How to grow orchids? Keeping a calm mind is key
Promote Chinese orchid culture, spread orchid knowledge
Recently I spoke with several orchid friends, and in our conversation we reached a consensus: we should advocate growing orchids with a calm mind. Everyone asked me to write an article on this topic and publicise it widely, to inject a little less-polluted fresh air into the orchid world. I thought this was just a very ordinary topic. It is hard to write any profound insights on it, but since there is in it a bit of fresh air beneficial to the orchid world, I may as well write it.
Growing orchids was originally meant for pleasure and cultivating one's character, and so it has been since ancient times. Pleasure and cultivating one's character means cultivating a calm mind that is undisturbed by worldly affairs and unpolluted by dust. It enables one to be calm and even-tempered, undisturbed when disturbed, unshaken when trouble comes, to treat others with a calm mind, to conduct oneself in the world with a calm mind, content and at ease, just like an orchid in nature, drinking in the fresh rain and dew and opening up with fresh fragrance. Growing orchids with a calm mind was the initial mentality, the first mentality, the primitive mentality of humankind when people began cultivating this ornamental plant. At that time orchids had not become a commodity; apart from one's own enjoyment, growing orchids was at most a gift for relatives and friends. At that time orchids were not cultivated in large quantities, had not entered the market to become a means of profit, and there were no so-called orchid experts. People had few improper thoughts when growing orchids; that truly was growing orchids with a calm mind.
If at that time growing orchids also had a non-calm mind, it might have been wanting to use orchids as tribute to the emperor or as bribes to officials, hoping thereby to win the emperor's or officials' favour and bring oneself benefits, that is, so-called growing orchids with a mind seeking favour. Such growers, even in ancient times, I think, were few in number. It should be said that in ancient times the vast majority of people grew orchids with a calm mind. The large-scale emergence of the non-calm mind in growing orchids came in modern and contemporary society, in a commodity economy society. Just as an industrialised and modernised society brings pollution to the environment.
In a society where all under heaven bustling come for profit, and all under heaven bustling go for profit, everything will be tainted with fame and gain, and growing orchids is no exception. Thus the non-calm mind in growing orchids appeared: there are those who set up scams to grow orchids for profit, those who speculate on orchids and jump off buildings, those who are impatient for success in growing orchids and pull up seedlings to help them grow, those who worry about gain and loss and grow orchids with a mentality of luck, those who seek fame and gain and quarrel endlessly at orchid show award judging, those who blow their own trumpet and fish for reputation, those who care only for their own profit and engage in unfair competition, those who deliberately mystify and make orchids seem understandable only to themselves and to no one else... and so on. Orchid growers have lost the calm mind and lost the original function of pleasure and cultivating one's character. This is the sorrow of orchid growers, and also the sorrow of the orchid world.
In view of this, today we must especially emphasise the calm mind in growing orchids, and advocate growing orchids with a calm mind, giving orchids with a calm mind, selling orchids with a calm mind, buying orchids with a calm mind, speculating on orchids with a calm mind, writing about orchids with a calm mind, speaking of profit with a calm mind, painting orchids with a calm mind, making orchid friends with a calm mind, attending orchid shows with a calm mind... Even if one grows orchids seeking fame and gain, one should also seek them with a calm mind and let nature take its course: take as much profit as one deserves, have whatever status one deserves, without striving too deliberately, and all the more without racking one's brains and resorting to any means to obtain them.
It is best for orchid growers to "examine themselves three times a day", to ask themselves honestly whether they have lost the calm mind in growing orchids, and if they find anything amiss, to turn their hearts around, cultivate the mind and settle into calm, and keep growing orchids with a calm mind. Only thus can one truly gain something from growing orchids and avoid losing something, and only thus can one grasp the true essence of growing orchids.
Orchid Bar, your good teacher on the road of growing orchids