symbiosis

EVERYTHING IS ONE THING - EVEN THE PARTS

haiku crossroads I feel intuitively that nature always backs up systems with alternative options. However, nature also likes to control populations. Too many yucca? Hold back the moths. Yucca shortage? Amp up the next generation of yucca-specific moths. But, having this limit, if such is actually the case, would be far too dangerous, is my own guess; so I'm betting there are backup pollination strategies that yucca scientists have yet to discover.

QUERENT The backup strategy has been discovered. Where yucca moths are absent, yuccas will not produce seeds unless they are hand pollinated.

"What truly sets this genus apart from other flowering plants is their unique method of pollination: A specific moth that is genetically programmed for stuffing a little ball of pollen into the cup-shaped stigma of each flower. Like fig wasps and acacia ants, the relationship is mutually beneficial to both partners, and is vital for the survival of both plant and insect."

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0902a.htm

haiku crossroads The great leap in understanding is to see nature as one body.

We take for granted the myriad little interactive lives that compose the ecology of our own physiology. Or we easily picture the aquarium of a single cell. We notice that slime moulds (sic) can split up into a host of little slugs. Everyone accepts the 'group mind' of the extended ant or bee 'colony'. This yucca-moth thing is one physiology in the same sense. We look at a wood or a small tribe of daises and it is a unity of apparently disparate entities. The ancients were aware of this. The angels and devas of place. Of rivers and hills and valleys and caves...and so on. The implications of a living universal 'Multibeing' are well worth holding in mind at all times; especially so when out and about practising the magical/mystical art of classical haiku in the wilds of the countryside or urbania. Furthermore, with respect to invisibly unified systems of life, anything that has form has an elemental spirit at least. Even that rusty microwave, discarded carelessly in the long grass by the side of the path, overgrown with brambles. There is no such thing as an unoccupied form is the uncanny truth. If it has a shape it has an ethereal resident(s). This perceptible knowledge is the fruit of the gift of the renaissance of mythic consciousness in the modern mind, which we can easily learn from the pine and the bamboo. The little poems some call haiku are simply spoor which litter the wayless way in our passing.

This is why I strongly recommend that all students keep a haiku diary. It's sort of like a doggy-poo bag. ^_^

haiku crossroads

Help Protect Our Garden Birds

QUERENT That last sentence just does it for me. A perfect ending to today's lesson!

haiku crossroads The point all readers should take on board is that our works on earth are residual. The journey is everything. The more we notice this the more we realise that vanity's production line is simply fertiliser for the distractions of memory. We are in a living movie (memory) and we also occupy a living mystery (the now of eternity). The journey is comprised of both these aspects. My guess is that the middle way raised to apex is the best bet for a nice trip. Otherwise we tend to see-saw between things and get erroneously stabilised in an attempt to live in the memory movie. This is why 'spiritual' therapies emphasise 'the now'. To compensate. Once we achieve some sort of a balanced position (for example by practising classical haiku with due diligence) we go for a resolution of the conflict between memory's virtual movie and 'the living moment' in eternity. This is and will be discussed further here - early morning dream. The teaching also ties in very much with this important explanation - Haiku Evolution, at least in my somewhat extensive experience.