# Plant more flowers

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Analogy
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-garden-plant-more-flowers
- Themes: emotions, cultivation, kindness, forgiveness
- Life situations: dealing with negative emotions, repressed feelings

## Synopsis (editorial 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.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

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.

## Teaching point

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

## 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.

## Source

- [Our Mind and Our Health | Ajahn Brahm | 7 July 2023](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irCk-DJXisM) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 59:05 to 1:00:02: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irCk-DJXisM&t=3545s

Other tellings of this story:

- [Grant Yourself a Moment of Peace | Ajahn Brahm | 11 April 2025](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZvNc4BpW_Q) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 6:57 to 7:15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZvNc4BpW_Q&t=417s