Taoist Garden Rubric

(A Mothers' Day Meditation)

Taoism is the watercourse way. Its guiding principle is running water; its moral imperative, simply to seek the easiest path downhill. The English word "elegance" approaches its inscrutable essence. "Beauty follows function," was Frank Lloyd Wright's rough read. Over-elaboration is Taoism's deadliest sin. Unnecessary adornment and unnecessary activity are, respectively, its esthetic and operational anathemata. It is the place where "less is more."

Spontaneity and serendipity are the chief fruits of Taoist gardening. Individual plants and the larger environmental interactions are trusted to dance their own dance. Since plants can make light into food and we can't, they are, in a significant sense, smarter than we are. Though relatively motionless, furniture they ain't. The network between plants and each other, between plants and the spinning cosmos is fragile; it behooves us, then, to reason together regarding landscaping initiatives before their irreversible implementation tears subtle--but vital--bonds. Despite the billions of dollars invested in commercial lawn-order hogwash, plants require no dictator armed with the latest store-bought military-industrial petrochemical gimmickry. Rather, they deserve compassionate watering and respect as beings of light clever enough to avoid the nuisance of locomotion.

Unflagging awareness focused on the plants with respect to their context cannot fail to yield rich rewards. Care must be taken not to drown otherwise-hearty indigenous species unfortunate enough to find themselves adjacent to effete, water-guzzling European imports (". . . there goes the neighborhood!") . But the whole shebang--the whole damned nine yards!!!!!--needs carefully targeted twice-a-week evening watering throughout the summer in order to flourish joyously. Fortunately, no entertainment provides a better opportunity for exercise--physical and spiritual alike--than work in a garden. Sunset, moreover, is both the most efficient time to irrigate and the pleasantest.

Characteristically, jingling consumerist propaganda has reduced "nature's call" to sheer anal compulsion. More meaningfully, she beckons to each and every one of us, her children: not with a Jewish mother's ceaselessly annoying pleas for attention, but as a trustworthy older friend hails younger ones--just to come out and play in the life-sustaining incandescence of this precious day!