THE THREE GARDENS OF RELATIONSHIPS

Dan Kurlapski - 9 August 2020

Whether it be a work, personal, family or romantic relationship, Zen Buddhism believes there to be three gardens that require nurturing.

However, not all three require you.

There’s:
My Garden
Your Garden
Our Garden

These exist in any relationship.

The garden each of us is most familiar with is ‘my garden’ which contains flowers and weeds.

Flowers represent all of the goodness you bring in the form of good habits and energy.
Weeds represent all of the not so useful habits and energy you may bring.

Often, people step into someone else’s garden with good intention to share their flowers, to share how good the world could be.

What is often missed though, is that in bringing your garden into someone else’s you also bring your weeds.

Your world is simply not their world and we have no right to try and make their world look like our own.

You are distinct.
As are they.

Sovereign, co-independent beings.

However...there is another garden.

Our garden.

Available to us to come together in.

To show up in relationship with another, holding good intention and without ego.

To play. To work. In synergy and cohesion.

Stay there too long though and you run out of flowers. All the goodness you have to offer.

What’s left now?

Weeds. Your traits and behaviours that aren’t so useful.

So be sure to return back to your own garden.

Regularly and consistently.

To attend to the responsibility of the work needed to be done there, in your own garden.

The weeding required to create space and expand your capacity for care, impact, play and positive influence that can then be brought into the world when you return to ‘our garden’.

Let’s play in our garden. Often and frequently. 

And as we do, let’s be ready to get our hands dirty once again and return to our own garden, remembering, our weeds are our potential 🌱