Einstein and Buddha in the Garden
Buddha and Einstein were in the garden with me yesterday. We tended the earthly things all influenced by celestial flows above and below and around this spinning globe. A garden can teach us many things about the theory of relativity and as we work in the amid the spring flowers, the birch flowers that look like a monarch butterfly chrysalis, the hooked eagle beak of an aquilegia flower, the lion’s roar of a dandelion (Dente de lion) leaf, the hum of a bee and the warmth of sunlit soil, we can’t help but notice the connections. We can’t help but see the morphing in and out of form: tree bark like elephant skin, grass like an insect’s wings. The bird wheeling above our heads is the egg in the nest in the camellia tree. The calendula flower opening to the sun, is the petal in our salad, is the warmth of digestion after a good meal.
The ancients through time and across cultures have talked about the oneness of all things. Source as energy, divine being, God, Ram, the spirit of place, the spirit in us, everything connected. Ficino in his patron’s villa in Florence in the 1400’s spoke of us being made of stardust, he saw the slow orb of planets within, us a microcosm of the macrocosm. Drop away Ego and Body, and you have Soul: timeless, formless. Ageless.
The zodiac was named as such because it was observed that certain constellations would be in the same place in the sky each year as the chick chipped its way out of the egg, the lamb was born, the migrations began, sap rose and leaves fell. Cancer for spring, Sagittarius for the godwit on the wing, a circus of animals and plants marking dates on a calendar here on earth and amongst the stars overhead.
I picture Einstein in the garden seeing these forms, these patterns, these extraordinary mathematical equations of grace, circles of life and death and life again. I think he must have been a shaman, a wise medicine man who spoke in scientific tongues, and as such was awarded handsomely for his wisdom. Yet, take away the blackboard and the theories and he was as Buddha in the garden, under the tree, looking deep into nature, he was the shaman with the drum counting out the rhythm of time.
Sages come and go through time. Some we hear of and many we don’t, but if we dare to look, they are right there with us. Always. Nature is a galaxy of kindred spirit. The more I have come to realise this, the bigger my own heart has become. The easier it is not just to see the tree, but to become the tree. And in moments of loneliness, light and breath can show us the way to the gods in everything.
In every thing.
Birdsong, our song, whale song each so full of spirit, lifting us to places beyond the “I” of us. The hum of the bee an ‘om’ of life. The garden is sound as well as form.
Yesterday in the garden, I took the photo of the tulip that accompanies this post. This tulip almost spent, blown open by time, looked to me like the birth of our cosmos, botanic big bang theory.
Einstein, chewing grass with Buddha under the tree looked at the photo, laughed at me and said, “ah yes my friend, look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
In my garden in spring