Observation and interaction

Here is one of twelve collages on The Permaculture Principles and how they might be applied to subsistence right livelihood, especially in the maritime Pacific Northwest. 

In recent years we have, on our one acre farm, by whatever causes, had fewer infestations here of insect pests, slugs and snails.

Perhaps one reason is that we keep an eye out for ways to encourage predation of these. By maintaining habitat refuges, we're seeing an increase in 1. garter snakes and gopher snakes, 2. tree frogs, and 3. orb weavers, yellow garden spiders, crab spiders and barn spiders. Also, we encourage 4. the ducks and chickens to spend time in the garden and orchard, especially in winter. When we find a ladybug or other beneficial on our walks, we bring it home if it seems okay to do so.

Through observation we can adapt to some changes. For example, we spotted a trend in increased supply of plantains, amaranths and false dandelion on the premises. We looked these up and ended up adding them to our diet and using the plantains for topical medication as well.

Bigger changes are leading us to other thoughts. Poison oak is on the increase, showing up on level ground and not just in the trees as formerly. We think from this, and hearing that rattlers are also extending their range, that our climate is drying and may affect the well, as our limited groundwater is seasonal-rains dependent. We can collect rain and drought-proof the garden somewhat, but may also need to add a water barrel and rotary pump for visits to the river, less than two miles off. We're nearing the end of our career here, but there's no point being driven off the place prematurely through lack of observation and interaction.

The Buddha’s insight into life’s interconnectedness has powerful implications for how we treat the natural world on earth, its wildlife, and each other. Because we depend so deeply on nature and on one another, we recognise that all life is as valuable as our own. 

  -- "Guest" writing for The Wildlife Trust

(To be continued)

The holistic way

If we look up "holistic" we find, apart from the narrower medical term, that it means "characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole."   

It is a term used by Permaculturists and is the point of Permaculture; treat this life (the "world") as a whole system of which we are a part, rather than as a set of resources (separate from us: objectified) to be exploited for profit, regardless of externalized costs.

Permaculture is a word originated by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren while considering whole systems in the context of agriculture in Tasmania. Permaculture principles as a set of ideas or design tools are in flux, as the movement's leadership is diverse and democratic, with new knowledge added all the time, so this series of posts will become dated quickly. 

With the exceptionally dissipative fossil fuel system rapidly approaching a EROEI Energy Returned On Energy Invested) of 1:1, the consequences: famines, resource wars, revolts, and corporate and governmental collapse appear unavoidable now. 

Those who have been feverishly working to create sustainable practices may or may not find a way for humanity to muddle through but remain the only game in town. There have been a number of related or similar efforts, such as the Satoyama Initiative or Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or Global Ecovillage Network.

I think the ethic (the "three ethics") as stated on permacultureprinciples.com is spot on. "Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share." Viewed through the monist glass, we can say that all this is Earth Care, people and their basic needs being a part of the holistic whole.

Here are the principles again:

1. Observe and Interact. By taking the time to engage with nature we can design relevant solutions.
2. Catch and Store Energy. Developing systems to collect resources when abundant, we can use them in need.
3. Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting useful rewards from your work.
4. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or non-resilient practices.
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – as opposed to non-renewable resources.
6. Produce No Waste – “Waste not, want not.”
7. Design From Patterns to Details – Observe patterns in nature and society. Test their appropriateness broadly, rather than losing yourself in detail.
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop, creating efficiencies and resiliences.
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions – Small is beautiful.
10. Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” -- be resilient.
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.

And, we'll go over them one by one.

An ethical life is one that is mindful, mannerly, and has style. Of
all moral failings and flaws of character, the worst is stinginess of
thought, which includes meanness in all its forms. Rudeness in
thought or deed toward others, toward nature, reduces the chances
of conviviality and interspecies communication, which are essential
to physical and spiritual survival.

-- Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild

(To be continued)

Right singularity

I've been covering, in my idiosyncratic way, the eight points of the eightfold path promulgated by Gotama when he snapped out of his long bout of meditation, determined to save the world. We've arrived at the last one, and it's a doozy.

Meditation is said, when undertaken correctly (whatever that might be), to get you the whole enchilada.

Well, it does. But it's generally offered embedded in pietistic hooraw: that "various levels or modes" thing can easily, and I suspect very often, be the money clause: "This stuff takes years, kid. Support me the whole time and I might get you there."   

I like and recommend meditation's ability to show, experimentally, such reality as we're equipped (as brains with sampling systems -- eyes, ears, etc.) to appreciate. And it takes some appreciation of what's what for there to be some justification for the other seven aspects of the path.

But it would be a mistake to go sit with the idea of "attaining" some kind of holiness. Attempting to become someone special (which is patently impossible) is exactly what Gotama would have you not do -- it would be the very illusion he returned to his friends to warn against.

So let's do a simple intellectual exercise. 'K?

You can imagine animals and plants arising from the biosphere, not as anything separate from the biosphere, the planet, the galaxy, the universe, but as aspects of all of the above -- it's all one thing, taking a variety of shapes, like thoughts in a mind. Yes?

But, wait -- are you an observer, outside of this image, or are you in it? The center of the universe, or an aspect of the universal?

I think we have to understand ourselves as, in our individuality, provisional beings at best, an aspect of the universal, to go on from here to the twelve principles that have been adumbrated as those of Permaculture. As foraging and farming and trading beings (which we have to be to live) we intervene with the plants and animals around us for our own benefit. How we do so may matter: what if they are our equals? What if it's important to show some respect? Hmm?

We know we have been destructive. How do we become less destructive, or are there even ways in which we can be constructive? If we are going to undertake to change the world for the "better," it's awfully important that the results be, umm, for the better.

'Cuz if we don't have good evidence for what we're doing, better we shoulda stayed on that couch, watching the commercials.

The field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very begin­ning. 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.

  -- Hongzhi, tr. Leighton

(To be continued)

Focus, focus!

 

Action, to be correct action, must spring from focus. If we react mainly to provocation, or take action aimlessly, our contribution will be correspondingly small. If we visualize a worthwhile project, and concentrate on it day and night, our impact will be the greater.

First we ascertain that our vision is "worthwhile." Then, whether we mean to create a one-acre food forest or manage a great nation's food system, we must focus on the task at hand and give it our all.

We can see, as we work through these principles, how each of them is a facet of a single principle. It becomes clear to us that right desire and right focus are practically the same. Right focus and right avocation, or livelihood, are also the same. The path is described as having eight parts so that we can absorb the lesson in manageable chunks.

Dogen uses the words "die sitting, die standing" to indicate the urgency we should bring to taking our path seriously. That doesn't mean don't have a sense of fun or play. It does mean not frittering away our minds endlessly on secondary, illusive matters -- a major trap for us in these times. 

Benefit others, which simultaneously gives abundant benefit to the self.

-- Dogen, Tenzo Kyokun, tr. Leighton and Okumura

(To be continued) 

Work well

From right doing, right work naturally flows. It is understandable if one has had to keep working at a fast-food place to help support one's children, but one must also keep an eye out for a better livelihood, as fast-food places poison the population.

In general few jobs meet this principle, as the world system has grown toward wage slavery to enrich those already rich, to most of whom the prospect of such enrichment doing harm to the population is of little or no concern.

It can be helpful to learn a craft or trade that may provide safe and nutritious food, clean water, goods or services that are as free as possible of harm through exploitation -- or debt, which is exploitation at one remove (including the system whereby corporate entities prioritize shareholders rather than the good of society and the biosphere).

It can be objected that looking into the probable effects of work is attachment to outcomes. Not necessarily. The spirit of one's commitment to the eightfold way is to acquire a certain level of skill in not doing harm, not to acquire praise or reward for so doing. Remain in the now and just do well.

I may be white-haired and nothing but bones 
but I’m versed in the work of daily survival 
in fall I pound thistles in a wooden mortar
in spring I dry vine buds in a wicker tray
I buy Solomon’s seal from a peddler down below
for seaweed I rely on a monk from across the sea
but who would have guessed at seventy-seven
I would dig a pond for lotus roots and water chestnuts

-- Stonehouse, tr. Red Pine

(To be continued)

Ethics are not your beliefs, they are what you do

 

Key to understanding why there are eight parts to the long- established Buddhist way and twelve principles to the more recent Permaculture way is this concept of "right doing."

If we are alive, we do some things. But perhaps some of them are thoughtless things. Then it behooves us to think this through. To do well, it may help to have (and keep to) a plan. (If we are uncomfortable calling what we do by the names given here, we may use other names. The important thing is the action.)

The Buddhist way may in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself.

The Permaculture principles are thought to be an expression of three ethics, caring for the earth, caring for people, and fairness -- which is really but one ethic, and may also in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule.

Everything unfolds from the observation that there is one observable reality, regardless of how it may be described, and that therefore in some sense there is no one or nothing from which we can be divided. Care for the earth is people care and is sharing.

So we can try this experimentally. See, feel, say (or refrain from saying), do, earn, strive, think, and manifest caring and sharing. We may find that it works, and that our cynicism has been a hindrance. Why should we ever be bored a single moment in an awakened life dedicated to right doing? It's not really harder than wrong doing.

Being mindful of generosity is a gate to what the Dharma illumines, for due to that we do not expect rewards. 

-- Dogen, 108 dharma gates, tr. Nearman

(To be continued)

Right saying

 

The world is coming to be defined by competing slanders and obfuscations. Clarity, honesty, openness and nurture are revolutionary. What really needs to be said? Are you the one to say it? How, when and where will it be most helpful? There are those who break silence only when it will be like a sunrise, and we know to treasure them.

As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.

-- Buddha to Mahapajapati, Gotami Sutta, tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

(To be continued)

Right desire

 

Desire is sometimes given a bad rap by good and thoughtful people. That's because it is conflated with acquisitiveness. We often wish to accrue money, fame, a lover, electronic toys, a car. But surely it is not wrong to desire universal health and happiness. So, right desire can be the motivator toward living a principled and clarified life. 

We see by this how far from these good things we can be led by advertising, propaganda, and selected "news" -- which may be but advertising and propaganda put forth by the unprincipled for the sake of a greedful and almost universally hurtful agenda. 

On a warm day we may desire to walk together to the lake or to sit under a tree and look across the river toward the mountain; in cold rain we may desire to sit by a fire with tea. These are good things; yet by wishing as much for others we find the springboard toward right action.

I said, “What does Zen Master Fenggan do when he is here?”
The monk said, “He pounds rice and offers it to the assembly of monks. At night he enjoys himself singing.”

-- Luqui Yin, tr. Tanahashi

(To be continued)

 

Right seeing

 

We begin by seeing our mistake. Separateness in the here and now is illusory, and our mental pictures of the past or future, laced with a desire to have things our own way, are also illusory. The universe with all that is in it is one thing. This is why it is right to resist the spreading of poisons in agriculture, the land, the skies, the sea, and in our cities, and to resist the spreading of fear (oppression) and of war (oppression also). 

The cause of the spreading of poisons, fear and war is the lack of accountability due to greed, and the correction of this sickness is accountability -- accepting responsibility for both the visible and invisible costs of our actions, and adjusting those actions accordingly, so that we may act with clarity and justice. Capitalism is (or certainly has become) systematized avoidance of justice. We can do better than this. 

Clearly seeing into one's nature is called practice, and the seat that puts an end to analytical thoughts is called zazen. 

-- Bassui

(To be continued) 

Permaculture ethics and principles in the light of Buddhism

"Earth care" is right action. Preventing soil loss, water pollution, excess atmospheric carbon, and radiological contamination are examples.

"People care" is right action. Active listening, feeding with good food, offering clean water, assisting with shelter and teaching right action are examples.

"Fair share" is right action. Living within one's means -- and finding small means sufficient opening up possibilities for others -- are examples.

These actions may be carried out in all of life, for example, within nature, architecturally, through responsible choice and use of tools, in teaching, in health care, in gift and exchange, in coming together on governance (the mutual determination of right action).

Grassroots Garden, Food for Lane County, Eugene, Oregon, USA

"Observation," as noted in the preceding post/note, is right action.

"Obtaining energy" in an ethical way (without destroying the life or livelihood of others, and without excess) is right action.

"Obtaining a yield" -- primary production (forestry, agriculture, manufacturing) in an ethical way for your livelihood (without destroying the life or livelihood of others, and without excess) is right action.

"Self-regulation" (evaluating and redirecting one's actions. Also: accepting criticism) is right action.

"Choosing to reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose, and renew" -- over the opposites of these -- is right action.

"Eschewing wastefulness", which is closely related to the preceding principle, is right action.

"Designing from patterns to details" -- close observation and imitation of natural cycles -- is right action.

"Integrating rather than segregating processes" -- closely related to the three preceding principles -- is right action. Incorporating a chicken moat into the homestead protects the garden from the hens and from the insects and mollusks the hens eat, for example.

"Using small and slow solutions" -- mulch rather than a tractor where a mulch will do -- is right action.

"Honoring diversity in all things" -- human and in nature (which comes to the same thing) -- is right action. Consider, for example, the resiliency of mutually respected vibrant culture and the resiliency of a food forest or polycultural vegetable garden.

"Using edges and valuing the marginal" is right action. This is related to honoring diversity; from the edges in society come imagination and innovation; from the edges in the landscape come wildlife and species interaction, preventing outsized populations of "undesirable" species without chemical invention among other benefits.

"Using and responding to change" is right action. Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει

All things flow. Ride the river of life.  

Unhesitatingly [the head of the farmyard] takes the lead in heavy physical labor. He cultivates the soil, sows seeds for vegetable crops, irrigates the fields when necessary, and thereby provides a steady supply of fresh vegetables and so on to the kitchen hall throughout the year.

-- Baizhang Monastic Regulations

(To be continued)