Diary of an Atheist Buddhist: The Three Jewels

"When you find the place where you are, practice occurs"--Dogen Zenji, Shobogenzo

Flower of the Week:

Dianthus sp. or "Sweet William"

Buddhist Lesson of the Week:

The Three Jewels

The bark on a Tibetan Cherry tree
in the Peace Garden

The Three Jewels are the Holy Trinity of Buddhism, if you will. They are the entirety of the basis of the religion. There are no concepts in Buddhism that are not attached to at least one, if not all three, of these ideas, and they are the foundation for all practice here at Green Gulch. They are:

1. Buddha

Buddha means great teacher. The Buddha, as in the great enlightened one who provided the philosophy and concepts for the religion, is by no means the only Buddha. Different Buddhist factions have different ideas on who a Buddha is, but in Zen I have heard many times that a Buddha is anyone who lives with Buddha-nature, or someone who is compassionate, mindful, forgiving, wise, etc. As far as actual practice goes, it can also mean a teacher for you to study with and have discussions with as you navigate your practice.

2. Dharma

The Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha. It is all of Buddhism's philosophies, dogmas, sutras, and lessons. One of the Boddhisattva vows is "Dharma gates are endless, I vow to enter them." This essentially means that there are many ways to discover the truth within the framework of Buddhism. There are endless opportunities to grow and learn, and those who are true with their practice will embrace all of those learning opportunities, even if they are unusual, unexpected, or even at times unwelcome. When you study Buddhism, you study the Dharma.

3. Sangha

The Sangha is the community in which you practice. Contemporarily it often refers to the groups of people who study the Dharma together. For example, Green Gulch is a Sangha, but so is the San Francisco Zen Center, as is Zen Buddhism in general, and Buddhism as a whole. Many Buddhists believe the whole world, and all of its population, to be a Sangha of sorts. Living and working in a community is such an important element of Buddhism because it is hard to actually practice if you do not have others to practice with. Living, working, and studying with others provides many more opportunities to practice compassion, patience, and awareness than if you were to only study by yourself. Sanghas also provide the opportunity to interact with teachers and people who can help guide you in your navigation of the Dharma.

My First Few Weeks:

Some broccoli and chard on the farm

It is hard for me to think about where to start. This past week and a half has felt like a month. It is hard for me to realize that I have not really shared very much of what has been happening here during this time before this point. The days here are wonderfully long and full, and it has been widely noted amongst us new residents that one day here often feels like it lasts two days in its fullness.

I think that perhaps the easiest way for me to start to talk about the beginning of my journey here is to break it up in nice, little, organized pieces. I have been told many times, especially during my application process to obtain this apprenticeship, that there are three main elements to living at Green Gulch, and it is imperative to partake in those three elements during our time here. I think I will talk about each part separately.

Practice

Practice is perhaps the most central of the three elements of living here, for obvious reasons; this is, after all, first and foremost, a religious center. The new apprentices moved to Green Gulch at the beginning of an interim period schedule, which is a more relaxed schedule than normal. This really only means that instead of two 40-minute periods of zazen in the morning, we only have one. That means that we have only had to start our days at 5:50 am instead of the more typical 5:00 am. We have two full weeks of this schedule before we jump deeper into the zazen.

There is an emphasis at Green Gulch on "work practice," which means living and working with a zen mind outside of zazen in the zendo. This is largely due to practical reasons, being we live and work on a relatively large and busy working farm and garden. The residents here need to be able to work while still placing their emphasis on their religious study. This means that when we work, we work and only focus on that. So when we pull weeds, we are encouraged to put all of our attention on pulling that weed. Or when we cut flowers, we focus only on the flower bush we are cutting. This of course is hard to do consistently through out the whole day, but that is why it is something that we practice.

Covered beds in the "kitchen garden," actually part of the farm

My sitting right now is largely unstructured (within my mind.) I don't try to push or pull my mind in any direction while I sit (which you're not supposed to do anyways when you sit zazen,) but I also haven't really been making a concentrated effort on watching my thoughts as they transpire at will. At times I worry about this, but I feel that it is okay; a lot of times in Zen it is important only to make the effort to make time for sitting, and through consistent sitting, a calm mind just kind of follows.

We are highly encouraged to engage in "practice discussions" (or "dokusans") while we're here, which are chats with members of the senior staff here at the center. We can talk to the abbess or the senior Dharma teacher, but they are hard to schedule time with because they are very busy. Most people seem to just find someone they like a lot who has lived here a long time and practiced for a long time. We are told that we can talk to them about anything during that time, because anything is relevant to our practice, including such seemingly frivolous things as crushes or disputes with your roommate. I am still figuring out who I would like to talk to...and really what it is I would talk to them about. I am sure things will come up. Perhaps they already have, and I just need to notice them in some coherent way.

Some lovely irises in the garden. The irises are fairly abundant right now.

After zazen in the mornings and in the evenings we do a service, which consists of bowing and chanting. It is definitely the part of our schedule that most new people find to be the most uncomfortable, only because it is by far the most religious part of our day. I feel like people are surprised by the religiosity of it because they think of zen as not all that religious, and as more of a philosophy. It is definitely a philosophy, and can be used that way (which is what I do), but that philosophy is based on a religion, and this is a center entirely devoted to that religion. As with everything in zen, I can take the whole religious aspect of our chants and interpret them however I like, which once I actually found something that worked for me, works very well. I might talk more later about what all that actually entails.

The chanting is also a neat way to encourage social cohesion of our sangha...just like singing together in church, chanting together in the zendo enables us to feel more cohesive as a group.

The "Peace Garden"

Work

I don't know the names of the flowers in the
foreground, but those are baby
sunflowers in the background

I work as a garden apprentice. There is only one other garden apprentice besides myself. Other people working in the garden right now include three apprentices from the garden season last year who either stayed at Green Gulch during the winter or are now returning to help for a little bit. We also have a garden manager. There are only ladies working in the garden, which can be interpreted however you like.

There are also many people who work on the farm, which is larger and right next door to the garden. There are 8 farm apprentices, I believe (most of which are men,) 4 returning farm apprentices from last year, and 3 farm managerial-type people. The farm and garden apprentices are often lumped together in activities around Green Gulch (the apprenticeship is technically the "farm/garden apprenticeship"), and we are all either friends already or working our way slowly to friendship :)

We work 5 days of the week (the typical Monday-Friday workweek) and have Saturday and Sunday off. However, our days off are hardly ever "off," or completely free. We are required to do morning zazen one of our two days off, and once we start going to Farmer's Markets we're going to be doing that on Saturdays.

Bed with baby zinnias

My work right now consists mainly of edging, weeding, and planting beds. We have two ceremonial gardens within the garden called the "Peace Garden" and the "Herb Circle." Today in the Herb Circle there is a large party (for a group separate from the center,) and so we had to spend most of our work time this week weeding the beds, mowing the lawns, and trimming the hedges in the Herb Circle to get it ready for today's events. There were a couple days where all we did was weed all day long, which was good for practice (in that it enabled us all to work on our patience.)

All people who work at Green Gulch are expected to work with "noble speech" which means that we only talk when it is necessary for the work we are doing. For example, I can check with my manager which plants I'm taking out in a bed or keeping, or I can ask for someone to hand me a spade, or some such thing, but no idle chit chat. We are not even really supposed to be talking about what we're doing in a general sense (i.e. asking questions about the flowers we're planting.) If we have questions of that sort while we're working we're expected to either research it in our free time or ask someone at another time.

I don't know a lot about plants, and I'm quickly realizing just how much I don't know about flowers at all. As those who know me well might know, I find it uncomfortable to be ignorant about pretty much anything, and so accepting my current ignorance about garden flowers is something I'm working with. I'm looking forward to learning more about them as my time goes on here, and to become proficient in something completely new to me.

On Wednesdays the garden is in charge of making flower arrangements for all of the altars at Green Gulch (of which there are many,) as well as for some of the offices, and the tables in the dining hall. Claudia, the garden manager, knew how much interest I had in the flower arranging, and thus gave me the first rotation in learning the ropes. I get to arrange flowers for the next two weeks as well, and then Juniper (the other garden apprentice) gets to do it for the three weeks after that. I absolutely loved the flower arranging. It was interesting to learn the process of choosing and clipping the flowers we use for the arrangements...of course it was more interesting to get to work on the arrangements themselves. I found it so wonderfully nourishing to be able to work on a creative project all day, and one that is important to the center and is genuinely enjoyed by everybody around here.

The "cob shed," or main garden building

Community

Of course, since Green Gulch is a relatively confined Sangha, participating in community life is important. This means a number of things--it could mean showing the proper respect (we bow an obscene amount here, around 70-100 times a day); it could mean being punctual (also very important here); it could mean just forming new friendships and new relationships with the practice leaders.

Before starting our apprenticeship on the 6th, all applicants for the apprenticeship program had to come here together for a sort of trial-period in February. Many of us from that period returned for the actual apprenticeship, and it was really nice to have our time together in February as a foundation for our friendships with each other now. That time in February also gave us the opportunity to be introduced to the community, and many of those connections are now growing stronger.

Our lovely yurt

I am living in a yurt that is about a 5 minute walk from the main campus buildings with 2 of the apprenticeship ladies, Juniper (the other garden apprentice,) and Isabelle (a farm apprentice). There is another yurt just above ours in which two of the male farm apprentices live. At first I had mixed feelings about the yurts (mainly just because Cloud Hall, the main dorm, is attached to the zendo, and you can practically just roll out of your bed in the morning on to your zazen cushion.) I am actually quite happy to have our own little haven away from the main hubbub of Green Gulch where we can wear tank tops without being reproached. It is also actually nice to get up kind of early before zazen and go and do yoga/stretch in Still Water Hall (a yoga room, essentially,) to get all nice and limber before sitting. Also the nights/mornings in the yurt are kind of cold as balls, so the allure of getting up and out to Still Water (where it is pleasantly balmy at all times) is a very good way to get going in the morning and make sure I get to zazen on time.

We also don't have any bathrooms out at the yurts (but we do have a faucet with potable water.) So that means we usually just have to plan on going to the bathroom around going to the yurt...but sometimes that doesn't work. At night we've developed a system that involves a bucket for our mid-slumber urination callings, which so far has worked out just fine. There is a compost toilet attached to the yurt, but it doesn't work, and I guess it would be a real big pain to get it working again.

I really enjoy spending time to get to know the various people who live here. We are all very similar people, as might be expected. It's a certain kind of person who's attracted to this place and this life. It's almost amazing just how intelligent everyone is, and how everybody is knowledgeable about something unique.

Some mist burning off the top of a hedge in the garden in the
morning

There are little activities all the time here for some community bonding/learning, especially for us apprentices. We have gone on nature walks where we learned all about the native plants around us (as well as many of their medicinal properties,) and walks to learn about our water systems (Green Gulch isn't attached to a municipal water system and gets all of its water for living spaces and the farm from 2 creeks, 3 reservoirs, and a well.) There was a movie night where we watched a delightful anime film called Paprika (form which Inception probably stole most of its ideas). Last night we played Avalon, which is a game that my friends and I would play all the time in Boulder, and I was very excited to play it here. It is also almost always possible to find a buddy to go on a hike with or go on a walk to the beach with at any given time.

Book of this Week:

I am re-reading the SFZC staple Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by our founder Suzuki Roshi. It is entirely DELIGHTFUL and a great way to find inspiration for practice when I'm starting to feel tired. If there is anyone reading this blog who has not read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and you have an interest in learning some basic Zen philosophies, then you should definitely read this book. It is easy to read and is actually quite funny in parts and you will find Suzuki entirely endearing, I promise.

Song(s) of this Week:

I have been rediscovering a band that was an old favorite of mine in high school, called Blind Pilot. In general I think that their first album is better, as I find it to be more poetic and insightful, but their second album can be fun as well. A good song from their first album is "Oviedo" and a good song from their second album is "Half Moon."

Oviedo: