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Tending the Garden of Body and Mind
The practitioner must first learn how to take care of their own body and mind, just as a gardener knows how to tend the garden of body-mind to cultivate the flowers of peace and happiness, while also composting the garbage of afflictions into green fertilizer to nourish the flowers. Body and mind are likened to two organic elements, containing both flowers (joy, peace) and garbage (anger, despair, fear, delusion, jealousy), and the practitioner does not run away or merely pray, but must practice embracing suffering, generating peace, and nourishing the flowers of happiness within themselves before they are able to help others.
The practice of mindfulness (Sanskrit: smṛti) begins with the breath and the steps, bringing body and mind together in the present moment. The basic exercises include:
- recognizing the in-breath and out-breath
- following the breath from beginning to end
- being aware of the whole body while breathing
- releasing tension in the body
- generating joy (pīti)
- generating happiness (sukha)
- recognizing and embracing pain
Thanks to mindfulness, concentration, and insight, the practitioner clearly sees the truth of suffering—the First Noble Truth—and courageously returns to observe and to transform suffering, thereby bringing peace and happiness to themselves and to the community.
