I’ve been spending a lot of time with seeds the last few days, and they never cease to amaze and move me. Brand new beings will spring from them, without any more effort on my part than burying them properly, in a spot with access to fresh air, and water, and light.
Last night, as I planted out yet more seeds for the flats that will sit on the corner of the kitchen table (the lettuces having finally all been moved outdoors), I became engrossed in their differing textures, sizes, colors, and shapes. It’s easy to become as enraptured and fascinated as any child if you meditate on seeds for just a few minutes, really.
Of course, you could plant them and never ponder the miracle at all. If you were in a hurry, you might never think twice. If your community were facing starvation, your anxiety for a nourishing result could crush any chance for awareness of a mystical connection. If you were greedy, you might see the seeds as merely a means to a profitable end — and complain about the steep increase in price since the last season’s purchase.
Clockwise from the biggest seed at the bottom of the circle, the seeds of: lima bean, lovage, lettuce, cardinal climber, spinach, mustard, Swiss chard, marigold, globe amaranth, dill, four o’clock, eggplant, snap pea, spider flower, nasturtium, and tomato. At the center is my living family heirloom, a half-runner bean seed.
Personally, I think my culture could use a lot more of us meditating on seeds. Maybe then we would make more sane choices collectively for the long term, thinking not so much about the next tax period, or election, or when we get to retire, if ever, but instead about our grandchildren, or what happens a hundred years from now, or in a hundred generations.
Seeds, although many of their cycles are quite short, may help us take the long view, perceive the actual circle of life — and not a romanticized or culturally-programmed version of it. Often, there is quite a difference between the two.
My own culture typically views seeds as a “resource” to be used and manipulated at will, and many times reduces the seeds and their fruits to products, things, or worse, numbers on a balance sheet. It is easy to see how we got ourselves into the mess we are in now, facing a shortage of crucial energy resources, with severely depleted topsoil, contaminated water and air, beaches awash with plastic and oceans pockmarked with enormous dead zones. This culture, which is unfortunately globally dominant now, could not manage to treat even the most obvious foundations of life with respect.
Under the influence of this kind of reductionist thinking, we cannot perceive ourselves as part of the circle, nor our proper place within it. Such a worldview allows the human being to assume an elevated status (the mighty, entitled Exploiter), while simultaneously degrading most human beings to mere units of monetary value (widget producer or widget consumer). It is convenient, though, if you’d like to forget any moral or ethical duty to your fellows on the way to your end goal.
From within an egoic frame of reference, it’s nearly impossible to recognize that without the work of the seeds, insignificant if one considers their size alone, we would not survive; that because we lack the ability to transform sunlight into a food source we can assimilate, we are, by any scientific definition, a kind of parasite, and unfortunately one that is currently engaged in killing its host.
Life and death, beauty and disfigurement, compassion and cruelty, wisdom and ignorance, the sublime heights and the depths of darkest despair. It’s all there if you look deeply enough.
Maybe I see too much in a seed.
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