Analogy · Ajahn Brahm

Plant more flowers

As told by Ajahn Brahm in Our Mind and Our Health | Ajahn Brahm | 7 July 2023

1 min read

You have a garden at home. You have weeds and you have flowers. Should you actually just maybe cultivate the flowers to acknowledge them, to emit them, to not suppress them, not repress them, not to repress the the weeds in your garden. That's a stupid thing to do. If you got gardens, there's weeds in there. Just make sure they don't sort of grow any further. That's not called repression. That's called, I suppose, weeding, cultivating a garden. But one of the best ways instead of like pulling the weeds out, plant more flowers and water the flowers. Water the bushes and then the flowers grow and soon the flowers and the bushes grow so great that they choke the the weeds off.

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 59:05 (to 1:00:02)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A garden has weeds and flowers. Rather than spending all day pulling weeds, plant more flowers and water them until there's no room left for weeds. Ajahn Brahm applies it to feelings. Don't dig up old anger and pick at it. Grow forgiveness, kindness and gratitude, and give the bad moods poor soil.

In brief (our summary)

Simile for 'repressed' emotions: your garden has weeds and flowers. Weeding isn't repression. But better than pulling the weeds, plant more flowers and water them; soon the flowers and bushes grow so well they choke the weeds.

Teaching point

Cultivate positive emotions (forgiveness, kindness) and they crowd out the negative ones.

When this story may help

dealing with negative emotions
repressed feelings

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in Our Mind and Our Health | Ajahn Brahm | 7 July 2023 · 2023-07-08 · ▶ watch from 59:05 to 1:00:02 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

1 other telling of this story

Grant Yourself a Moment of Peace | Ajahn Brahm | 11 April 2025 · 2025-04-12 · ▶ watch from 6:57 to 7:15 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia
Apr 2025 telling: garden 'relax' becomes weeding and watering — can't stop doing.

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions: unpunctuated, words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

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The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)