Mellow Yellow

MELLOW YELLOW

Reading Krishnamurti among the mustard flowers. May 1982. Think on These Things was assigned as an independent reading in my philosophy class, but I didn’t have time for it all year. Now, with the beginning of summer, I finally had the leisure to read it.  

I sat at the picnic table in the backyard. It was a small yard, fenced off from the shop yard next door. But it had grass and a picnic table and Mom’s laundry drying in the breeze. Yellow flowers bloomed everywhere they were not supposed to be. A consequence of living next to a mustard factory. I did not like mustard one bit. I still don’t. But mustard flowers are very pretty. Especially when they are not supposed to be there. 

Those wild and wily flowers distracted me from my book so that I never received the wisdom of Krishnamurti. To this day, I know not the lessons taught by the great spiritual teacher. But I do know the lesson of the mustard flowers.