Daily Meditation: Thursday, January 10, 2013

Experiences - like fruit stones you bury in the soil

01/10/2013

Supposing someone brings you fruit from a type of tree you have never come across. You eat the fruit, but is that enough for you to know the tree that has produced it? No, to know the tree, do not throw away the stone as you usually do, but bury it in the earth, because it will show you what sort of tree it was picked from. The stone is contained in the fruit, but the tree is contained in the stone. In order to know the stone’s secrets, you have to bury it and wait, watching how the sun and water work on it so that a tree will grow, with roots, a trunk, branches, leaves and, again, fruit. What lesson can we draw from this image of the stone? That each experience in life should not merely be savoured; it should also be considered as a seed you place in the soil to see what will come up. Which means you must reflect on everything that happens to you, so that in future you will know what to do with the ‘fruits’ you receive – whether you should throw them away, eat them or plant them to perpetuate them. That way you will avoid many mistakes.