weeds
The Seba library treats Weed in 9 passages, across 4 authors (including Easwaran, Eknath, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Barrett, Lisa Feldman).
the God-seed is still intact. When at last we begin to search for it we discover it is covered with weeds – weeds of fear and anger and giant thistles of greed that try to choke out everything else.
Easwaran argues that the God-seed — the indestructible spiritual potential — is not absent but obscured by psychological weeds (fear, anger, greed), which wither only through sustained meditative discrimination.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
Anger is one of the worst of these weeds; it spreads over every inch of ground and keeps other plants from growing. But all negative states of mind – fear, hostility, jealousy, depression – make it difficult for useful plants like kindness and consideration to grow.
Easwaran systematically equates weeds with negative mental states, arguing that failure to remove them — and especially the habit of dwelling on them — drives their roots deeper into consciousness.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
the garden of resentment can still be weeded and new seeds planted. But if it is not weeded, after many years there will be a harvest of ill health.
Easwaran extends the weed metaphor into psychosomatic territory, claiming that unweeded resentment produces physiological consequences such as hypertension and chronic illness.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
what you thought were twenty weeds have actually only ten roots. Then, deeper still, you see that these seemingly ten roots are actually ten shoots off five stout stems… At last you get to the taproot, which is self-will.
Easwaran uses the weed’s root system as a structural metaphor for the depth-layers of ego, arguing that the final, singular taproot of all psychological obstructions is self-will.
, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975thesis
My part of the job is to do my best at watering and weeding… if we go on watering and weeding faithfully, we will go out confidently expecting to see no results as usual and there will be a little tendril of okra poking up from the ground.
Easwaran frames weeding as a patient, incremental spiritual practice whose fruits are invisible for long periods, testing dedication on the inner path.
, The Upanishadssupporting
the too-good mother has the stamina of a formidable weed and lives on, waving her leaves and overprotecting her daughter even though the script says, ‘Exit stage left now.’
Estés applies the weed figure to the psychic complex of the over-protective mother, whose tenacious persistence obstructs the daughter’s necessary initiation into independence.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
In the garden we practice letting thoughts, ideas, preferences, desires, even loves, both live and die. We plant, we pull, we bury.
Estés positions the psychic garden — including the act of pulling weeds — as a contemplative practice for learning the Life/Death/Life cycle central to wild feminine psychology.
, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017supporting
Collective intentionality requires that everyone in a group shares a similar concept, be it ‘Flower’ or ‘Weed’ or ‘Fear.’
Barrett uses the weed/flower distinction as a paradigm case to demonstrate that certain categories are not perceiver-independent but are constituted through shared conceptual agreement — placing ‘weed’ alongside ‘fear’ as a socially constructed classification.
, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017supporting
sea… personified by Leviathan, 254f; and serpent, 438n; and sun, 200f; -symbol, 218, 271f; weed, 243
Jung’s index lists sea-weed within the symbolic constellation of the sea as mother-symbol, situating it within the night-sea journey mythology without extended elaboration.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952aside