Let Them Be.

by Aranyakananda

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”

– Osho

The words above are currently striking me quite heavily. Not as a metaphor for something bigger, but literally. At my office in the back of the building we have a concrete patio and a nice lilac bush. When it bloomed last year, a co-worker and I went on a mission to fill the office with the aroma and the sense of life that the flowers emitted. He cut off a branch and put them in a watered vase in his office. I did the same in my cubicle. He put some at the front desk.

And I was thinking of doing the same this year. But while there is not necessarily anything wrong with picking flowers or in this case trimming off a branch for your enjoyment, I am finding this year that it is much more of a spiritual experience to go out to where this flower chose to bloom.

To sit beside it.
To feel the sun fall upon your face just as it falls upon the plant.
To take in its aroma in its natural environment.
To feel the breeze, and hear the scuttle of the leaves along with it.
To recite a few mantras before it.
To thank it for simply being right where it is.

I guess it’s just the bhakt yogi in me. Also it provides a nice escape from the normalcy of my cubicle. If I kept the flowers at my desk, they would lose the exceptional quality they have in their natural environment. They would become mundane.

Also call me a tree-hugging hippie but I love it that there is a weed growing straight up from under one of the wooden benches out there, and it is growing straight between two of the planks of the bench and it has not come to any harm.

Aum Suryaya Namaha
Jai Hari Aum

Aum
Bhuh Bhuvah Svah
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dheemahi
Dhiyo Yo nah Prachodayat