Pebble Meditation - Flower

“Breathing in, I see myself as a flower. Breathing out, I feel fresh. Flower, fresh.”

The first of the four Pebble Meditations to cultivate happiness as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. Flower, fresh. So descriptive that it takes little effort to establish the image in my mind. I like this meditation as I find it quickly establishes a base mindset from which I can guide myself to inner peace and calm.

When I am the flower, I feel connected to the earth. I feel the sun that nurtured me. I feel the soil that nourished me. I taste the rain that made me strong. This connection reminds me that we are all 'inter-are'. There is no independent self as the perception of me or mine is an illusion. I am made up 'non-I' elements of which I depend.

Awesome, reassuring concept that makes it impossible not be an environmentalist. We all know this to be true but contrived circumstances conspire to distract us until we forget to remember. Flower, fresh allows me to begin anew.

“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-“ with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be.” - Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926)