Ecclesiastes 2:5 Meaning I Made Myself Gardens and Parks

Taṇhā: Craving Taṇhā is the thirst that keeps asking for one more. Plant every kind of fruit tree and the soil still feels bare, because a garden built to quiet wanting only trains the wanting to ask again the morning after the harvest. Drinking salt water runs the same course: each swallow sharpens the thirst it promised to end, so the hand reaches for the next cup and the next.

Māna: Conceit Māna is the pride of I am, the self sizing itself up by what it can point to. Each plot and orchard planted for myself carves another line into a monument to the great I, and every fruit tree quietly props up the thought, look what I have become. It is the small swell anyone feels stepping back to admire a lawn they just mowed.

Anicca: Impermanence Anicca is the mark that everything put together comes apart. A garden is made of growing, dying things: buds open, fruit ripens and drops, leaves brown and let go, and the orchard tended so carefully is already drifting back toward the bare ground it rose from, where the gardener will follow it down. It is a sandcastle finished at the moment the tide turns, standing complete and washing away in the same breath.

Dukkha: Unsatisfactoriness Dukkha is the hollow that pleasant things rest on without ever filling. The gardens stand finished and the fruit hangs sweet on the branch, yet the ache holds, because owning every kind of fruit never reaches the floor of what aches. It is the fine meal that leaves you hungry an hour later, serving exactly what was ordered and somehow still coming up short of enough.

Nibbidā: Disenchantment Nibbidā is the weary turning away that arrives once the emptiness is felt. After the last tree goes in and the novelty thins, the gardens begin to look like a great deal of digging for a bowl of fruit, and the orchard that promised everything now reads as one more thing to water and prune. It is the flatness of a toy the morning after the holiday, still bright and no longer wanted.