It's a thing

Dogen makes much of shikan-taza as being the whole of practice. "Although it is said that there are as many minds as there are persons, still they all negotiate the way solely in zazen." 

He's not wrong. Stillness is where you find true-ness. At the same time, his monks had to get up and go clean the zendo sometime, and there was also construction, maintenance, cooking, water carrying and farming going on. His explanation was that at the root of all this activity there is still that same stillness. Whether or not you fan yourself, air is air.

When we lived for eight years in the outskirts of one small city and I worked in the larger city across the river, I often biked to work along established bicycle routes and across the wide river on a bike bridge, a scenic round trip of some sixteen miles. In heavier weather, I took the bus.

Bodhidharma splits up practice in much the same way. If wall-gazing does it for you, he says, gaze away! It is, when you do it, the entirety of practice. On the other hand, everything else is waiting for you as practice: the whole of life's activity. One of my hardest-working spiritual teachers, a Hutterite, Barbara Maendel, put it drolly when handing out our farm chores from a seemingly endless list: "a change is as good as a rest."

Zazen is the bicycle. Just get on it and go. In heavier weather, a change is good too. Just get on the bus and go.

Life practice is the bus. If you're sitting in the doctor's waiting room, sure, you can work on your stillness, but also there's the check-in and the visit, which may provide vexations. The arriving and the departing may stress as well -- that near-miss in the parking lot, say. Everything seems to push and pull. To deal with these as Dharma practice, form Dharma life habits.

Bodhidharma breaks life practice into four parts: absence of resentment, acceptance of circumstances, absence of craving, and accord with Dharma. 

To form the habit of not resenting can be a big change in lifestyle for many of us. It means accepting circumstances just as they are, with no craving for them to be any different. That doesn't mean don't swim when you fall into the water, it just means don't spend your swimming energy on uselessly grieving the fall or being angry that you were bumped. Swim. 

Accord with Dharma means embodying Buddha's truth by living the six wisdoms (paramitas). Six tools are available to bring us to the place of non-resentment: giving, ethical discipline, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom.

"Giving" is practice in being kind, a way of cultivating a cooperative, productive and peaceful community.

"Ethical discipline" is self-regulation: holding anger, greed and delusion in check, we foster a cooperative, productive and peaceful community.

"Patience" is practice in accepting circumstances as they are; it's rooted in letting go of the past and especially the future, allowing the community's cooperation, productivity and peace to unfold unforced.

"Effort" here is not the willful struggle that might be envisioned by the ascetic, but the steady self-application to practice that leaves behind the constructed self composed of greed, anger and delusion. This too benefits the community.

"Meditation" in the midst of life practice is that stillness in the doctor's waiting room, increasingly expanding into the visit and the coming and going. You may call it equanimity. It is beneficial to the community.

"Wisdom" here is "prajna," an ongoing appreciation of the ontological truth of the Dharma: "thusness." An insight into thusness is provided by the idea of dependent origination: all things are what they are together, in the same nowness, and nothing exists separately. As our illusion of separateness fades, our actions spring from this realization, and we benefit the community.

shonin painted six rocks, each with a paramita, as mnemonic devices. What, she's 76.

To see Dogen's practical application of the principle of life practice, samu practice, read his "Instructions to the cook," Tenzo Kyokun.

If you only have wild grasses with which to make a broth, do not disdain them. If you have ingredients for a creamy soup do not be delighted. Where there is no attachment, there can be no aversion. Do not be careless with poor ingredients and do not depend on fine ingredients to do your work for you but work with everything with the same sincerity. If you do not do so then it is like changing your behaviour according to the status of the person you meet; this is not how a student of the Way is. (tr. Anzan Hoshin and Yasuda Joshu Dainen)

Hongzhi sums up. "You must purify, cure, grind down, or brush away all the ten­dencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of brightness."

The bicycle in good weather carried me to the entrance of the building where I worked. I arrived exercised and healthy, ready to benefit the community.

The bus, in heavy weather, stopped right in front of the same building. I arrived rested, composed, ready to benefit the community.

Not saying I always rose to the occasion. But that clear circle of brightness -- it's a thing. We should all look into it.

 -- shonin 

Cut Cabbage

 

I’m a poor but happy follower of the Way
whatever happens takes care of my needs
last night the west wind blew down an old tree
at daybreak firewood covered the ground
windblown white silk wreathed the red scarps
dewdrop pearls adorned the green cliffs
my survival has always depended on what’s present
why should I tire myself out making plans

-- Stonehouse, tr. Red Pine 

I'm interested in the traces I feel I can sense of the effect of the word "Way" in various minds. Ask the average Taoist or Zennist about it, and you can hear some overlap in their replies, but it's not a matchup, the way their image of "noodles" or "ocean" might be. This leaves me wondering what idiot came up with the word "Way" in the first place. Trying to confuse us, eh?

The more I muse on all this, the more I feel like candles and chants risk more hindrance than help. When it's time to cut up some cabbage, just pick up the knife and cut cabbage.

-- shonin

One head

 I've brought a head of red cabbage into the tiny hut kitchen to blanch, pickle and water bath can, using the few narrowmouth lids I have on hand (small jars). About half of this will go in the freezer. All will be small batches, to have with rice, spuds or noodles. 

[later] All done; it made about six pints of canned "imitation kimchi" in jars and five pints in bags in the hut freezer. That's enough for about thirty-three meals for me, in combination with other ingredients.

Two heads, they say, are better than one, but thirty-three meals' worth of cabbage is a lot for me in one year. So it's as well that only one of my cabbages made a head! I'm fine with that; the collards did much better and will likely be the main winter veg this year.

We are a two-headed species. One head witnesses a singing bird. The other talks to itself: "Oh, there's a singing bird." This monologue appears to be a step away from the world, or what could be called nature, even though of course the monologue occurs within nature -- it can't be anywhere else! But we fool ourselves.

The epitome of such fooling is when we try, sometimes with horrible success, to fool one another. As a civilization we're approaching fully automated 24/7 fooling, with a corresponding massive leap in gratuitous suffering.

Zen folks have a project to let go of that second head, for as much of the time as is practicable. Releasing the past as regret, releasing the future as expectation, hear the bird, see the garden, inhale, exhale, cut the cabbage.

-- shonin 

The Woman Lets It Be

Hidden Lamp, p.62

 

Master Langye Huijue had a woman disciple who came to him for instruction.  The master told her to examine the saying “Let it be.”  He said that if she faithfully used this sentence as a scythe, she would cut down illusions and reap enlightenment.

 

The woman followed his instructions faithfully.  One day her house burned down and she said, “Let it be.”  ....

One day she started to make fried cakes for dinner as her husband lit the fire.  She prepared the batter and heated the oil, then poured a spoonful of batter into the hot oil.

 

When she heard the sizzling sound, she was immediately enlightened.  She threw the pan to the ground and jumped up and down, clapping her hands and laughing.

 

Her husband shouted at her, “What are you doing?  Have you gone mad?”  She answered, “Let it be.”

 

Then she went to Huijue and he confirmed that she had indeed harvested the holy fruit.

 

No aversion

 I get questions about hermitary cookery.

There might not be much to tell; I'll try.

There are as many ways to cook and eat as there are people. Some ways are just "I'll eat whatever they parachute into this refugee camp" or "well, I sure hope I get to eat in the rapidly approaching afterlife." In other words, eating, let alone cooking, is a privilege in the world, more so, perhaps, than when foraged food was all there was to be had.

So, I'm conflicted about what may appear to be showing off. On the other hand, mindful eating can be an exercise in responsible behavior. I do think that my solitary routine, now established, is less wasteful, more nutritious, and healthier than before. While that may not do much for the world, it does something. Dogen tells us a little is a lot in Buddhist practice. You never know where a given small yet sincere practice will take you, but usually not to anyplace those around you will regard as a hindrance. Taking proper care of yourself takes care of others in many ways, often unforeseen.

Dogen wrote a small treatise, the title of which can be loosely translated "Instructions for the Monastery Head Cook (Tenzo)," which was/is intended as a guide to ethically feeding, in effect, a commune. 

Also the position tends to be a rotating one. Everyone has already been told to tough it out if you prove to be untalented, and by gosh they had better be thankful for it. So it's great that I, an untalented cook with only one patron, don't at all mind most of my mistakes. If it's truly inedible, just apologize to it with a gassho and add it to the compost.

In my movements and attitude, to the extent possible for me, I follow the "Instructions to the Tenzo. "

Here's the kitchen. The hut is nine feet wide. Most daily use items fit along a six foot section of one wall. Some supplies and less frequently used items are stored under or above the sewing table, alongside the opposite wall. Indoor plants and a basin and ewer share the space, along with baskets of fabric and sundries.

You can see I'm a pack rat, dating back to days of actual rather than currently simulated poverty. Everything here is hand-me-downs. I think that matters in the case of an attached hermitary, because I'm duplicating equipment already available in the kitchen of the household. But that kitchen, in a 1950s starter bungalow, is also tiny and the other family members have their own dietary requirements. We stay out of one another's hair, so to speak.

The hut has one wall outlet with its own circuit breaker, good for up to twenty amps, which enforces attentive power usage. The tiny fridge is on all the time, so the kettle and microwave and rice cooker and space heater can be used in twos but not in threes or fours. This enforces some discipline and thinking ahead, especially in winter.

As homesteaders/nomads, we used to cook on a smallish wood stove, the top of which enforced a similar discipline: a pot of water for washing dishes might take up half the surface and a Dutch oven with beans or bread in it taking up the other half. We inverted their lids and set bowls of whatever on them to simmer. My current efforts reflect the frugality of those years.

Back in the day

I forage very locally, mostly on this one city lot.

We don't use herbicides or pesticides, so I safely wander around the yard, then the garden. What draws my interest? In season, chicory, dandelions, nipplewort, narrow leaf plantain, crimson clover, deadnettle, cat’s ears, blackberry leaves, fir or spruce needles, money plant, parlsey, sage, rosemary, thyme, Bigleaf maple flowers, willow leaves, herb Robert, and crop foliage such as kale, chard, beet greens, squash blossoms and leaves, pea and bean foliage, corn silk, and the like.

Out of season, many of these are not as bitter as some foraging websites will tell you, and if worst comes to worst, for the pot I steam first and reserve the bitter stock to give to my house plants or garden.

Often the yard is so productive I don't even make it into the garden. That's the maritime Pacific Northwest for you.

I bring my treasures into the hut and decide how they will be used. My cookery revolves around making tea (tisane) first. If what I gathered appeals to me as tea only, I put that in the tea strainer, set the strainer in a cup, run the kettle and pour boiling water over the foliage. It won't make much color in the cup unless there is something like beet greens, or I've dried the foliage, or I'm adding green tea or perhaps Darjeeling. That's fine. Minimalists need not be nutrition maximalists, let alone flavor maximalists, except perhaps if they can afford some loose-packed Darjeeling.

This tea is to have when Zooming with the sangha, or a friend, or while reading, or just watching the moon cross the window.

Next, I notice it's meal time. Some things that we all like to eat raw, I have to eat only a little of or not at all, so I do tend to focus on the steamer.

The little Aroma rice steamer, which is the heart of the hermitary kitchen, was handed down because it forgot its time limit for making rice. So I have to keep an eye on it for that cycle. I may use that for rice, or lentils, or root vegs, but I don't need a lot, and I'm not a fan of the coating on the metal liner you're supposed to cook in. My porcelain eating bowl fits inside the liner. So I put an inch of water from the pitcher (rain water, if it's fresh) inside the liner and set the bowl in that. 

I'm also not fond of the plastic steamer basket that came with the appliance, so that added to my interest in learning to cook in various ways in the bowl.

I then cut up any root vegs I'm using, including skins if possible, or pour in the rice or lentils, and add water, salt, spices as needed. Set on Rice or sometimes twice on Steam. Udon I find I can make on Steam (5 minutes), though the consistency might not be to everyone's taste. Summer vegs such as zucchini should wait out the first five minutes and then be thrown in, chopped. Density is my guide here.

Meanwhile, if I'm adding greens, I have options. I might use what's in the strainer, if it's not anything I really shouldn't try to eat (for example, willow bark). Or I may choose to roll up some dandelion and chicory leaves with onion greens in a leaf of collard or kale and chop small, then check to see if the carbs are done, then turn off the rice steamer, pop in the greens (and maybe small tomatoes and such), and close the lid for some residual-heat cooking.

The bowl will be a little hot to fish out of the liner with my fingers, as there's little room along the sides, so I grab the bowl with a handy pair of side-cutting pliers and set it on a coaster. Here I may add more seasoning or soy sauce as desired. I pour some water in a cup and keep it handy, or if the broth is palatable, I'll use that, and sit down and eat.

This can be a wet way to eat, so I often pour off the liquids to drink. This is a matter of taste; in Japan folks eat the solids, then drink liquids from the bowl as a chaser. Great! I have to spend a lot of time in my zero gravity chair and pretty much only eat there, so draining the bowl first saves me trouble with wet chin and fabric.

I mostly rotate four "recipes" based on rice, then potatoes, then lentils, then noodles, through the two daily meals and there is my week. For snacks there might be a deadfall apple or whatever comes my way.

I used to do a lot more drying of fruits and foliage than needed for the winters and now mostly just set aside some of my foraging to dry on a hardware-cloth shelf in the "greenhouse," or chop it all up to stuff into an ice cube tray, maybe with a bit of olive oil, for itinerant use.

Aside from this routine, I grind mixed grains in the Corona once a year and jar it up for the occasional breakfast with apple butter, and if I have extra fruit or root vegs on hand I may get out the small graniteware water bath canner and make preserves or pickled vegs to use over the winter, in very small jars.

 
The herb Robert and willow are part of my efforts to treat leukemia. 

I wouldn't ask anyone to try to duplicate my diet, but I do encourage experimentation for those interested in simplifying. This kind of food prep and eating is adaptable to many situations, especially for anyone living alone in a small space. Also it is a very portable way to eat, though maybe not as Spartan as this: Cooking Without a Kitchen: The Coffeemaker Cookbook

By not unnecessarily frequenting restaurants and supermarkets, it is possible to simplify quite a lot. Some foods are becoming scarce and I like to think I am leaving it on the shelves for someone else. 

I think the complexity of our civilization has a lot of inflicted suffering to live down. Courtesy shows there is a commons of the heart.  🙏

-- shonin 

If you only have wild grasses with which to make a broth, do not disdain them ... Where there is no attachment, there can be no aversion. -- Dogen

Hermiting is universal

I'm spending a lot more time in the hut. It's a tool shed dating back to the 50s, rebuilt for zazen practice and teleconferencing with the sangha (we mostly only meet online). I grow vegetables close at hand, pick "weeds" for tea, and use the tiny kitchen quite a lot. The leukemia seems to be in stasis for now. I greet crows outside my window.

Makeshift interior walls, makeshift altar, makeshift nun. At 76 and newly fragile health-wise, I sit here at the computer and commingle with my peers in the form of streams of electrons.

The kitchen is just a rice cooker, micro sized microwave, electric kettle, and a few jars and cans and utensils, most of them in a little hand-me-down butcher block table. I do most of my cooking in my eating bowl set inside the rice cooker liner in an inch or so of water. Works great. Kitchen table was my grandmother's from the 1930s. I ran my forehead into it on my scooter when I was three and just about knocked myself out. 

I'm told I got up and tried again and again. Whirr, wham! Whirr, wham! There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Stepping outside. The han is a plaque a friend made for me. I don't use it very often as there is no one to call with it and it's too near the neighbors. But I like having it. The mallet is a leatherworker's mallet that I retrieved from a dumpster somewhere.

Manzoku-an (Hermitage of Enough) is a former tool shed at the end of what was once a long carport. It's nine by thirteen feet. I've built a little courtyard for it using framed reed mats. I have used this hut for part-time hermiting off and on for nine years, overlapping with the previous hut, Gogo-an (10X10'), which I used for about the same span, or for a combined total of eleven years.

 What have I learned from this activity? Not so very much; the skills for living simply -- even somewhat starkly -- were acquired in childhood, as my parents encouraged me in running wild in the woods. At thirteen I camped for a week on an island in a swamp in subzero weather, building a kind of beaver lodge for myself of sticks and leaves. I kept a fire going at the entrance, and chopped ice for water from the frozen creek with a hatchet.

As a young adult, I lived in a succession of yurts, vehicles and small travel trailers, moving from place to place for forestry contracting, and did not fully return to "civilization" until I was thirty-six. I then worked at a university for twenty-two years and retired, at fifty-nine, to farm an acre. Hand tools were the order of the day -- an intention to return to simplicity.

When I began to study Zen with a teacher, I looked around the farm for a place to sit quietly out of the way, and the children's abandoned playhouse filled the bill. It did not take me long to move in a few items and begin cooking and even sometimes sleeping there as well as sitting zazen. This sort of thing just felt natural to me, and the family supported my efforts.

When I discovered an online sangha to sit with, I brought a laptop out to the hut, Gogo-an, and practiced with them, even participating in an online ango and rohatsu. This was a change from hermiting -- or was it? Our routine was much like that of the Discalced Carmelite sisters, each in her own hut but gathering with the others for ritual. 

Along came the pandemic and my local sangha moved online as well, where it has stayed ever since. Such groups have a bit of a Carmelite flavor. Many of the people with whom I sit zazen or sesshin live alone. Many others practice with the assent of family members, but most do sit alone in their choice of room (or sometimes outdoors), as teleconferencing tends to place each person in a box, containing mostly a face, with perhaps an altar and bookcase in frame.

This mode of being isolated in company is not unfamiliar to monks and nuns in a monastery or local sangha. Benedictines gather, but each is alone with God in the company of others, perhaps to the extent of wearing a hooded cowl, or in the case of nuns, a coif, wimple and veil. Muslims have the sajada, or prayer rug, again alone with God amid the multitude. Zen practitioners tend to sit in a row, all facing the same direction, each alone with Dharma. Every religious person is already a hermit.

Religion, as we tend to define it, may not be the whole Venn diagram here.

People who live alone generally, or find themselves alone with or among others (there are many single beds in apartments, houses and ship cabins), or even who find themselves walking to the waterfront to commune with gulls and the stench of the wharf, are also hermits. Never make the mistake of supposing that someone who stops only briefly to admire a daffodil has had no important business there.

Some may think they do not have hermiting skills, but I think we all do. What we may lack is the expectation that we'll have to live simply for an extended period of time, which can take some planning and prioritization. And in fact, though I have done that, it's not really what I'm doing right now; the hut is fifty feet from shared modern conveniences -- my bedroom is in the house. 

But I like to practice living simply in the hut, to keep the skills up (y'know "just in case," or in case someone else needs to know the little that I know) and to support my Buddhist practice. I'm doing a lot of sits. I find they're "good" for me; I need centering. It's cheaper than psychotherapy.

As we find ourselves more and more constrained by our unwieldy modernity, with the likelihood of catastrophic weather events, pandemics and crop failures, we may make some effort, as is always commendable, to ease the burdens of those around us but cannot hope, as individuals, to remedy all. 

What we can hope to do on our small scale (along with whatever else we're up to) is recognize that much of the time, what we might call down time or at least our in-between times, is what Buddhists call practice, which I will provisionally term as hermiting. Prayer, recollection, meditation, sittin' at the dock o' th' bay, admiring a daffodil, these are things that most anyone can do as they come to them, but I think we also, many of us, recognize that there are skilled ways of going about solitude. We know skilled loners when we see them, whether in films, videos, or sidewalk encounters.

Your bedroom, your kitchen, your study (if you have one), your creekside path, your hut attached to the family home or in its back yard -- your brief alone time "amid the noise and the haste" is your practice place. Whatever practice you do there, may it flow as a spring of water of life for you, and may you, in your short time here, find whatever you may recognize as blessing.

 -- shonin

Some cold tea

The renovations that took place here seven years ago led to there being a massive pile of rubble and old cinderblocks and another of lumber studded with rusty bent nails, which quickly acquired a covering of very robust Himalaya blackberries. 

I'd had a notion of building some kind of greenhouse/shadehouse out of these bits and bobs, but renters occupied much of the premises during most of that time, and I felt shy of hammering and sawing in their sunbathing space, so ... but this year, I resolved to evict the blackberries and put up a structure in their stead, using the materials now solidly locked in their embrace.

Once the cutting, uprooting re-piling and tilling was done (this took a couple of months), I sorted materials, pulled nails, and meditated on the shape of the space. It would be about ten feet by sixteen, and would need to be tall enough to allow for a door, yet low enough not to exceed the height of my neighbor's wooden fence, which stood only six feet tall on a curb of about fourteen inches height along the property line.

I had imported the screen door from the farm, ideal for the purpose as it was made of wood and had been cut down to accommodate a low porch ceiling. I attached the door to the back corner of Manzoku-an with hinges and framed it. The height of the door frame determined the height of the east-facing wall of the structure, facing in toward the back yard. I then bolted a two-by four, eleven feet long, across the back of the hut, with enough slope to shed water past the door. This would determine the height of the walls and height and slope of the roof.

From there, I proceeded to wrap walls around to the east and north, always using wood from the rapidly diminishing pile, framing in scrap windows as I went.

It was now possible to roof the space, which was done with corrugated fiberglass also found in the pile.

On the floor, with some digging, I managed to create a path of sorts using the rubble and cinderblocks.

It would be nice to have raised beds, but I've used up the materials. So, for now, I'll spread straw. The uphill bed is straight, about fifteen feet long, and the downhill bed is a kind of keyhole pattern.

I've brought in the seedling shelves, potting table and tools, freeing up a bit of breathing room for Manzoku-an, where they spent the last year.

 

Yes, it's close to the fence line, but Manzoku-an predates the fence, this is a tiny agricultural project, and it's free-standing. None of it is attached to the fence.

Will this thing work? I expect there will be problems at first. At the moment the ambient temperature is 76F, the hut has 83 and the greenhouse is a toasty 92 (!!) -- but of course I'm not bothering to shade and ventilate much until next summer. It's not a proper shadehouse with such big windows, nor is it a proper greenhouse as it does not face south, but -- assuming I have allowed enough light -- I feel it has some potential toward season extending. We'll see.

Left to right: "deer fence," Manzoku-an, "greenhouse," tool shed. 
Some leftover used lumber is stored on the hut's roof.

The last construction project for the year is deer proofing the old and new beds with a bit of chicken wire fence. Whether it will work is for the deer to decide.

I think will go now and sit in the shade with some cold tea.

-- shonin

There are four inherent attributes to tea: peacefulness, respectfulness, purity and quietness. -- Martine Batchelor

Many are

Mixed signs abound; after the storm, leaves shredded
by hail loll about on the street and
are investigated by crows. Where have the

birds been, all these baked-earth and baked-sky
days? And now they vanish again, as heat
resumes, as gardens wilt, as humans scurry

into delicious air inside sly merchants' shade.
I choose, as viruses have not, despite assurances,
abated, to limit myself, in straw Asian hat,

to observing this stuttering start to autumn
at first hand in the yard, at second hand
while putting away bought things the family's

acquired for me, before retiring once again
to the hermitary, converted tool shed
behind the house at the end of the drive

to zoom into the ether and sit
zazen with a few, who know
where to find me, some quiet, and themselves.

Many are hermits in just this way, though they
might not see it in these terms. A daily
routine within walls, or gardens, or

property lines: boundaries we create
of imagined air clean enough to inhale
without becoming a burden to our loves.

It's not much of a poem but shows what I've been thinking about. Autumn is trying hard to come in, with a strong system off the Pacific having filled our dried-up rain barrels, and awakened all the animals that seemed to be hiding somewhere after the heat waves, one of them topping 100°(f) for five days. We have another heat wave coming in September that looks to go over 90 for five days, with one more day pushing 100. But, yeah, plants have started putting on their fall plumage and the nights are cool.

I notice these things from the yard and while sitting in the "veranda" (basically a deck roof but no deck, just grass growing out of sand), or working in the garden. I have leukemia (slow, the CLL kind) and old age and what not, and a basic shyness with added cognitive decline, so I'm no longer a driver and now no longer a walker of the neighborhood sidewalks, unless someone is with me.

I'm also careful to breathe clean air. Weak lungs and all that, and I don't think much of the current official advice on viruses: Covid has surged hard this summer, and has been proven to have a long tail for many even when not initially presenting with symptoms. Even though my immune system is probably not very compromised, I see no reason to court disaster just because the CDC wants to avoid angering the nation's rentier class.

This adds a burden to the family; they mask up to go get groceries and feel a little self-conscious about it. But they agree that we, as a nuclear family with only one remaining driver, are exposed to too many potential unforeseen circumstances, so a few relatively easily achieved precautions are rational for us.

I spend time on federated social media and am seeing a lot of posts with this kind of thinking; it's like there is an emerging hermit class.

It's, for many, a privileged class, supported by the shipping phenomenon and an underclass (that's, alas, what it is) of front-line warehouse workers, store clerks and delivery people, many drawn from marginalized populations, who are getting sick repeatedly, and many of whom end up horizontal on couches, joining the ranks of those who must be maintained at cost to their tiny social safety nets or overworked social services.

This is like treading water after a ship sank. Many who thought themselves well-to-do are in the water with the people who brought them groceries or rotated their tires. I think there will be more of this and perhaps much more.

Against this slow-motion dystopian background, I think about what my role can or even "should" be. I have some intellect remaining, so I spend most of my days (and nights) doomscrolling for what I think might be the best policies and advice concerning climate, health, extreme weather resilience, and domestic and international relations, including resource wars, to share with whomever wishes to hear all this.

Buddhism came to me in the guise of how one might best behave on a sinking ship (or in the water afterwards); a kind of hospice manual:

"There are four kinds of wisdom that benefit living beings: giving, kind speech, beneficial deeds, and cooperation. These are the practices of the vow of the bodhisattva" -- Dogen.

Clearly the instructions are intended for face-to-face interaction, yet here I am hanging out mostly in my homemade hermitary, a repurposed tool shed. Right; well, my excuses, with the admission of privilege, are as stated above, and my practice (when not raising vegetables) is an online practice. It is twofold: curate links to sensible adaptive choices in a deteriorating system ("secular") and offer opportunities for zazen practice and discussion of anattā and its implications ("religious").

Of course, sometime soon I (we) might not have Internet access. What then? Well, much of the time, when I have my nose out of the computer, I sit in the veranda and watch. There's not much to watch: the clothesline, the power poles that run along our alley instead of our street, some fruit trees, and houses belonging mostly to absentee Airbnb owners. It's a restful spot.

 

Birds sit the wires in seasonal rotation. Swallows and purple finches have moved off, and currently starlings are passing through. Starlings were permanent residents at the farm in the last decade; before that, they migrated past us as they do here in spring and fall. And we're no longer under the flyway; I miss the honking of vees of geese while I worked the farm garden.

The distance between these two locations is fourteen miles. This variability of population is interesting; I can speculate about it for hours. What's not to entertain?

Or I just ... sit. Right there, every blade of grass continually establishes the temple of the whole universe. What's not to contemplate?

I think the phenomenon of "hermit" life goes vastly unremarked and underappreciated. In this neighborhood alone, many work among their flowers, vegetables and apple trees alone, contemplatively plying trowel and clippers. Kitchen work, too, is often undertaken alone yet not lonely, chopping, folding in, turning from counterspace to sink with a bowl, mind gathered to a single point.

My maternal grandmother had a huge extended family, but as they passed one by one, she accepted a small apartment near us and established a routine of bible study and housekeeping that lasted until she breathed her last. My paternal grandmother outlived all but one son and accepted a small single-wide trailer in his back yard, sitting out front and shelling beans as the geese passed over.

Who's to say they were not practiced eremitic meditators? They both, by the way, faced pancreatic cancer at the end and both dealt with it by no longer eating, with a silent yet not sad patience I admired.

There must be millions of these "hermits," widows, widowers, the divorced, or separated, or abandoned to end-of-life care facilities, or, among those younger, simply content to rise, go forth to stamp books behind a library desk, go home and sit by a window watching people with umbrellas scurry along rain-swept streets, or, or ...

... and not necessarily unhappy about it. Even many who strongly enjoy being social also enjoy solitude.

The worldwide assumption of a religious or even secular requirement that to do well one must do for others does not come with a meter. A quiet life has this to recommend it: those living contented with little typically do not generate much of this world's distress. As such they can serve as models for a life not dependent upon material culture for "happiness."

That in itself benefits living beings.

-- shonin

 

Rice and veg

 

I grew some things and chopped them up. I steamed them enough to call them blanched, and steeped them in rice vinegar and honey.  

It's not like I can't or don't buy groceries, but occasional water-bath canning gives one the cheery sound of lids popping, and a sense of life going ahead.

Pop. Pop. Six or seven times, then go look at the moon.

This is preparation for a winter in the hermitary. 

Pickled veg is famously what Asian hermits have with their rice (when they have rice), especially in winter. Stonehouse recalled having gone through a hundred crocks of pickles, more or less, at his hermitage.

Stonehouse  had a hermitage, whereas I merely have a hermitary, that is, in my case, a she-cave attached to a comfortable home. Sincerity comes in bursts of a few seconds; I feel I would make a terrible Zen leader. 

That's all right. We are bubbles on the stream. When I see three seconds of sincerity, I jump on -- free ride! 

In the morning, rice and veg.

-- shonin 

 

Forty-some years I've
Lived in the mountains,
Ignorant of the world's
Rise and fall.
Warmed at night by a stove
Full of pine needles;
Satisfied at noon by a bowl
Of wild plants;
Sitting on rocks
Watching clouds and empty thoughts;
Patching my robe in sunlight;
Practicing silence
Till someone asks
Why Bodhidharma came east,
And I hang out my wash

-- Shiwu (Stonehouse) tr. Red Pine

No problem

 

 
People who are unwell may find that their options appear to be limited. Waking with a dry mouth and eyes and a hammering heart, they wonder if they are going to be able to get up this morning; then they find (this time) that they can do it. They get up and go do a few chores, then find themselves short of breath and the hammer heart has not gone away, which is a little new. They go back to bed and sleep at midday, then awaken to find there is a cup of tea left for them on the side table by a concerned family member. It's not quite hot; that was an unexpectedly long nap.

Perhaps they struggle up again, re-heat the tea, and, spilling a little (Oh, hot!), wander out back to sit in the sun, going over what chores remain that could be done somehow. "I might move that little ash tree that came up in the lawn, find it a better home. I wonder where the shovel for that is."

Planning a task is not failure to be in the moment. Those who go out shopping must sequence their activities: "bag, check. List, check. Keys, check. Phone, check. Okay, leave a cup of tea for the old-timer and say I'm going out. Oh, she's out cold. Well, she'll figure it out. I'll just tiptoe away."

All these activities are miracles of right now. Planning and listing are the sort of thing those new to zen may feel they must struggle against, but not so. The past vanishes into memory and the future is merely ideation, but these memories and ideas are indubitably part of the present moment.

The trick is to be all of you all the time, because you are all of the universe, with its air and warmth and tea passing through "you," along with the sound of jays out back for the old-timer and the changing colors of the stop light for the shopper. If what you are doing is what you are doing, inhabit all of it, like a star shining into all parts of its stellar system and on into the great beyond.

-- shonin

Katagiri says: 

Taking care of right now is coping with an emergency case. So when a moment comes, whatever happens, just face your life as it really is, giving away any ideas of good or bad, and try your best to carry out what you have to do. You can do this; you can face your life with a calm mind and burn the flame of your life in whatever you do. This is Buddha’s practice. That’s why teachers always tell you to practice, devote yourself to doing something, and forget yourself. When you forget yourself and put your wholehearted effort into facing every moment, you can do something, and simultaneously you can rest in the continuous flow of life energy. Then you really enjoy your life. 

Suzuki adds:

Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form, and emptiness emptiness." When Buddha comes, you will welcome him; when the devil comes, you will welcome him. The famous Chinese Zen master Ummon, said, "Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha." When he was ill, someone asked him, "How are you?" And he answered, "Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha." That is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness." There is no problem. One year of life is good.

The practice of a true person

My favorite Zen text is Tenzo Kyokun, Dogen's Instructions for the (Monastery) Cook.

Here is a passage to which I have returned multiple times: 

When you take care of things, do not see with your common eyes, do not think with your common sentiments. Pick a single blade of grass and erect a sanctuary for the jewel king; enter a single atom and turn the great wheel of the teaching. So even when you are making a broth of coarse greens, do not arouse an attitude of distaste or dismissal. Even when you are making a high-quality cream soup, do not arouse an attitude of rapture or dancing for joy. If you already have no attachments, how could you have any disgust? Therefore, although you may encounter inferior ingredients, do not be at all negligent; although you may come across delicacies, be all the more diligent. Never alter your state of mind based on materials. People who change their mind according to ingredients, or adjust their speech to [the status of] whoever they are talking to, are not people of the Way. -- Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community : A Translation of the Eihei Shingi ed./tr. Leighton and Okumura

When we make a judgment or show a preference, we impose a delusion on what's right in front of us, ignoring the co-dependent arising of all things. Buddhist ethics is training in thusness; that which is before us, rather than that which we wish is there or wish not there.

We can cover much, if not all, of the precepts by means of a single term: "honesty." Honest living simply precludes stealing, lying, misusing, murdering, willfully injuring, gossiping, disparaging, and disrespecting. Buddha spelled out these things because training in honesty is hard.

Dogen points out that the stakes are quite high. Though he continually refers to "just sitting" as the entire Buddhist project, he explicitly sets a high bar for the behavior that gives "just sitting" a chance to even happen: "People who... adjust their speech to whoever they are talking to, are not people of the Way."

As for the attitude while preparing food, the essential point is deeply to arouse genuine mind and respectful mind without making judgments about the ingredients' fineness or coarseness....  Although they create relationship to buddha, [donations that are] abundant but lacking [in heart] are not as good as those that are small but sincere. This is the practice of a [true] person.

We might try being honest to our vegetables and see if it doesn't feel a bit like training in "right doing." 😄 

-- shonin

In Place 45

Food and drink, free for the labor,

are the proper business

of humans; she strives to make

gratitude her main possession

She grows more vegetables than she needs and puts herself in a position to give some away, thus paying her debt of gratitude.

The Buddhist path itself is understood as something that brings gratitude and joy.
-- Paula Arai, Women Living Zen 151

In Place 44

Plant vegetables; this provides

exercise and sharpens observation

as well as making food and tea

available to you and others





We cultivate ourselves indoors and we cultivate ourselves outdoors, hoe in hand.

A couple of beds inside the fence, of kale, chard and potatoes mostly, keep the old woman busy in her tiny kitchen. As she waters the garden, small birds dart through the spray to catch a drop.

We empty our minds in the hall for creating buddhas, where some naturally open their flower of awakening in this monastic garden in the hills.
-- Hongzhi, quoted by Dogen in Eihei Koroku, 250 (tr. Leighton and Okamura)

In Place 43

Inspired by her stairs,

the old woman undertakes

to clear more stream bed;

instant rock garden





Between the stones she has tucked comfrey, mint, and mosses. In drought, she waters the stones, hopefully keeping the “garden” alive till winter.

Plans and events seldom agree
Who can step back doesn't worry
We blossom and fade like flowers
We gather and part like clouds
—Shiwu (Stonehouse, tr. Red Pine)

In Place 42

In summer she, grunting, hauls 
 
large stones from the dry wash

up to the hut to make steps

for those who keep to a path




She had no idea she could move anything so heavy. Samu with appropriate sweat.

Back by the stone bridge, mind returns.
Where now the things that troubled me?
— Han Shan (tr. Red Pine)

 

In Place 31

She loves to hear rain

on leaves, on grass and stones;

when rain falls on desk and books

she does roof work






The hut, built from scraps, is approaching the end of its third decade and maintenance is on the increase. She muses that rain and work are both excellent ways to observe the universal as the particular and vice versa.

Not engaging in extensive deliberation,
When sowing the fields you must work diligently.

-- Dogen, Eihei Koroku 445 (tr. Leighton and Okamura)

In Place 30

Everything within reach,

including the broom:

spring cleaning is quickly done

in a room eight by ten






"Allow no dust to cling." Plenty of dust remains after nearsighted Old Woman sweeps.

When the old woman wants to read a book, she extends her arm; when she wants tea, she extends her arm. Pretentiousness? Contrivance? Of course! But the genuine is never absent; it's up to her to notice.

Sweeping away mist and clouds, the purity of the universe is revealed, As, together with the wooden man, we all enjoy a spring of great peace. 

-- Zukui Jifu in Eminent Nuns, 144 (Beata Grant)

 

 

In Place 16

Preparing for a lack of shade,

the old woman dabs white paint

at the roof and rough-sawn walls

old wire fence makes an enclosure

Good paint is available at low prices (in five gallon cans) from the local recycler. The old woman has welded-wire fencing and tee posts left over from decades of farm projects. To build a little compound for the hut and its “raised” beds, she wraps fencing around a corner of the pasture. She gives the wire fencing a “rustic” look by inserting hazel prunings in the fencing vertically to a height above six feet. This is more practical than it looks, as it reduces the likelihood of the vegetables being grazed by deer. They are lovely to watch, but perhaps less so when they are partaking of one's kale.

Sitting, I meditate on emptiness
as fresh breezes fill the temple.
Words are inherently empty and yet
still I am fond of brush and ink.
My mind like ashes after the fire and yet
still I am tied to the world.

-- Miaohui (Grant, Daughters of Emptiness 121)

In Place 8

Shade tree, dying, leans on hut; 

old woman, sad, makes cuts

then cables tree uphill to make

firewood she had not needed





The tree began an imperceptibly slow but undeniable lean to the east, downhill, a path that would take it through the hut. Two feet thick and fifty feet tall, it presented a problem for the old woman. She considered whether to give up the hut, then elected to draw the tree uphill with wire rope and pulleys. Cutting the tree while it was under pressure from the cable presented its own set of difficulties, as the tree could split and crash backward into the building. By cutting most of the way through the stump and then cranking and resetting the tension many times, she eventually brought the tree within reach of a pole saw. Daylight where shade had been -- she'd foolishly counted on that shade for the hot summers.

Across the valley
I hear the sounds of trees being felled 

-- Ryokan (tr. Abé and Haskel)

 

In Place 7

Snips rusty fence wire
to set a gate; a tiny parkland in
deep brush -- this dry wash
silent in summer; in winter roaring

The gate provides an entryway from the poultry pasture, allowing access to the hut should anything happen to the main bridge, which crosses the creek elsewhere, nearer the homestead. Three bridges have been washed away by floods in times past. It is a very dynamic landscape.

Though the river's current never fails, the water passing, moment by moment, is never the same. Where the current pools, bubbles form on the surface, bursting and disappearing as others rise to replace them, none lasting long. In this world, people and their dwelling places are like that, always changing. 

-- Chomei, Hojoki

 

In Place 6

She's thrown a heavy old fir beam

from bank to bank, replacing a bridge 

long gone, and cut new trail right 

through old undergrowth: back door




An intimidating thicket of Himalaya berry canes of course grew up beneath the cottonwoods along the dry wash (a respectable creek in rainy season) but with time and a pair of secateurs such things can be pushed back, if a path is wanted.

If you don’t understand the way right before you,
how will you know the path as you walk?

-- Shitou (tr. Soto-Shu Liturgy Conference)