In This Moment, with a quote from Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now
My champa tree, with about six years of growth, has a wandering branch structure that I believe is of museum quality for its gracefulness. Also known as frangipani or plumeria, its plentiful spread is visible from my wide front-bedroom window. It needs only water. Opposite to this situation of beauty without effort is that of a young champa outside my compound wall.
Having driven past the opened gate into my home one day, I returned outside to check on the young champa, which when offered to me had first been described as possibly red (a champa’s more frequent color is milk white). “Did I want it?” Delighted, I’d said yes! It was planted, like the others outside the brick wall, in a tall, cream-in-coffee-color painted cage. My sad, earlier lesson had been that cows rub their horns on trees and the bark of several of mine had been badly but not irrevocably damaged. This one was safe from that, but of my twenty trees, this young champa was taking my greatest efforts to keep it alive.
My inspection this day revealed that three branches were three-quarters close to dying due to their characteristic of being swollen and fleshy. I entered my home and returned in work clothes.
In this moment, wearing work gloves and holding quarter-inch wide rope and scissors, I assessed how I was to save these branches of the tree. Putting the rope and scissors into one of the rectangular jali openings of the wall, I gently moved each of the branches in the direction it needed to grow to see if I could tie each one of them in such a way that the areas of deep creases I was now looking at would straighten. The cage, in place to prevent harm, was paradoxically preventing the tree’s natural horizontal or mildly angled growth upwards.
Ever so briefly, I was aware that my mind was totally focused on this situation—with no distracting, interruptive thoughts. With a patience born of love, I noted that the champa also had its first blooms of deep pink upper petals rising from lower, yellow curves. I cradled a first branch. My free hand wove the rope among the leaves then slowly inched the branch into position. As I tied a knot around an upright, sturdier branch, I kept my glance moving between them to determine the exact length of rope needed. Done, I continued with the other two. Holding my remaining rope and gloves, I paused to examine the results of this new, trapeze-like appearance among the branches, thought yes—then smiled.
And from The Power of Now, “All that you ever have to deal with, cope with, in real life—as opposed to imaginary mind projections—is this moment. … There is nothing wrong with striving to improve your life situation. You can improve your situation but not your life. … Life is your deepest inner Being. It is already whole, complete, perfect. Your life situation consists of your circumstances and your experiences.”*
My realization is, “The moment is undivided attention, of being so occupied that our only focus is … in this moment.”
*Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, pgs. 70, 71.