The garden you tend to most.

By tending to others and the world around us, we tend to ourselves.

Our conception of who we are is quite limited and limiting. We conceive of ourselves as our bodies, our feelings and perceptions, our thoughts, beliefs and positions. We often feel separate from others, segregated to a lonely and isolated existence. We have a deep yearning for connection with nature and contact with others. Most of us can intuit that our conception of who we are is limiting. We feel that bondage.

The Buddha taught that the examination of the self begins with examining the five skandhas. The self is composed of these five skandhas, and by examining the five skandhas we can arrive at the wisdom of selflessness.

The first of the skandhas is the rupa skandha, or aggregate of form. The rupa skandha refers to not only our own physical form, but more generally to everything that we can see, hear, smell, taste or touch. All matter is rupa skandha. Our environment and all beings, the entire universe, all that appears and exists is rupa skandha, our aggregate of form.

Our own body is the result of our past actions, and thus the most karmically significant rupa skandha based on our past experience. Our own physical body is the garden that we tend to daily, that we look after the most and identify with. But our rupa skandha is not only our physical body, it is also the environment and world around us.

Start seeing all form as your form. Start seeing your 'self' as your setting, your neighborhood, your world. When we appreciate our rupa skandha in this way, we want to take good care not only of our own body, but the environment and beings around us.

Start by tending to your own physical body with gentleness, attentiveness and kindness. Extend that to your neighborhood and community. Extend that to the whole world.

Let your gentleness, attentiveness and kindness spread.

By tending to others and the world around us, we tend to ourselves.