Gardening for the Soul

Zeno

Recently, gardening has become more than a metaphor for me. I have followed Candide in a literal sense and found great peace in our garden.

To quote W Beran Wolfe:

If we want to know what happiness is we must seek it, not as if it were a part of gold at the end of the rainbow, but among human beings who are living richly and fully the good life. If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double Dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar gold button that has rolled under the cupboard in his bed room. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living 24 crowded hours of the day.

I first read Voltaire’s Candide when I was 16 and the final lines of the book made an immediate and lasting impression. Candide eventually settles upon devoting his life to simple work and not concerning himself with external affairs:

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Why I have never learned that lesson is quite beyond me, but I have always known its truth at a deep and instinctive level. Desire and worldliness have perhaps been the obstacles for me, and they remain formidable opponents.

One morning I felt a need to bury myself, to soothe my mind in a simple physical task. My wife and I set about pruning the fruit trees in the garden and even as I climbed the ladder, I felt a sense of deep content slowly creeping over my mind.

Contentment – a physical, bodily feeling or an emotion of the mind, a purely mental phenomena. Both; a quiet mind and a restful body combined for a glorious period when all seems right with the world.

Pruning fruit trees is the very embodiment of oneness. Up in those branches, I felt little difference between myself and the tree. We co-existed as I gently snipped last year’s growth to help the tree produce next year’s fruit. It did not feel a destructive act, nor a selfish one – this ancient task flowed, quite naturally between myself and the tree. I felt a kinship, a closeness with an entity so very similar to myself. Two products of evolution in a symbiotic relationship.

No need for complexity or deep thought. No noise, no machinery – I could have performed the task with a simple flint had I needed to.

There was a simple, glorious, rhythmic flow. Mind and body and tree intertwined. Legs and arms and branches melded, two sentient entities in harmony. Two distant cousins, each from the same rootstock moving through the eternal harmony of the seasons. From the deep hibernation of winter to the rebirth of spring and the eventual fruits of Keat’s autumn.

And then the cuttings and the bonfire. No harm to the tree, and so the quiet crackling and smoking of thin branches and last summer’s dried out leaves brought an added heightening of the senses. A visceral pleasure, a meandering of the mind, a meditation where both body and thought drifted in the gentle melancholy of a winter’s morning.

Oneness. So often talked about, so rarely felt. But with what overwhelming pleasure when it happens. A spinning earth, a fiery sun, an infinite universe. A tiny garden with growing, spreading, evolving animals and plants. Water and birds. Spiders, moles, bugs. Earth.

Earth and air, fire and water.

Call it a morning of sudden and welcome revelation. A few hours of profound peace. A sense of gnosis. May there be ever more of such moments.

41 Comments

  1. Had a similar moment of oneness today. Neck deep in a freezing cold sea, bobbing up and down as the moon undulated the waves on the surface. Body frozen, mind cold too, a temporary stasis and with that such peace.

    A return to the shore with eyes closed, the distant winter sun guiding me home with the flying v’s of birds overhead doing likewise.

    Being part of nature, even if for a few brief minutes is a welcome reminder that we are part of something truly wonderful.

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    1. How absolutely stunning. Absolutely wonderful and beautifully described. I was wondering whether to buy the new kayak I have been researching – sitting bobbing around and paddling up and down the coast can also “do it” for me. The trick is to make the experience last – which in my case I find difficult. to permanently blot out the daily litany of worry and anxiety. No wouldn’t that be something!

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  4. Thank you, Anthony. I think of Flow, which I try to grasp, but is somehow found by letting go while still engaged. Is that Presence? Maybe letting go of the old attachments to allow the new to come forth. I hope you have a fruitful year. Best wishes.

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    1. Wonderful, wonderful. Exactly. Flow. The Tao. Maslow’s peak experiences. You are so right – the trick is to live in that flow permanently, if you can! I hope your year is fruitful as well and thank you for your thoughts.

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  7. Oneness! I very much enjoyed imagining the feeling of oneness you describe as you prune fruit trees. I like to think of trees as friends, although sometimes I feel one with nature when I’m walking with it. 🙂

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  14. When I walk around town, without headphones in, without needing to be somewhere, I can find that sense of contentment. Then, when I return home, I can sit at my computer and write or edit my writing and fall seamlessly into the worlds in the page workout slipping into the worries if whether my writing is good enough.

    Thank you for your words, and sharing encouragement to seek the ways we can find and live that peace.

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  18. My little tropical garden is my refuge whether I’m putzing in it or sitting and listening to the birds or watching the lizards…it’s my peace.

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  19. I spent some time the other day re-reading some of your previous postings and it seems I must have somehow missed this gem from January of last year. It’s a wonderful stroll through the benefits of gardening for the soul, and it inspired me to refresh my memory a bit on the subject of Voltaire. I selected my volume of Will and Ariel Durant from the bookshelf called “The Age of Voltaire,” and much to my surprise I found my thin paperback version of “Candide,” pressed as a bookmark in the 900-page volume at the point where they discuss “Candide!” No wonder I couldn’t find it all this time!

    In an interesting sidenote, the authors noted in their treatment of the story, that even though “…Voltaire knew quite well that few men ever encounter so bitter a concatenation of catastrophes as Candide’s. He must have known, too, that though it is good to cultivate one’s garden, to do well one’s individual and immediate task, it is also good to have larger interests than one’s field.” It seems to me that you have concluded the same in your posting here.

    The translation of Candide I have is by Lowell Bair, with an appreciation by Andre Maurois. In his commentary, Mr. Maurois noted that Voltaire’s treatment of the story in “Candide,” brought many ideas into clarity for the readers of the story, but remarked also that “…It is certain that a system imbued with perfect clarity has few chances of being a truthful image of an obscure and mysterious world.” I couldn’t agree more!

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  20. I spent some time yesterday re-reading some of your previous postings and it seems I must have somehow missed this gem from January of last year. It’s a wonderful stroll through the benefits of gardening for the soul, and it inspired me to refresh my memory a bit on the subject of Voltaire. I selected my volume of Will and Ariel Durant from the bookshelf called “The Age of Voltaire,” and much to my surprise I found my thin paperback version of “Candide,” pressed as a bookmark in the 900-page volume at the point where they discuss “Candide!” No wonder I couldn’t find it all this time!

    In an interesting sidenote, the authors noted in their treatment of the story, that even though “…Voltaire knew quite well that few men ever encounter so bitter a concatenation of catastrophes as Candide’s. He must have known, too, that though it is good to cultivate one’s garden, to do well one’s individual and immediate task, it is also good to have larger interests than one’s field.” It seems to me that you have concluded the same in your posting here.

    The translation of Candide I have is by Lowell Bair, with an appreciation by Andre Maurois. In his commentary, Mr. Maurois noted that Voltaire’s treatment of the story in “Candide,” brought many ideas into clarity for the readers of the story, but remarked also that “…It is certain that a system imbued with perfect clarity has few chances of being a truthful image of an obscure and mysterious world.” I couldn’t agree more!

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