11 Jun Life in the human garden

‘Shh,’ says my wife, ‘listen…’. I don’t dare move anymore. Now I hear it too. It is the shuffling of an animal in the corner of the garden. ‘Look, there he is,’ whispers my wife, ‘a hedgehog’. ‘What?’ I think to myself, ‘a hedgehog in our garden?’ My wife always spots animals much sooner than I do. A speck of chamois on a mountain face, a marmot disguised as a stone on a piece of rock, the ears of a hare in a field that moment later reveals its body as well. I still don’t see the hedgehog. Carefully, I change my viewing angle and sure enough, after staring for a long time, I see him too. He shuffles through the garden as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to live together in this place. My wife fetches a small bowl of cat food and places it a meter away from him. It is twilight, but now I see him clearly and hear him too: loudly gnawing, he devours the kibble. Then he hurries along the fence to the back, into the narrow slit between the fence and the garden shed. Would he have a hiding place there?

Who dares?
The next morning, another chapter is written in our animal diary. “Look, here they come,” says my wife. I see a great tit on a branch low to the ground, followed by another one a little higher up. A moment later, it turns out to be quite a group. They move as a group: first, one flies a little closer. Then the next one dares to join in, but just a little further away. “Oh, a little sound.” The whole little group flutters back a few meters and looks around busily. The boldest one is already flying forward again. The second is overtaken by the third and flies right up to the thick branch lying over the artificial mini-pond. A little patience later, when they are certain that no nefarious cat is lurking nearby, the first great tit takes a dive and splashes the water all around. My wife is a gardener, and we have a garden that has been developed to be animal-friendly. Behind the pond lies a woodpile made of scrap branches. A little further on is a compost bin. Ground covers grow between the shrubs, a large part of which has claimed the spot of their own accord.

A living garden for human
An animal-friendly garden… does such a thing as a human-friendly living garden also exist, I ask myself. A way of life where people feel at home and safe. Where they can quietly potter around and become one with their surroundings. I have just reread the book ‘Sit’ by Zen Master Deshimaru. Deshimaru is the master who brought Zen to Europe in 1967. In the book, he states that Zen meditation causes a person to return to the ‘normal state’. At first glance, that is a remarkable statement. You would expect meditation to provide something extra, something special, like beautiful clothes, but meditation actually takes something away, leaving the naked normal state, and that state is quite special!

Spontaneous
In line with Master Deshimaru’s statement, I often say that Time Surfing is our normal way of doing things. It brings people back to their natural spontaneity. If we do not get in our own way and create space so that things can present themselves at the right moment, a harmony arises between the various aspects of life, all of which are important: performing tasks, moving your body, taking breathing breaks, engaging in social conversations, tidying up, developing yourself, pausing to reflect on something that happens to pass by. The beauty of it is: if you open yourself up to this ‘human-friendly’ style of working, you also function much better, even within today’s demanding, fast-paced society.

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch