No hindrance

Gardens occupy the mind/bodies of gardeners. The vegetable gardener benefits from the garden not by receiving vegetables alone, but also by having a relationship to the natural realm; by exercise, fresh air, quietude, focus. And the world benefits from the gardener's renewed equanimity as well as, perhaps, some of the food. 
 

Monastery gardens focus on food but also on medicinal plants and plants for craft, ranging from bamboo to indigo, as well. Asian monasteries are often located in or near forests to which they have access for making anything from furniture to roof-beams.

Hermits often don't have as many resources as monasteries, unless they reside near one with which they have an arrangement, or near a kindly disposed settlement, perhaps. Most hermits are agile enough, until near their end, to be their own gardener, herb-gatherer, wood-cutter, carpenter, glazier, cook, tilesetter, candle-maker, or whatever needs arise. Their resources are, within reasonable limits, whatever or whomever they can reach. I reach for many things, in season, right here on this 1/5 acre lot. There are dandelions, cat's-ear, spearmint, peppermint, lemon balm, blackberrry, Oregon grape, calendulas, marigolds, nipplewort, deadnettle, plantain, self-heal, thistles, herb-Robert, camellias, cascara (use with caution), ash, Douglas fir, and cedar right at hand, and a short walk along the street provides, with permission, rose petals and hips, birch foliage, hawthorn, bigleaf maple, assorted pines, deodar, crabapples, pie cherries, broadleaf plantain, chickweed, chicory, and on and on. Some are for topical agents, some for medicine or tea, some for walking sticks or to prop up peas or beans.

Concerning the peas or beans, we do have the usual variety of vegs and fruits, and the family also collects a bag of vegetables each week in summer from the Youth Garden CSA. These they use during the week, and then the day before the next batch arrives, I raid the leftovers for things to add to my own stash of vegetables for chopping and pickling.

It's a small, satisfactory, labor-intensive and meditative practice. I'm more in-the-zone at the cutting board than anywhere else. Enough diced root and leafy veg to fill the rice steamer is enough to fill several half pint jars with pickles, or combine two batches to fill several pint jars.

I mostly don't use quart jars for this any more, because I go through the contents too slowly. I still have a number of half gallon jars from my more manic canning days, and these I'm using to keep bulk dried sundries on hand.

 

 

The idea, then, for much of the year, is to steam a handful or two of (soaked) black beans, pinto beans, chickpeas, split peas, lentils, or rice or tofu or pasta, open a small jar of pickles to throw in at the last minute, serve into a bowl, sit down, be thankful, and eat.

Stonehouse noticed his food routine made up the bulk of his practice.

Lunch in my mountain kitchen
there’s a shimmering springwater sauce 
a well-cooked stew of preserved bamboo
a fragrant pot of hard-grain rice
blue-cap mushrooms fried in oil
purple-bud ginger vinaigrette
none of them heavenly dishes
but why should I cater to gods
(tr. Red Pine)

Life is short. If you have salt, reach for the salt. If you don't have salt right now, reach for the dried kale flakes you've made. There's always something, until there really truly isn't. And "really truly isn't" comes to us all in its own time. As it will do so whether we have salt or don't, there's no need to rush around or fret. This is called "no hindrance."

-- shonin

  

  

The nothing zazen is good for

Chitting potatoes

Rev. Dainei, my Dharma brother, chose the following quote as the footer for a recent email:

It is necessary for us to keep the constant way. Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. If you become too busy and too excited, your mind becomes rough and ragged. This is not good. If possible, try to be always calm and joyful and keep yourself from excitement. Usually we become busier and busier, day by day, year by year, especially in our modern world. If we revisit old, familiar places after a long time, we are astonished by the changes. It cannot be helped. But if we become interested in some excitement, or in our own change, we will become completely involved in our busy life, and we will be lost. But if your mind is calm and constant, you can keep yourself away from the noisy world even though you are in the midst of it. In the midst of noise and change, your mind will be quiet and stable. -- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (emphasis added)

 The more time I spend with Zen, the less I know about it. Maybe you have had this experience as well. I'm going through a phase of making it to a fair number of sits, thanks to teleconferencing. Sometimes we chant, have dedications and bows, and so on. I'm grateful for these opportunities, as they do seem to help with centering.

I come most alive in the in between times, cutting chard and lifting a few potatoes, then sitting at the hut's "kitchen" table with cleaver and chopping block. I cut up potatoes, garlic scapes and chard stems, with some dried chili pepper, and steam them for fifteen minutes or so, meanwhile chopping greens (chard leaves, dandelions, a cabbage leaf maybe, some clover buds and self-heal) to put into the steamer in the last minute. I drain these and stir in some olive oil, soy sauce, chili powder and sesame seeds, briefly offer the bowl at the altar, and dig in. Have with water or "yard tea" -- currently dock, ash leaves, fennel, herb Robert, self-heal and camellia leaves -- and, after a while, go check some chitting potatoes and water the garden beds and young trees from the rain barrels.

This routine requires very little if any thought, and also very little if any thought suppression. There's no aim here to "become enlightened."

Strangely enough, what has sold me on the effortlessness of "concentration on our daily routine" is that I'm in the early stages of cognitive decline. Memories and words are getting harder to access. Since I don't have many responsibilities nowadays, there's little cause to be stressed about it. Loss becomes not so much "oh, I lost that" and something more like "this is what there is right now" -- which is of course the entire universe.

My youngest, who lives with us (he's 42) also goes out and "just gardens." He remembers to stop by the strawberry bed on his way back to the house. He finds me resting in my chair and holds up a ripe strawberry. I open my mouth and he pops it in, like a starling feeding its chick. This is the nothing zazen is good for.

--shonin