funniest thing happened!!! As I was walking along thinking about this social justice project and that social justice project and how my work was evolving to help them, this statement just bubbled up!!!!!!!!
" Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." Rumi
Thich Nhat Hahn, on his way back to his beloved home from the US where he had met with Martin Luther King and other activists in the USA, Vietnam, when he got the news of his exile, settled in France which accepted him and began building what is now three Zen Buddhist meditation practice centers in the Thich Nhat Hahn tradition. The Vietnamese government eventually tore down the temples his community had founded in Vietnam and violated and chased away the masses of the Vietnamese people who had gone there to become monks and Buddhist nuns. It was a horrible scene. Many people are still traumatized today.
I had planned to stay three months at Plum Village, but my retreat was so successful I was literally overwhelmed with my success just after 6 weeks and left the retreat, as I said, overwhelmed with my insights and experiences. After regrouping, I returned to Plum Village again and have now become a regular practitioner at these Meditation Practice centers, which include three in the USA, Batesville, Mississippi, Outside of New York City and outside of Santa Cruz California. "The practice" as we call it has profoundly changed my life.
The practice has also clearly shown me the path to transforming myself and how to do that. The path has been rocky at times, odd and weird, sometimes disappointing but in the end always for my spiritual growth. It took me about 5 years to understand what had happened to me back in 2014 at my first spiritual retreat, and what the import of my first retreat experience was.
I have never duplicated that first truly overwhelming and amazing and enlightening connection with the ultimate reality, however, I have always continued to grow spiritually, sometimes going backwards a little, which now I know is part of going forward! That apparently is how you go forward: backward, forward, backward forward and so on!!!! Y'all know.
In any case, this morning when I recalled Rumi's wise words "Today I am wise, so I am changing myself," I started to smile And after a moment I smiled! And I got it. And I started smiling to myself!!!
I had in essence caught myself trying to make plans etc. etc. etc. So I smiled and started to laugh a little. And then I started reflecting on what work could I do that would grow me? Cultivate me? Nurture my spiritual growth? And then I smiled and I remembered how I got involved in all this movement work in the first place, back in about 2005, 17 years ago!!!!
Urban gardening!!!!
And horticulture, growing and selling flowers.
Not only did I remember how "my food movement work" began, but I remembered how happy it made me and how happy I was in those days!!! I always had a song on my lips and in my heart! I was always happy, smiling, happy to help customers, happy to work. I was always the first one to work and even though I really did not want to go home, I did!!! I slept well, made my neighbors happy with all the flowers and plants on my porch and my friends smiled when they came to my home which had become a greenhouse! (Okay maybe I went a bit too far when I started taking the furniture out to make room for plants, but I was in love!)
I also remembered volunteering that summer at Alamar Organoponico outside of Havana in 2008 and how deliriously happy I was working there. I only worked the mornings, 5 days a week. The afternoons were too hot. I could not do it!!!! I love the two gentleman I worked for. They were very kind. They were older than I was. Ruchi was 84 about and he worked all day!!!! He finally quit at about 90 a few years ago. He shared with me he was fed up with his small salary!!!! (Maybe he was just blowing off steam that day and went back, but I didn't want him to quit (I didn't say anything.) but I was scared he would die if he quit! He was making like 25 cents a day! (Even in Cuba that isn't much! I do not know why his salary was so low, just that it was.)
I love helping customers there too! Many would come in looking for medicinal herbs to treat a health problem. They could not afford traditional medicine. I learned a lot helping them. I worked in the herb section.
Others came in asking for plants for their Yoruba spiritual practices.
It was quite large about 40 by 30 feet at least. I watered, weeded, helped customers, sometimes did some planting, harvesting, helping with some of the other areas.Everyone treated me well. And it helped a lot that I looked Cuban, i.e., my brown skin. I did not attract attention as an obvious foreigner.
Another job that I thrived on was cleaning horse stalls and grooming horses; It was nirvana! I worked at Grenoble Stables in Grandville, Ohio. I also loved the owners who were wonderful and down to
Earth. It was me!
I realized, I just needed to go back to the farm; it was that simple! Yet it had taken some time for me to realize that that was all I needed to do. Go back to the farm and horticulture work I loved and which brought me so much happiness in the first place. I thought I could do some writing on the side but my spiritual practice was in the garden, on the farm.
It was some time ago that I realized why this work made me so happy on a more profound level. I realized that when I did this work I stopped thinking! I stopped thinking and just fell, without thinking and without awareness into the present moment, as Thich Nhat Hahn letting it take me along, which I now know is the key to happiness and everything good!!! Nowadays I am aware of that, back then I wasn't. I was just happy.
Since that time, I have learned from so many spiritual teachers, Thich Nhat Hahn to Christian to Hindu and to Yoruba spiritual teachers, that the whole goal of any spiritual practice, i.e. to grow you spiritually, is to stop your mind, to stop the thinking. And without being aware of it. this happened to me so lovely when I worked at these jobs in the past. Yep, the thinking just pretty much stopped.
On my first retreat at Plum VIllage back in 2014, doing what THich Nhat Hahn taught, my thinking stopped altogether and I was overwhelmed by what was left when there was absolutely no thinking.
In any case, I am truly relieved to have been shown the way back to the farm and to happiness as my way of life, my spiritual practice and truly a beautiful way to live. I am looking forward to see what life will have to offer settling into this old/new spiritual practice:gardening and small scale urban farming!
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