Down to Earth - Living Service
It’s said that if you want a pet then you should first try keeping a plant alive. I had a neighbor whose child was allowed to own a rabbit after they had kept a Tamagochi alive for two weeks. It seems far easier to tend to a game with bleeps, bloops, pixels and buttons than it is to tend to the needs of a real-life being. Understanding the basic necessities of a life form can teach us a lot about how to nurture ourselves and others. This lays a necessary foundation for our social and emotional wellness.
The Path of Service
Caring for others, animals or house plants is to be of service. Serving others, we put our momentary desires aside to make room for something/someone else who is in a state of need.
As well as the service we provide, for a time, one can escape the confines of their personal world and internal chatter, coming to comprehend that of another’s.
Time away from the personal ‘chatter’ of the mind is meditation.
Dropping our attachments is told to be enlightening.
A garden is a place so full of insight. There is an array of knowledge to be learned, there are many beautiful things to be found and seen, but nothing will deliver greater richness to the land than the intentional service of another person.
Bhakti Yoga is a known devotional path of rendering loving service. In Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) there are many ways to devote to realizing one's own true nature. We’re all different, so doesn’t it make sense that ‘the way’ may actually consist of many ways? ‘Sanatana Dharma’ means ‘journey to realization’. This may be different from one being to another.
There is a lifetime's worth of knowledge, deeds, services and methods with which one can understand this existence that we share. There appears no singular way to better yourself or find meaning in life. And so, Sanatana Dharma presents a multitude of ‘paths’, free for the choice of any devotee or seeker. Of which, Bhakti Yoga is the title for the path of rendering loving service to others.
Gifting time, wealth, food and service to others; we break down the barriers of our own personal suffering. We are all alike in our ability to suffer. As ‘personal’ matters are dissolved, one can see ‘self’ in all others - they awaken to the matters beyond their individual nature. This is the significance of Bhakti Yoga.
Tending to the People's Garden
Service is the underlining way of gardening. I’ve noticed as I tend to vegetable patches and fruit trees that all I am doing is answering to the needs of very many ‘individuals’. To serve me and my family with sustenance, I need to better serve the plant life outside.
What I give to the vegetable patch may return to me, in the same way, that the loving service to others may be returned in other unforeseen ways.
As well as the fruits of the garden, there are many healthy returns that come as thanks to your time and attention:
Time spent outdoors is medicine for the soul - vitamins from the sun, clean air and nature are all known stress relievers.
Getting your hands into the soil is good for the immune system - the many bacterias in the soil are known to help strengthen your body's immune response. To
reap local, organic harvest is good for the body, environment and biodiversity that surrounds us.
There are incalculable returns to come of the garden. After all, tending to the ground is as old as mankind. Learning to serve the ground offers the mind a concept of ‘self’ that is beyond our individual ‘selves’. There is the chance to understand that the way in which you can offer yourself may indeed come back to you in return.
What Works for the Garden Can Work for Us All
Attention given to the source of your food is the attention given to the source of yourself. The origin and journey of your food end with you. After all, you are what you eat! The fast-paced, consumer-friendly way of busy, modern life, has us ignorant to the production of our own building blocks. Plants are the single medium between you and the soil! Have you ever paused to think about how closely related that makes you to a hand full of dirt? That’s the grit from stone and the poop from minibeasts. It’s one vessel away from becoming a part of you!
Watching the food come from the ground, feeding said ground with fallen vegetation and playing witness to the bugs, grubs and other bacterial life forms under the earth that turn waste into dinner, I feel as though I have learned a valuable lesson in service.
The transformational effect one can have over a small patch of land demonstrates physically what it means to live in a way that serves. As plants and other lifeforms can flourish, one can find themselves by tending to the needs of others. Just as the devotional path of Bhakti Yoga is understood.
Like clockwork, all of the processes beyond your door become your food. They become you. And it doesn’t stop there. Your own digestion would not function without the synchronized service of your gut microbiome. There is a world inside of you that you are feeding. This world is responsible for feeding you, and your ‘waste’ is then the beginning of the next cycle.
A garden is a place so full of insight. There is an array of knowledge to be learned, there are many beautiful things to be found and seen, but nothing will deliver greater richness to the land than the intentional service of another person.
I can see myself in the garden that I serve. The significance of my service is made clear by the prospering life around me. Surely this physical, natural and living example of loving service and its turnovers, spans deeper into the human condition. In such a way that can validate the path of Bhakti Yoga — being of service to others.
We are stronger together. The time we give is time we gain. Not every crop can flourish and some efforts may be lost. But we’re never out of options when our hand turns to service.
How may you be of service today?
