Two-Minute Tulip Meditation

"Two lips must insist on two more to be kissed, or they'll never know what love can do..." (from the song "To Each His Own" by Jay Livingston & Ray Evans)

Tulips have enchanted me this Spring. I'm smitten. The word-play with "two lips" makes me think of a chaste kiss, something gentle, graceful, and holy. Known by the genus "Tulipa," tulips are bulbiferous geophytes of the lily family, "Liliaceae." Hermaphroditic, they exhibit a gentle balance of male and female traits. Anyone who loves Nature and has encountered Spring in the Midwest has experienced the thrill of the brightly hued yellows, reds, oranges, pinks, purples, and whites. From a distance, they are completely enthralling, like a beloved beckoning - completely irresistible. You might say, they have us at "Hello!"

It is the deep soulfulness of tulips that has enraptured me this Spring. They often have a surprise burst from within that we can only see by altering our perspective, getting up close and peering into the center. We can learn from the center. What awaits is sheer Mystery, absolute Joy - like the centermost region of a holy sanctuary, pure and lustrous, quietly hidden and unutterably alluring. To gaze upon this loveliness, one must alternate between breathlessness and the shivers. And deep appreciation of their beauty requires entering that still center point, where we find ourselves open, peaceful, and at rest.

Here's a way in... "one of the doors into the temple," as Mary Oliver might say. A simple meditation:

Approach a bunch of tulips or a single bulb in bloom with reverence and curiosity. Note its regal dignity from a distance, the way it carries itself in the breeze, swaying slightly, but not cowering. Allow yourself a moment for composure, for noticing your breath. Feel how its color-burst draws you near, closer, closer, until you feel engulfed by its harmonious balance and beauty. Rest a moment. Notice your heart rate and respiration. Relax in the presence of such beauty. Imagine yourself one of these beauties, just beginning to open, and unfurl yourself, extending more fully into light and warmth and moisture. Imagine yourself bathing in the glow of genuine Joy from crawling creatures, flying insects, and morning dew. Imagine yourself glowing from within.

Now, step back a moment. See the tulip(s) against the background shades of spring growth, reddish-purples morphing into greening stems and leaves. How brilliant are the tulips now? They belong right where they are, just as they are. So do you. Completely at home in this microcosm.

Creep closer, closer, closer still. What do you notice? Your side-only view reveals the supple stem and cup or star-shape as the bulb is opening, its pointed "wings" of green leaves providing stability and a graceful frame. Now, bend down, genuflecting beside your favorite tulip. Take a deep breath so as not to disturb the reverence. Wait for a moment of quiet, calm, and equanimity. Ready? Peer inside.

A stunning burst of colors, shapes, and light conjoin! Such surprise, such an elixir of Life! Six distinct, basifixed stamens are arranged in two whorls of three, with filaments shorter than the tepals and dilated towards their base. Each stigma has three lobes with three chambers and ovaries embedded in their pistils. They flow in their self-expression, navigating fluidly as female-male hermaphrodites. Totally open. Wholly themselves. Completely connected. As you note the mixes of hues within the interior, notice how flawlessly, how gracefully the colors blend and morph. Notice how effortless in their authenticity and allure. We, too, have many-faceted interior lives, richly shifting as relationships and contexts change around and within us. We need not hide our true colors. We, too, are infinitely complex and nuanced, alluring and mysterious. We, too, are enchanting. Our kaleidoscopic souls imitating tulips in all their glory.

Tulips. Two lips. Aren't they lovely? Truly?

You, too, Love. You, too!

Allow the poetess' Sylvia Plath's meditation on fragility - "Tulips" - to invite you to go deeper, and learn peacefulness "... a bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me ..."

Tulips

By Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.

Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.   

I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly

As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.   

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.   

I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses   

And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff   

Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.

Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.

The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,

They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,

Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,   

So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water

Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.

They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.   

Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage——

My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,   

My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;   

Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat   

stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.

They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.   

Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley   

I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books   

Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.   

I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

How free it is, you have no idea how free——

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them   

Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.  

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.

Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe   

Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.   

Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.

They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,   

Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,   

A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.   

The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me

Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,   

And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow   

Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,   

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.   

The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,

Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.   

Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.

Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river   

Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.   

They concentrate my attention, that was happy   

Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.

The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;   

They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,   

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes

Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,

And comes from a country far away as health.