Plant-based Meditation: Peaceful Abiding
Staying with the breath, our constant reminder to receive + release
Earlier this year, I led a series of “plant-based meditations” — plant-inspired dharma talk followed by a 20-minute meditation held outside, in a local plant nursery. More background on that series and the first one can be found here. The second is here.
Notes from the dharma talk and meditation are below, and further below is full audio of the talk + guided meditation.
A note on the audio quality: This was recorded on the notes app on my phone as it sat in my lap during the talk so, you know. But it’s authentic and I’m offering it up. You’ll get the gist and hear the birds!
The view—
At the time of this talk, January 22, 2023, it was the Lunar New Year (water rabbit) and the Aquarian new moon. Right now, it’s an Aries full moon. Just before it was the autumnal equinox, the start of Fall. Then it was a Monday, then my birthday. Soon it’ll be something else.
My point is, it’s always something.
It’s nice to have these meaning-making mechanisms, whether astrological, seasonal, logistical or otherwise, to enable us to package up reality and count up the coins of our life. To mark time ritually and remind us that we can always start again.
These frameworks mean virtually nothing to plants (except the general passage of time in terms of light and seasons).
For the natural world, the environment provides meaning. Before, it was torrentially rainy. Plants acted accordingly: full, joyful, thrifty to capture the water. They knew the rain would pass, and it did. Now, it is sunny and dry.
In reality, we can always start again. Plants know this.
Every time you take a breath, you’ve started again. Phew.
Plants are absolutely *covered* in stomata (like we are), or porous mechanisms on their leaf tops and bellies, stems, and roots through which they pulsate and regulate: they inhale and exhale air as needed, and they manage water loss
Stomata are structures that open and close, that breathe, part of the plants’ vascular system that enables receive and release. The specifics depend on the environmental context (is it rainy? is it hot and sunny? is it nighttime?) but it’s always a taking in and then a release.
This is how growth occurs; this is how they buckle down during drought; this is how they make food from the sun. It’s an endless process of transformation juxtaposed by the constancy of it. Never-ending change! Can you relate?
We, too, have this capacity.
We adapt to environmental changes, sometimes whether we like it or not, and all the while we’re breathing. Taking in and releasing air like stomata opening and closing.
Simply breathing is one of the most radical mechanisms we have for transformation: moving through hard things, wonderful things, and just the basic passage of time.
Let’s just sit and breathe with ourselves, while plants breathe with themselves. Let’s all breathe together.
The meditation—
(Recommend having a houseplant nearby, or doing this outdoors if you can)
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