Flowers as Teachers for Joy… and Mindfulness
A story of Joy and Mindfulness enriching each other
On Saturday June, a good friend, brought flowers to our dinner party. I’d asked if she could bring some from their garden, but by mid-October they were all withered away.
So instead she brought a bouquet of 4 red roses with baby’s breath, greens and 2 large yellow beautiful sunflowers. I arranged them in my favorite blue vase.
Roses, baby’s breath and sunflowers, symbolizing a fullness of beauty, or more generally symbolizing a full, joyous life.
Looking now at the arrangement, my mind goes to the beauty of these flowers, how they reflect an ideal of life for many of us in this country of plenty. These flowers were bright, and dense, no gaps of emptiness, and full of life and happy colors. Our ideal lives may be like that: full of things to do, lots of friends, happiness, just moving from one happy moment to the next, all the time.
The other side of Joy
We may not live up to that ideal, it would be hard! But in seeking joy all the time we may sometimes get really into the happiness. Even carried away with it, perhaps wanting to stay up late and enjoy ever more time with this joy.
It’s possible that with this full life, lots of good stuff, we lose sight of our thoughts and emotions, as we move quickly along through pleasure. I have a real worry about losing myself in happiness. Losing contact with myself as I focus on outside pleasure.
Before June and our other friends arrived for dinner Saturday I’d bought some flowers at Trader Joe’s. TJ offers so many bright flowers, but I was attracted to something white, and bought 2 kinds of greens to go along with it, roscos and eucalyptus. Thought I’d arrange something simple, where the angles of the stems provide the beauty rather than the colors, and the shapes of the greens would enhance the arrangement. Home, I’d arranged them into 4 small oases of calm and put them around the living room.
A simple Japanese Ikebana arrangement. Ikebana is a spiritual, mindful way of flower arranging. This arrangement symbolizes calm, peacefulness and mindfulness. Uses a complex white flower with roscos and eucalyptus.
The gift of Mindfulness, a Complement to Joy
We had a great evening, lots of chatter and good food.
When our guests had departed I sat on the couch to feel deeply into the emotions of the evening and noticed the flowers, June’s bright and full, mine understated (IMHO).
I thought they were the perfect pair. Bright and full for the time we were with friends, spare and calm for the time after, this time of rest and reflection. And, yes, emotions of gratitude for these friends, for our access to food and shelter, and for our health also came in.
The varieties of intensity in both arrangements had reminded me of our good times and also held me in a calm space where I could feel, and understand.
Feeling deeply
As I write this, Robert Frost’s poem, The Tuft of Flowers, comes to mind. In it, he works alone in a large field, feeling isolated, until he sees some tall growing flowers another worker left behind. Were they left on purpose, he wonders, then answers himself….
The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
Ikebana-Nature for country meditation? Roses-Couch for urban?
For awhile now I’ve joked with friends that when I’m in the country, far from the city, surrounded by nature, I need a different, easier kind of mindfulness.
In the country, I just need to be present and aware of all that is calm around me. But in the city I need to sit quietly and meditate on my couch, eyes closed, in order to find the calm presence that is a promise of mindful meditation.
An Invitation to understanding for you, the Reader
Why don’t you play with that, and get back to me in a comment at the end of this piece? See what it’s like to intend for mindfulness to be in you when you’re in your dwelling, and then again when you’re outside in nature. What do you notice? Is it anything like my experience? Or not?
What is breath meditation for, really? Isn’t it a wonderful vehicle to bring us into the present? Is it possible that when surrounding ourselves with the calm simplicity of nature, that nature is doing exactly what breath meditation does when we sit in meditation surrounded by our lists of projects and devices and books?
Perhaps there are two ways to bring us to an awareness of life right now, as it is, without a need to make it better, but rather just to “be” for a short while, without living in that other, ordinary awareness of needing to grow, or solve problems, to knock a few things off the to-do list.
One way to to drip into mindful awareness is to sit with nature, take it in as it is in the moment. The second way is to sit, close the eyes, follow the breath, be present through focus on the breath.
Or perhaps is the way to simply “be”. Whether it’s in nature or on the couch.
Thank you June for the arrangement of roses, a reminder that I can live fully, happy, engaged. And I’m grateful for my training in Ikebana to add in slowness, calm and peace. I think they complement each other. I don’t want to be all thoughtful Donald, and I don’t want to be all playing around Donald. These two ways of being need each other.
Maybe they even require each other?
It has been written by Thich Nhat Hanh that left and right require each other. If there is only one hand there is no left or right. Similarly how can there be joy unless there is some other feeling to contrast with it?
