here is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

our mind is a garden,
your thoughts are the seeds,
the harvest can be either flowers or weeds.

Author Unknown
 

our garden will reveal yourself.

Henry Mitchell

hen I see
Heaven and earth as
My own garden,
I live that moment
Outside the Universe.

A Zen Harvest: Japanese Folk Zen Sayings, p. 53

Gardens
part seven

n our everyday garden grow the rosemary, juniper, ferns and plane trees, perfectly tangible and visible. For these plants that have an illusory relationship with us, which in no way alters their existentiality, we are merely an event, an accident, and our presence, which seems so solid, laden with gravity, is to them no more than a momentary void in motion through the air. Reality is a quality that belongs to them, and we can exercise no rights over it.

Leo Lionni

he many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, 1996, p. 101

n the assemblies of the enlightened ones there have been many cases of mastering the Way bringing forth the heart of plants and trees; this is what awakening the mind for enlightenment is like. The fifth patriarch of Zen was once a pine-planting wayfarer; Rinzai worked on planting cedars and pines on Mount Obaku. ... Working with plants, trees, fences and walls,  if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment.

Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31

Garden Sanctuaries for a Techno-World
Philosophy Notepad > Gardens 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Philosophy Notepad > Gardening 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
Philosophy Notepad > Beauty & Harmony 1 | 2 | 3
Spiritual Gardens