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The Seed & The Plant

EK ONG KAAR KAUR

Gardening in the semi-arid desert of New Mexico is not like gardening anywhere else. There is a certain unforgiving relentlessness to the seasons.

The transition from month to month brings different types of challenges. The brutal winds of spring can gust up to 50 miles an hour. The desert summer has temperatures that might fluctuate 40 degrees Fahrenheit or more between the heat of the day and the cool of the night. Fall is maybe the only time that everything is nice for a while before that mountain cold kicks in for the winter.

And the summer is short. A short growing season for food. God knows what would happen if the trucks filling the shelves of the grocery stores stopped rolling into town.

Most people garden and have something to show for it. For me, I consider myself more of an amateur botanist doing experiments. Sometimes the only things I get out of the experience are philosophical musings.

Lately I have been thinking about the challenge of the seed.

Before you plant a seed, everything seems possible. You can look at a seed and see a perfect plant. A perfect life. Strong and healthy. Productive.

That is why a gardener spends time preparing the soil. To give that seed the very best chance it has to express itself in the most beautiful way possible.

But the reality of the seed is very different. Sometimes a seed does not even sprout. Sometimes the seedling has stunted growth. If the seed does develop in a healthy way, so many challenges come along. Grasshoppers eat the leaves. Bugs suck the juice out of it. Or maybe the challenge is just the weather. A hail storm at the wrong moment can create irreparable damage.

Before the seeds go in the ground, each one has the potential of a perfect life. But by the time the seeds have expressed themselves in their life cycles, hardly any one of them matches that image of perfection.

On the contrary, they have manifested what they can, become damaged in certain ways, healthy in others. Conquering challenge after challenge. And those that survive the struggle inherent in life become fruitful.

The idea of the "perfect plant" is a fantasy from the start. Instead, one needs a certain non-attachment. Give each seed a chance and see what they do. Whatever happens during the season, that is what happens.

We can only do our best to serve their process, and let their stories unfold. Sometimes I wonder if the concept of karam had its roots in our need to explain this simple biological reality.

No two seeds will ever sprout the same. No two people will live the same. Each human has challenges to face. Each life has its own trajectory and arc. Does it end early? Does it end late? What damage happens along the way? What inner strength keeps it going? What fruit does a human life create in the end?

One reason I appreciate watching the land is because gurbani uses so many nature metaphors. When we see how Nature really moves in Her own rhythm, these concepts in gurbani take on a deeper, more relevant meaning.

There is a word - saphalu - it means fruitful. One theme in the Guru Granth Sahib is this issue of how the human life becomes fruitful. How does it complete itself and multiply itself, the way a plant does?

Serving the Guru. Meditating on the Divine. Chanting Gurbani. Being in the company of those who live by their spirit. These are the environments that help a human life, no matter how brief or damaged it might be, come to a place of abundance.

Because every seed has a chance. But not every seed makes it. It is true in the garden. It is true in society.

So the Sikh Masters gave a way for the seed of the human to have the best chance possible. The Gurus gave us a way to go through the struggle inherent in life and feel victorious in the end.

One of the reasons I have been thinking about this so much is because I have reached a time in my life where I have to make peace with the idealism of my youth. That idealism is like the time before planting - where every possibility exists for every aspect of life to be perfect.

But then you go through the journey of time. The challenge. The pain. The disappointment and damage.

And, of course. the blessings. The grace. The victory and the healing.

And you step back, more than halfway through the life cycle, and evaluate. How many leaves have made it? What parts have the predators eaten away? What strength remains? What roots, what flowers, what fruits?

You have to make peace with it all. With the good, the bad and the ugly. With the heart-breaks and the triumphs.

Because there are no do-overs. This is it. This one and only chance to be in this particular body, with these particular opportunities.

And when it is gone, it is gone.

My idealism served me as a young woman. It made me reach for something more than what I saw around me. And in that reaching, I became so blessed. My life has taken me down a road I never knew existed, and it has fascinated me - all the ways the Universe can speak to you.

But taking stock now, acceptance of what is - that is the next part of the journey. Because some seeds never sprouted the way I had hoped, or prayed or longed for. And the only way to deal with that is to embrace what is.

Forgiveness may be nothing more then the peace we make with the gap between the potential of the seed and the reality. What we imagined might happen versus what actually happened.

Forgiveness means no blame, no guilt, no shame. No anything except accepting the totality of life as it exists on its own terms with love, gratitude and affection. It is opening one's eyes wide to see what has happened, and letting go of the picture in the mind that we mistakenly compare it with. In that embrace, you can see the value of what has actually sprouted. And appreciate it.

Isn't that what Guru Nanak said was the lesson we had to learn? To see everything as coming from The One Giver. And to never stop appreciating what the Giver has done?

You start with a vision.

You end up with reality.

And life is just the journey in between.

July 22, 2015

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