The Light in the Darkness

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”
--Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

"Just this is it".
--Dongshan Lianjie

Hello everybody!

I have been feeling quasi-inspired to write a blogpost for a while now. As this is no longer something that I do regularly anymore, it is now more difficult for me to start in on writing a post--the more time that passes between posts, the more overwhelming it is for me to think about trying to synthesize the thoughts and new understandings that arise in that time.

I wished to take photos for this post as well, but as I dusted off the ole camera it soon became rather apparent that my trusty battery, which has served me well for the past 8 years, has decided to finally poop out. So, until I get a new battery, I shan't be taking any more photos. I feel like this is some sort of karmic retribution for me neglecting that particular art form for the past 4 months or so, like my camera decided to stick it to me for abandoning it for so long by just up and dying. Well, well done camera, well done. I didn't realize just how much I wanted to wander the garden through your lens until I was no longer able to do so. It turns out you don't realize what you've got until you've got it no more (I hope I don't overwhelm anybody with this innovative and unique insight--it should by now hopefully be apparent that sitting a bajillion hours of meditation has made me a more deep and contemplative person).

Anyways, I am honestly unsure of how to even start to talk about all that I experienced and grew into during this past Practice Period. With every Practice Period, I feel like I expand; I become wider and deeper in ways that beforehand I didn't even know the potential of. Reading that last sentence back now it sounds real hokey and pretentious, but I mean it earnestly. It's amazing how much is opened up just through observing the mind...and it turns out that the more that you observe it, the more the world, the universe, and your person is likewise opened, like a blossom unfolding.

The theme of this Practice Period was "Guest and Host", and it had two parts: the first was an exploration of the poem "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" by 9th century Chan master Dongshan Lianjie (in Japanese he is called Tozan Ryokai) led by our abbess Fu Schroeder; the second part was an exploration of the Japanese way of tea and all of it's beautiful details led by our tea master Meiya Wender. "Guest and Host" in relation to the ceremony of tea can be clearly understood: in every tea ceremony there is a host to guests who are receiving bowls of tea. In relation to the "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi", it becomes a bit more esoteric.

Buddhists generally believe that there are two forms of reality: there is the relative, which is the reality that we all readily understand and usually exist in, and then there is the ultimate reality which is ineffable, and yet perhaps much more "real" than the relative reality because it is not filtered through each of our subjective lenses (which are formed through our own karmic histories, societal upbringings, and/or just physical beings).  The relative reality is known as the "guest" and the ultimate reality is known as the "host". With this is mind, I'll post a link to the "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi", which is a poem about the two forms of reality and how they interact here. (It was a bit too long to post on the blog, I think...but definitely worth at least a gander).

"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is definitely not clear in what it is describing--but you need to keep in mind that this is a poem, written by a Chinese Chan master, in the 9th century. So, you know, it'd be surprising if it were clear, really. With these poems, or really with most any work by a Buddhist master, it is greatly encouraged for us to study them with a teacher. This poem is actually rather interesting and full of profound insight, but I would not have that particular taste of it if it weren't for the guidance I have received in understanding it. Also, just to be super clear, I do not really understand it still. Anyways, as I said before, it is essentially about navigating the relationship between the dark (the ultimate) and the light (the relative).

To better navigate our relationship with the ultimate and relative realities, Dongshan came up with the Five Ranks. The Five Ranks describe the five different relationships we could have with the two forms of reality throughout our practice. They are similar to the the 10 Oxherding Pictures in that these ranks describe, essentially, a process of obtaining enlightenment, and yet they may not be (and in fact, usually are not) experienced in order. In fact, our lives are usually a rather sporadic dance across these Five Ranks, and seldom do we actually settle on one for very long. The Five Ranks are actually described in a poem by Dongshan, but I feel like there's enough going on here right now, and so I won't introduce the poem, but rather just describe what's essentially going on at each rank as I understand it (although you could look up the poem and think about it with the descriptions below. I actually think the poem is rather beautiful. Link to the Wiki page with the poem here).

The Five Ranks:

1. The dark in the light

This rank is essentially when you're going about your daily life, caught up in the flow of progression and consumption, and all of a sudden you realize that that is not the whole reality. That there is something more, and yet you are unsure of what it is or how you could even begin to understand it. Fu believes that everybody experiences moments like this, and it leads them to spiritual practice (in whatever form). I could easily understand how someone could come across such a sensation as this and believe it to be an encounter with God; for us atheist Buddhists, it is not given that name (it is given the name of the ultimate reality), but really they could very easily be the same thing.

2. The light in the dark

Having encountered this taste of darkness, and spent some time seeking to become intimate with it--it becomes the forefront of your attention. This could easily be understood in the lens of a Practice Period: I participate in zazen and in Practice Periods because of this taste of darkness, this taste of the grandness of reality which I know I cannot yet comprehend. I thus sit an exorbitant amount and distance myself from the goings-on of the world so that I might better become familiar with this darkness. As such, it becomes my daily life, this focus on the ultimate. Meanwhile the light--the relative world of relationships, politics, environmental disaster, consumerism, media, entertainment, etc.-- begins to just exist on the periphery of my awareness.

3. I forget what this one is described as, but I think of it as "on the mountaintop"(the dark?)

At this stage one drops away all connections to the world of the light. It could be understood as enlightenment: the dark becomes your reality. You see everything only in terms of its parts, its dependent co-arising, its non-self, its impermanence. You no longer see the world as a place that functions separate from everything else. You see the emptiness of everything. It is tempting to stay here, to stay in the ultimate reality and forget about the relative reality, which becomes a reality which is obviously contrived. The Buddha thought about staying in this reality upon his own enlightenment--and yet he decided to return to the world of the light, of the relative, and teach.

4. the light

It is important to leave the mountaintop. Just as the Buddha chose to return to the world with his new awareness, so must we all on this spiritual path. To live isolated in enlightened awareness of the ultimate is a selfish thing to do; and so we must take courage and live with compassion. Thus we return to the "marketplace" (the relative reality) and take the steadied ground which we gained in the third stage and use it to help cease suffering of those caught up in the relative reality in whatever way we can. For, after all, the relative reality is just as real as the ultimate is. To ignore it would not only be selfish, it would be ignorant. And so this stage is a return to living fully in the light once more.

5. the dark becomes the light (and vice versa)

This to me seems to be the stage of true enlightenment. It is when one realizes that the light and dark realities are actually not separate. They are, in fact, the same thing. One cannot be differentiated from the other. You fully live in a space of non-duality; you see the dark as light, and the light as dark. There is no need to choose to return to the mountaintop or the marketplace, for you see that the marketplace is on the mountaintop, and has been this whole time, and always will be. It is realizing that the relative reality is just an expression of the ultimate reality, and the ultimate is just an expression of the relative. They are not even two sides of the same coin; they are just the coin in and of itself. It is easy to live a life of love, unbridled and true, in such a place. It is not to live through compassion, but to live as compassion. It is not to live through wisdom, but to live as wisdom. And to die as the same.

**The ultimate reality is also knows as "emptiness" and the relative is known as "form"

Perhaps due to the topic matter of this Practice Period, or maybe perhaps due to the current state of our country and the world, or most likely due to a combination of both, I experienced my first true taste of nihilism this Practice Period, and thus also experienced my first rather profound existential crisis. Actually, to talk about all of this in the past tense is not entirely correct--I am very much still in this period of existential crisis.

I am naturally a rather optimistic person, which might seem odd for someone who has regularly experienced and lived in states of depression throughout her life, and yet so it is. I have a rather ardent faith in the principle of impermanence, and it has gotten me through most everything in my life up to this point (which, admittedly, is not a whole lot). I fully and completely believe that everything is transient, perhaps most especially with regards to feelings and mind-states. Through a large dose of meditation, it becomes especially clear that nothing that arises in the mind lasts for very long--pair that with a realization that everything that we experience or know is just a manifestation of our mind trying to perceive its ineffably grand environment (the guest trying to understand the host, the light trying to grasp the dark, the form trying to hold on to the emptiness, what have you)--and you begin to realize, rather viscerally, that everything is transient. Thus, the depression, anxiety, headache, heartbreak, etc. will inevitably come to end, as everything does. And, often, in its place there arises a spectacular joy, gratitude, vivacity, or maybe just a sublime normality. These too will not last, but in realizing that, one is more capable of fully living in that brightness, knowing it will fade.

I have always believed in the power of good--of love--to overcome. This, perhaps, is not an uncommon belief of children, and it seems that such a belief tends to fade the longer one lives in the world and is exposed to the rampant greed, hatred, and delusion that permeates our existence. Something I like about Buddhism is that from the get-go it is like, yeah, that shit's out there, and it's not going away. The Buddha initially taught us how, as individuals, we can live better lives separate from the greed, hate, and delusion--to not add to the poisons of the world, and through so doing, act as a sort of passive cure. Later, Mahayana Buddhists took it one step further: practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism (also called Bodhisattvas) decided to look at the horrors of the world, and to not only work and live towards not adding to the poison, but instead to actively work towards curing others from the poison, knowing full well that such a task was impossible.

The vows of a Bodhisattva are: "Beings are numberless; I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it." The entire set of vows just reeks of "yeah, this is impossible, and yet fuck it, we're gonna do it anyways." There's courage there: it is facing the inevitable, and yet daring to challenge it--all in the name of compassion and love.

So, anyways, I am drawn to Zen Buddhism for its brazen acceptance of the impermanence of all things--I like that pragmatism. I am equally drawn to the entirely non-pragmatic assertion that despite that, we're going to work towards making the world better. To have courage and compassion in face of the emptiness and impermanence.

However, during this past Practice Period, I experienced the entirely unwelcome crisis of my faith in impermanence no longer becoming my refuge from the uncertainty of life, and instead having it become the foundation for all of my uncertainty. Despite the fact that I studied biology in college, and thus have a rather well-versed understanding of our current climate crisis, it had never really sunk in for me just how dire it is until about a month ago. My optimism was a cloud over my eyes--I knew it was bad, but I had a blind hope that humanity would alter its ways and somehow save ourselves and the other species we're taking down with us. That veil of optimism was lifted rather abruptly, and it left me completely floundering. I began to see that the greed, hatred, and delusion I had been taught about was a real thing; I began to fully realize that humanity might not last on this planet much longer, along with many of the other species I'm rather fond of. I began to see and feel, really for the first time, the impermanence of everything. I felt, and still currently feel, the reality that humanity and the world as we know it will one day end, and it looks like it's on track to happen sooner rather than later.

This has left me teetering in many ways; I've always made a concentrated effort to make the most of my own single, precious life--but how can I do that now, through the lens of the end of everything I know and love happening some day? I've always wanted to have children--how can I now, with any wholeheartedness, bring children into this world? It would be a selfish thing for me to do, and I aim to not be selfish. How could I justify spending years of my short life to be in school, studying something that will soon end, or working for a non-profit that works towards saving something that will end, or how can I have a relationship knowing it will end, or start a friendship knowing it will end, etc.?

I've always been able to answer all of these questions through my optimism--my hope that love and goodness will come out right in the end, and so I need not worry about all of this. As long as I live well and with love, it will create a ripple effect, and everybody will end up living well and with love. Although I can still see how this could be true, how could I ever live well enough or create enough love to balance out all of the deeply engrained greed, hatred, and delusion that is so rampant? There was never a golden age of humanity in which there was no war, no rape, no inequity of resources--why should I hope this will change?

I recently left Green Gulch on a trip to Massachusetts for a family reunion, to celebrate my grandmother's 90th birthday. It was a lovely trip, and it was actually quite nice to see my family. However, it was definitely an instance of me leaving the "mountaintop" to be submerged in the "marketplace". While I'm in my nice bubble at Green Gulch, I live a  reality in which everybody is respectful of themselves, each other, their food, their water, their environment, etc. However, when I was back in Massachusetts, I realized that that is not at all the case everywhere: the America that I grew up in and was a part of for so long is still carrying on just merrily...

So many people live their lives through consumption. They buy whatever they can (as a means to end their suffering in some way, I'm sure), and then quickly realize that that doesn't do the trick, and so they throw away what they previously bought...to make room for the new stuff they're going to buy to try to fill the vacancy in their lives. It is what our capitalist, consumerist culture has taught everyone to do. Meanwhile, people have never been more depressed, and waste is created at an alarming rate--both physical waste, and, of course, the gases that are readily released into the atmosphere through this process that are slowly but surely altering our world.

So, this post is a bit more of a downer than the other ones hitherto have been. I'm sorry about this, genuinely. I'm sure the people reading this (probably being my parents, thanks for sticking with it this far guys), know full well that life is hard. Any living and cognizant American is currently in a state of panic about something.

The world has always had some sort of crisis--something that has seemed like the end of days, the end of our lives as we know it...and yet here we are. Human beings are good problem solvers (even if most of the problems we solve are ones that we create in the first place); it is perhaps one of our greatest evolutionary strengths as a species. However, we are still a young species, and it is of note how incredibly, devastatingly much we have altered the planet we inhabit in our short run as a part of its ecosystem. Species go extinct, and humans will one day too--there is nothing we can do about that.

I guess I just need to affirm that I have this nihilism blooming within my heart and mind right now--but just as importantly I need to acknowledge that I am still an inherent optimist. I am both (yay for non-dualism!). I am astoundingly afraid that everything will end and that beings will continue to suffer through the greed, hatred, and delusion of themselves and others; perhaps most pertinently I am afraid of my increasing realization that nothing is as it seems, that I am just a configuration of momentarily aligning fragments of the universe, as is everyone and everything else, and thus nothing has any individual importance. However, just as earnestly, I still see the beauty in all of it.

During this past sesshin (the week of all-day sits that ends a Practice Period) I was out walking in the garden, and I stopped to look at a leaf. It was an ordinary leaf--I can't even remember what plant it came from. I squatted down on the grass next to this leaf and examined it. I looked at the thin green tissue, the veins that delicately ran throughout the structure, and the compartments within the leaf. I thought about all I had learned while studying biology about the structure of a plant cell and photosynthesis. I had the soft realization that the vein structure in the leaf's body was not so different from the vein structure in my own. I thought about the first fatty acid that formed in the primordial soup eons ago, and how today that chemical incident takes the shape of great red woods, humpback whales, crows, mushrooms, the bacteria in the compost and in my gut, blades of grass, and my own delicate body holding onto the delicate body of a leaf in a sunny garden.

Everything in that moment was fragmentary. It could all be easily broken down into parts. It could easily be understood how all of it will end...and yet it was real and it was simple and it was ordinary and it was extraordinary. The ultimate truth was exposed and intertwined into my being and consciousness for an instant while I realized the grandness of this world and this universe and what it means to be alive.

Human beings are good at solving problems. Human beings are ourselves very problematic. So how do we solve this problem?

The universe has manifested in the expression of our species for this moment in eternal time. We are as we are. We will end as we will end. In the meantime, I see no other better way to spend my short, perhaps meaningless, existence than by making it full and deep. I choose to live with courage in the face of the inevitable, and to hold those that need holding and let go of those that need letting go. I choose to feel the brilliance of the ephemeral, the transient, the imperceptible. I choose to live my life in connection with my senses and with my own squishy, bony, hairy, smooth body. I choose to live as a Bodhisattva not because I believe in enlightenment or nirvana (I don't), but because it is the only way that I can see to make art of my life; to love radically, to be genuine and honest, to work towards the cessation of suffering of beings because that is what is what a good person does.

I am still unsure about the power of radical love to overcome all--it now seems naive. And yet, and yet, maybe it's okay to live thus anyways. Is there anything else that can be done but to work hard and earnestly, to rest easily and be amazed, to have children and raise them to be conscientious and good-hearted, to make love, to argue about the great matter, to eat and love your food and the effort that brought it to you, to build friendships and communities, and continue to live as a member of this species whole-heartedly?

Maybe there's no problem to solve here. Maybe just to exist, sitting silently, breathing in and out...maybe that is enough.

Maybe.


"When Death Comes" by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes, 

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridgegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

The Loving Kindness Meditation (again)

"What’s past is past, nothing can change that. But the future can be different if we choose to make it so. We have to cultivate a vision of a happier, more peaceful future and make the effort now to bring it about. This is no time for complacency, hope lies in the action we take."--The 14th Dalai Lama

"World peace can only be based on inner peace. If we ask what destroys our inner peace, it’s not weapons and external threats, but our own inner flaws like anger. This is one of the reasons why love and compassion are important, because they strengthen us. This is a source of hope."--The 14th Dalai Lama

Hello everybody!

So...I have not done a blogpost in a while, and I will not do one for another long stretch. I primarily stopped posting last fall because I was entering a Practice Period (a time of increased concentration and study). I will again be entering a Practice Period here at Green Gulch, starting tomorrow, and so again, I will not post for a couple of months. 

My blog, for the most part, served the function during my first 6 months at Green Gulch as a platform for me to process the insane amount of wisdom consistently being poured over me in this shower of increased awareness. It also served as a way for me to attempt to explain to my friends and family "on the outside" what it is that I am learning and experiencing here, which is a difficult task to do completely.

At this point, I again feel a need to try to process my reality through writing it out and broadcasting it. Also, just as earnestly, I feel that it would be good for people to have access to the wisdom provided to me through this place in order to help them figure out our contemporary world.

The country is obviously in pain, and as a result of that pain we have, as a nation, elected a cold sore of a person to run our nation. People without much optimism for the future given their position in our society, or their frustration over not having work, or their fear based in ignorance, put their hope in Trump to "Make America Great Again". 

However, even the people who voted for Trump are becoming disenchanted with their courier of the future, their prince of the working man, their herald for a return to prosperity. Increasingly, Trump (and his advisors) seems like an almost two-dimensional villain straight from a Disney movie. Nothing he is doing makes sense, and it is hurting a lot of people (not to mention other living beings and the planet itself). It has not even been a month of America under a Trump presidency, and the damage that has been done is enough to fill a lifetime--many lifetimes. 

But, I imagine all of you who read this are already well aware of how much suffering he has caused, and are all feeling rather fatigued by it already. It is, understandably, exhausting being consistently bombarded by blows all over the fragile body of our progressive idealism. So, I won't go into the details of what he's done, or is planning to do, as I'm sure most of you are already aware of what is going down.

Instead, I want to talk about the advice that has been given to me and the rest of my community leaders by our teachers as to how to deal with the insanity of our current reality (I wistfully think of the plentitude of alternate universes where Trump was not elected, and how in those universes, in the ones where there is also a Multiverse Theory, there are people saying "God, can you imagine if we lived in a universe where Trump was actually elected President of the United States?") 

I would also like to share some insights I had during the last Practice Period that I have found helpful in dealing with all of this, and how those insights cause me to alternatively shrink with paralyzing guilt or entirely and confidently embrace my life on this planet right now. I think that I'll start with those insights, as they are the lens though which I am investigating life right now, and thus an appropriate foundation for the rest of my thoughts.

Green Gulch Practice Period, Fall 2016

Our Practice Period group, with Reb Anderson (also called Tenshin Roshi) in the front and center.

As a reminder for those who aren't readily exposed to this lifestyle all of the time, a Practice Period at Green Gulch is a two month long period of intensive meditation and study. It involves more daily sitting (typically 5 times a day, instead of the usual 3), less work (only 3 hours a day instead of 6), and usually has a focus for the time, as designated by the flag teacher for the PP. The flag teacher for ours was none other than Reb Anderson himself, and the focus was the Oxherding Pictures.

The Oxherding Pictures are a series of 10 pictures, accompanied by poems, that allegorically tell the story of a practitioner working towards realization. In the photos and the poems the "oxherder" is the practitioner, while the "ox" is realization, or nirvana. Honestly I wasn't super into this whole thing, and didn't find it entirely compelling, so I'm not going to talk too much about it here.

Before PP started Reb pulled aside the group of residents continuing into PP and asked us to think about our intention for the Practice Period. At first I had a lot of resistance to being asked to come up with an intention--it led rather viscerally to flashbacks of my hippy grade school perpetually asking me to set goals for myself. However, after a couple of weeks into PP, it became clear to me that I actually did have an intention. This intention was something that I had been subconsciously mulling over for a while, but my mind was ready during PP to bring it to the forefront and to direct all of my energy and focus into this one idea: that I needed to practice loving unconditionally, without expectations.

Living at Green Gulch has really highlighted for me my natural capacity to love people, and to love them deeply--although this sounds like a very charming and pleasant trait (and I believe that oftentimes it is just that), it has also led me to a lot of suffering. I realized concretely during PP that the only reason I suffered from such a capacity to love was that I in turn 1) expected everybody that I loved to love me as much as I loved them, and 2) I expected that they would express that love in the same manner that I expressed it.

I realized that releasing that hold, that tight, tight grip on those expectations would liberate me. I realized that the most important thing I could possibly do with my intentions and time right now is to practice being a person who truly loved unconditionally. This was not easily done, and I experienced what I can only really describe as mental growing pains in working towards this, both within my space of formal meditation, and outside of it, in my interactions with people. However, throughout those two months I found myself looking around at the people surrounding me, and feeling a deep and warm happiness at their existence. Just that--feeling happy that they exist. With some of these people, I knew that they did not love me as I loved them, and yet I would look at them and marvel at their beautiful complexity just as ardently as if they did.

This work turned out to be rather fortuitous, as half-way through PP, Donald Trump was somehow elected the 45th President of the United States. Our (perhaps obviously) very liberal community was in shambles; like a lot of the nation, we went through all 5 of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally (very begrudging) acceptance that this is our new reality. Slowly, as a community, we came to understand how we, as bodhisattvas, would approach this reality: with compassion, of course.

It is not easy to live through compassion. It is something that takes hard work, patience, and perseverance. The predominantly white, liberal, well-educated, upper-middle-class demographic of Green Gulch had to come to terms with the fact that we live in a very nice, well-insulated bubble of liberal ideals and lifestyles; that despite our vow to save all beings, we were very ignorant of the pain felt by most of the country.

It is easy to hate, especially if those whom you hate are hateful. It is easy to look at the people who voted for Trump and categorize them as "other", as all belonging to a group that is defined by the man they chose to be their leader. It is easy to be hateful of Trump himself, because he deliberately and intentionally, seemingly without insight, works towards causing harm.

I look at the rage I feel when I see him doing literally everything he's done as President so far, and I know that it is valid. He is harming the environment, women, people of color, immigrants, indigenous peoples, Muslims, the poor--basically everyone who is not a rich, white man. As a bodhisattva, and a person who works on feeling compassion and empathy, this all devastates me. And yet, I know I need to be aware of my privilege, and the place that my rage has within my context as a well-educated, well-loved, well-cared-for, white girl.

I cannot help my privilege and the world view that I have as a result of that privilege. Yet I feel like I need to be aware that it is easy for me, from my place in this cozy, safe, little valley to believe that we must live through compassion, and treat all of the people who are hateful with compassion; I am doing it from my security as a white, well-educated person.

In fact, this is something that I don't even agree with all of the time myself. Throughout PP we had the opportunity to have "teas" with Reb, where the whole PP group sat in a room with Reb for a couple of hours and asked him questions, about anything. At one point Reb was talking about how it is the role of a Bodhisattva to treat every injustice, every crime, every misdeed, with compassion and light-heartedness; I felt an immediate reaction to these words when I thought about them applied to sexual abuse or mass genocide. I didn't understand, nor did I agree, that such things should be taken light-heartedly. I brought this up to Reb in the tea, and found his answer disappointing. He did not seem like he was ready or capable to take up this issue from the viewpoint of a victim in such a situation. It took me a while to feel compassion for him in this regard, and to realize that just like I can't help how my psychology is a result of my privilege, neither can he, despite all of his meditation and study (and wisdom). Such things were outside of his realm of experience, and so he did not think to include them in his discussion.

Anyways, I think it is important to approach the mass injustices incurred by the Trump Administration with compassion, but not light-heartedness. It is important to not be reactive, as our President is, but to instead be responsive. Compassion, sympathy, and empathy are all built on a foundation of suffering. It is easier for people to feel compassion, sympathy, or empathy with someone suffering a plight similar to a plight they themselves have suffered. To know suffering at all inspires compassion when you see the suffering of others. I believe, although do not know, that Trump has not lived a life in which he has suffered; he has not lived a life where he has to see the consequences of his actions on others; he has not lived a life where he was held responsible, where he was made to understand that others are just as important as he is. So, just like myself, just like Reb, Trump is a product of his privilege, and his extremely cushioned privilege has resulted in him practically being psychologically incapable of feeling pain for others, including the confused pain of many of the people who voted for him.

The pain his supporters felt was real, is real. They feel overlooked. During the Industrial Revolution, the people of the midwest were worried about their jobs because their agrarian lifestyle was being made near impractical and unprofitable due to the success of the factories in the big cities on the coasts. This resulted in political turbulence and general unrest. Now, the people of the midwest are worried about their jobs because their industrial lifestyle is being made near impractical and unprofitable due to the success of the tech industries in the big cities on the coasts. These cities are making the money, and so making the culture, making the social progressions, and are all but forgetting their afraid brothers and sisters in the middle of the country. This is, of course, and over-simplification, but not entirely off point, I don't think.

To live in compassion is not to live complacently; it is to live in the radical acceptance that complete, deep, unconditional love for all beings is the way. It is to be conscientious and courteous and responsive, not reactive. It is to be radiant and surefooted in the face of the darkness of ignorance. It is to be a mirror and a light to those who hate because they suffer; it is to be an ally and a friend to those who are oppressed and made to suffer through the hatred of others. It is not to be idle, but to be persistently engaged with life, in all its forms. It is to be a personification of love, hope, and strength.

Metta

There is a practice within Mahayana Buddhism called "Metta", which is just exactly practicing living through the Loving Kindness Meditation (posted below). Metta involves this process, more or less: while you're meditating, or reading through the meditation below, imagine pouring the love described in the meditation to someone you love. Imagine a partner, a parent, a sibling, or a close friend while you're reading. It will feel rather good and uplifting, I'm sure. Then, read through it again thinking of a friendly or neutral acquaintance--a work colleague, your favorite cashier, the bus driver you routinely get on your morning commute, what have you. It will still feel pretty good, and you'll think that you're a pretty neat person to feel so lovingly for a stranger. Last, read it thinking about someone you do not like at all--your boyfriend's sexist and racist uncle, that woman who shouted at you at work, our President. See what comes up for you--and think about why those feelings and thoughts are coming up. I feel like maybe it will be harder on this last one than on the other two--why is it harder? Why can you not wish such things for that person?

Metta is a way to literally exercise your capacity for compassion, fully and deeply. If you do not think that such a thing in necessary, well you might be right. However, I feel it is important. Whenever I look at those I see as heroes, they are living in love despite every reason they have not to. They are people who are oppressed, who are starved of everything good, and yet they persevere in the most radical way they can--to continue embracing those pains, to push through them, to grow strong and brilliant in their resistance through love.

One of my most favorite quotes comes from Mr. Rogers. It is something I continue to find inspiration in. It is this:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Right now almost everything in the news is scary. It is our job to be the helpers.

I feel inspired when I look at the people of our country today. They are loud and active. They are showing love radically. I am moved that people march and protest; I am moved that people protect Muslims praying in airports and that the National Park Service is unofficially leading the resistance. The people of America are more radiant than ever. I heard people remark a few times while participating in the Women's March that Trump has already done something no other President has done: unite the country. Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, Native, Poor, Wealthy, Liberal, Conservative, Men, Women, Straight, LGBQT: All are united in our fear for what this man can do to our country, to our lives, to the people, places, and communities that we love.

Going into another Practice Period at such a time, it is hard to not feel like I'm running away. We are not supposed to leave the valley during these next two months, nor be on the internet, or really actively engage in the world at large to any real extent. I will not be able to share information, remain as informed, or join in on marches or protests. Yet I feel that to live this lifestyle is a form of protest itself (while still inwardly cringing at the privilege that allows me to have that viewpoint, but so it goes.) To be quiet and contemplative, soft and aware, and deeply, intimately connected to the place and people around me, it is a radical way to live. It encourages within me grace and commitment and calm, all things which I hope I can in turn give to this aching world.

As Wendy Johnson said during our most recent public Dharma Talk on Sunday, the waters right now are very muddy. But it is good! Because beauty grows from muddy waters; it is from the darkest and dirtiest conditions that lotuses bloom forth.

And so I want to share with you the Loving Kindness Meditation, my favorite chant that we do here. It is full of beautiful, simple ideas on how to be the best person you can be, in my opinion. Without politics, without economics, without social constructs, this is a call to live lovingly in your most basic personhood. It is how you can live your life with grace, humility, and love. It is how you can be a helper.

The Loving Kindness Meditation:

This is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise,
Who seeks the good, and has obtained peace.

Let one be strenuous, upright, and sincere,
Without pride, easily contented, and joyous.
Let one not be submerged by the things of the world.
Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches.
Let one's senses be controlled.
Let one be wise but not puffed up and
Let one not desire great possessions even for one's family.
Let one do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove.

May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety,
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
In high or middle or low realms of existence.
Small or great, visible or invisible,
Near or far, born or to be born,
May all beings be happy.

Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state.
Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life
Watches over and protects her only child,
So with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things.
Suffusing love over the entire world,
Above, below, and all around, without limit,
So let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world.

Standing or walking, sitting or lying down,
During all one's waking hours,
Let one practice the way with gratitude.

Not holding to fixed views,
Endowed with insight,
Freed from sense appetites,
One who achieves the way
Will be freed from the duality of birth and death.

Hello, Goodbye

I have not written a post in a while. I don't really know who all is impacted by this besides maybe my parents, but if you are, then I am sorry that I dropped off the face of the Earth for a bit there. I am writing a post now to amend for this, as well as to prepare some people for the fact that I will not be writing on here for a while. At least two months...but who knows for how much longer after that as well.

Tomorrow I start Practice Period. Practice Period is a whole different ball game than the summer apprenticeship season here in the gulch. Whereas, out of necessity, the focus of the summer season here is the production of the farm and garden (as well as the retreats and guests), in Practice Period the focus is, well, the practice. It's led by Reb Anderson, who will give us many a dharma talk (undoubtedly about "pivots" and "pivoting") and a class on the Ox Herding Pictures. Our abbess Fu is also going to give a class on Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen. 

I will still be working in the garden, but only 4 hours a day. The rest of my time is going to be largely spent sitting. During the summer I was only required to sit 4 days a week; now I will sit at least one 40-minute period every day (even on our personal days, of which we only get one-and-a-half a week). Every Tuesday we will have a half-day sit, followed by free time. Every work day we get two hours of free time in the afternoon, as well as one hour of required reading time, during which we can only read dharma books. 

The bookends of the Practice Period are periods of INTENSE sitting. Tomorrow, to kick it off, we are doing a two-day tangaryo. Tangaryo is sitting all-day (5 am to 9 pm) with the only breaks being meal times (followed by one hour of free time). Tangaryo is supposed to me reminiscent of when monks would first approach a monastery to practice, and they used to have to sit outside of the temple, unperturbed, until they were allowed admittance inside. This was a test to show your dedication. It completely reminds me of Fight Club and people waiting outside of the house on Paper Street until they were allowed entry into Project Mayhem.

At the end of Practice Period we will sit a sesshin. I've already talked about sesshins before, but in case you missed that post, a sesshin is a week of all-day sits. The all-day sits during sesshin are less stringent than during tangaryo, in that you get more breaks and are able to walk around more and stuff, but it's still from 5 in the morning till 9 at night, and you know, is an entire week.

Anyways, this whole thing is supposedly super great, really grounding, really unifying, and I'm curious about it all. I don't really have any expectations, at least ones that I'm conscious of. We'll just see what happens.

I will not be on my computer during Practice Period, so this is going to be my last post until probably at least mid-December. I know I haven't posted in a while, so I'll do a quick catch-up before saying goodbye for now.

Notable occurrences from the past month:

1. I returned to Colorado for the wedding of two of my favorite people, Jordan Breakstone and Dana Shier. It was an absolutely tremendous time, wonderfully full of love and a completely perfect weekend, in my opinion. It was the first time since I moved to Green Gulch that I  had been away from the valley for more than 24 hours. As such it was very stimulating at many points, but overall rather heartening and refreshing. I was able to help them out by utilizing my skills at flower arranging that grew and blossomed here (pun intended) to do the arrangements for the wedding. It was quite the homecoming for all of my college friends, known as The Collective (with some notable lovelies missing). The weekend for me was essentially a Collective love-fest, where we were all able to be together and continuously expressing to each other how much we all love each other. I really do love them all, a lot. I'm also just so excited and happy for Jordan and Dana. It is quite the accomplishment to bring together so many people in complete unison and love to celebrate their own love and commitments to each other.

Extended Collective, with bride and groom front and center. Missing notables: Kati, Nick, Shane, Johanna, Sean and Luke.

2. On the last Friday of September the farm and garden put on the annual Harvest Dinner and Dance. It was quite the evening. The farm and garden crew collectively made the dinner, primarily using ingredients from the farm/garden, and decorated our usually unassuming pool deck into a rather lovely dance space, complete with twinkle lights, large paper flowers, and real flowers spattered about. The dinner consisted of absolutely delicious beet burgers, yummy herb spreads, roasted potatoes, lovely cole slaw, and baked apples. The dance was a square dance, complete with an official caller. I'll admit that, despite my fervent love of dancing, I was not feeling too excited at the thought of square dancing. However, it was quite perfect--I think that perhaps a community of quiet introverts might need someone telling them how to dance and how to make contact with one another in order for us to be comfortable with doing so. Furthermore, my friend (the community's friend) Travis returned for the weekend, and it was just so great to have him around.

3. On the day following the Harvest Dinner a group of us went up Mount Tam and hung out on the grassy slopes of the sleeping goddess over-looking the sea. On this trip I was particularly struck by the wonder that hanging out with a group of Zen students is. Everybody makes such piquant, understated, apt, completely respectful and loving remarks about our situations. When we arrived to our spot on the hill, comments such as "the grass smells lovely," "look at the way the waves roll out there on the ocean," and "the trees are such a deep color green!" were exchanged before we all sat silently and easily in our spot together for a good while. We also explored forests, went to Stinson Beach for ice cream, and then Mill Valley for burgers on this outing. It was really, simply, wonderful.

4. Reverend angel Kyodo williams came and gave a dharma talk to the Green Gulch community. Reverend angel is an African-American, lesbian, Zen priest. She has written a few highly-acclaimed books about engaged Buddhism, including her most recent, Radical Dharma. She is absolutely inspiring to listen to. She has such clear insight into what it means to live compassionately while still valuing your own struggles and the suffering of the world. One of her main points, and one that is particularly striking to me each time I hear her speak, is that we must be compassionate towards people who are bigoted or oppressive because they are missing out on so much of life and experience through their hatred and closed-off hearts and minds. She presents that idea much more eloquently and inspiringly than I just did, so if you're interested in what she has to say, you should definitely read her books or listen to her talks.

5. A group of us had one last outing to Ryan's grandparents' orchard in Sebastopol. I love Sebastopol--really just Sonoma County in general. It's climate is dry and hot, and far more similar to the climate that I grew up in than the damp and grey climate I currently reside in. The orchard was lovely, of course. We did some more work to prepare the property for Ryan's brother's wedding, which happened on Saturday (congratulations Gabe and Shannon! I know the both of you definitely read the blog and would be remiss if I didn't do a shout-out). It was great to have a weekend away before being in lock-down for two months.

6. The garden manager, Claudia, went to Tassajara (our sister temple) for Practice Period there, leaving the garden without a manager for a while. She prepared us all very thoroughly for her time away, and I'm also curious as to what that's going to be like. Marie and Rebecca are not doing Practice Period, so they'll be able to work full-time, which will help. Juniper and I are still going to work in the garden when we can, and two new Practice Period people will also join our crew. Considering that the garden is already really slowing down on production, I think it will be fine and entirely manageable. We had a lovely last week together (Isabelle is also moving on to work on her career). I love the garden ladies, and I am so grateful to have had them as my work family these past six months.

The ladies of the garden!

Some Journal Entries from this Past Month:

1. The Garden at Evening

This dusk is so real and whole--the deep, sheer, tangible obscurity in the light, signaling another transition, another change. The breeze momentarily soaked through me before passing on to carry the bees and dragonflies home. The trees are their own dark silhouettes, the individuality of their limbs and their beings becoming a shadow of an entangled complexity. They are set against the pastel awareness of the reminiscent sky, beckoning thoughts of the past when I was tired, but otherwise happy. 

I am happy now, though more completely. I don't know what makes me so sure that the happiness of this moment is more complete than the happinesses of my past. I still feel the cold air, the coming turns, but now I know to stop and look at the stars, to look at the moon and marvel. 

The clover is deep and full beneath my feet. The birds are signaling the curtain call and the flowers around me seem more tangible in their beauty in this fading light than when they are radiant in the brightness of day. This beauty is easier for me to understand, to see in myself. It is subdued, quiet, and slyly self-aware. 

I see in front of me some wisps of clouds impermanently stained a vibrant pink by the setting sun, outlining and framing the almost imperceptible twinkle of the first star shining for this night, for this place. I know it is possible to both be alone, and not be at all--to only be a reflection of this world slowly pivoting away from our star and towards the light of stars that passed through the ineffable emptiness of vast space to only be momentarily seen and seldom understood. 

This tree right before me knows me better than I could ever know it. I don't know why that seems to be the case--perhaps it is a different sort of knowing than the kind I'm accustomed to. Goodnight, tree. I'll try to see you in the morning as I tend to the soil and plants around you, surrounding you. Thank you for being here with me tonight. 

2. Sitting in the Dining Room

I'm just going to sit down and write and see what happens.

What exists in this state of stale inspiration? This state of idealizing the potential for artistry and raw emotion? Is my neck too tight? Have I consumed too much sugar? Is my disconnect from my heart making it impossible to think clearly? What is the danger of living too much in your head?

I have discovered what it is like to live complacently in a place that is dedicated to awareness.

I am consistently entirely aware of how young I am--of how my youth begets frustration, sometimes directed at the fact that I am young and not reckless. I always aim to live a life that is conscientious, thoughtful, and measured, but by living in such a way, so much is left out. So much is gained, but still there is so much left out. I do not wish to live with reckless impulsiveness, but sometimes I want to consciously be recklessly impulsive. I sometimes want to give into my frivolous desires, in full acknowledgement of their frivolity and senselessness and ephemerality…just so I can experience it. Just to satisfy my scientific curiosity at how life can be, is going to be.

The light here is dark, even in midday. Right now it could be considered proper evening. So it is, of course, the hues of a day ending. The plants outside the window are dancing under the force of unleashed rainfall, rejoicing in the potential such unbound moisture brings--potential to go to sleep, to rejuvenate, to nourish their short-lived tissues that cling to the surface of this ever-evolving and breathing space rock. 

All of the beings here are used to living in a cloud, to navigating our gaze through the passing of mists and fogs along the hidden ridge lines of our encompassing hills. We are used to navigating the clouds surrounding our imperfect senses so that we can rest uneasily and joyously in the knowledge that we know nothing, and soon this will all end.

It is a full moon tonight, but her energy will be hidden behind torrents--but only from us valley folk. The moon herself will always bathe in her own energy as an ever-present, ever-inspiring, ever-lifeless orb; sister to the stars, but only distantly so--only so to the poetic creatures down below her who seek to understand their place among the entirety of everything while it lasts. 

Really, it's just as well that I won't have the moon with me tonight--the unbridled and wild energy she inspires in my delicate body when she is at her full-scale voluptuousness sounds frustrating. I am fortunate to have lovely nights filled with hope and tension. I am unlucky that I have the habit of expecting all such similar circumstances to yield similar results.

3. Place

Today it is rainy. It has been so for the past few days, but it is important to notice it today as well. Today is a day of transition. People well-loved by the community are moving away and new faces are joining us (well, new to me). It is overall a rather refreshing experience. Maybe refreshing is not the right word, for it is so positive. There is naturally some sadness in seeing some of my loves leave--but they're not really gone, and I know that.

Today is my last day living in the yurt. Tomorrow I will move into the urban center of Green Gulch--Cloud Hall--and no longer be able to associate with the mountain folk of which I am now a part. This is a transition that I have been waiting for with earnest eagerness. I am convinced that I will have more free-time if I am not having to consistently trek back and forth from the outskirts. Perhaps more pertinently, the yurt is not insulated and it is starting to get cold. At night the cold does not bother me--it is primarily an issue at 4:15 in the morning when I wake up to stumble my way along the dark path to zazen. 

My room in Cloud Hall is warm and cozy, and just like the yurt I'll have a skylight and lovely ladies for company. I am ready for this transition, and yet there's always a little trepidation in change, in having to release your former way of living so that you may grow and learn. I am reminded of when I was growing up and my family would move houses. As we were pulling away for the last time from what had been our home, my mom would always look back and say "Bye-bye, happy house!", which my brother and I would then repeat. I always found that small ritual comforting and right--I have always inherently felt that places or things should be treated with respect, especially if they shelter you or care for you or give you comfort and support. I have carried this ritual with me into adulthood (if that is what this is). I said it to my dorm room in college, and to every place that has sheltered me since. 

I have been making sure to fully appreciate all that the yurt-living experience can uniquely offer to me, to my experience and my connection to this place, to Green Gulch. In Wendy Johnson's class, "Buddhism and Ecology", she effortlessly and reverentially identifies with and loves the land, her place. As someone who grew up in a small mountain town, I have been instructed and reminded throughout my life to find my place. To orient to where I am. In Colorado, that orientation was done easily through using the enveloping mountains. Here there is potential for it to be done through the hills, the fog, the ocean, the redwood forests, the garden, or the farm. Yet recently I have not been able to connect to this earth, to this land that I now call home. 

I have been too trapped in my own ideas of what I am not getting from life. I've been living in a fog of self-involved frustration and in so doing I have disconnected from my place--from my soil, my flowers, my food, my softly rolling clouds, my bright stars, my sunlit dry hills, my body on this Earth. It is a little disheartening to discover that even living a life as a gardener at a Zen center is conducive to a period of dissociation from my surroundings and the planet. Although, because I live as a gardener at a zen center, I do have the fortunate advantage of being someone who is aware of my dissociation. I am also lucky enough to have ready access to wise beings such as Wendy who are able to gently encourage me to lift my head out of my own ass and look around for a moment, at the moment.

So, today I looked around once more. On one of my last hikes from the yurt I stopped for a moment to look at a tree--a tree I've passed many, many times. It is a striking tree, and has impressed me continuously throughout the past six months with its character. It looks old, wise, venerable, crotchety, tired, aged, storied, harried, and magnificent. It is bare of any foliage but is somehow consistently spattered with immense cones. Its branches are all gnarled and broken, and reach out to the sky in a sort of resigned attempt to connect to its environs. One day, maybe a month or so ago, I saw a hawk perched on one of the tree's staggering limbs. I stopped to stare at that glorious bird, and it in turn intently and silently stared at me. We watched each other, the hawk gazing down at me with such an unfiltered awareness of my being that I was quickly unnerved at my nakedness and insignificance to this creature and continued on. Today, as it is a rainy day, the usually dry and grey wood of the tree is drenched deeply so that it has become very dark--almost black. The pale green lichen that delicately and stubbornly stretches along its bark is in striking contrast to that wet wood.

As I continued up the hill towards Green Gulch proper, I reflected on how the hill used to feel like a small panic attack every time I climbed it. It becomes unassumingly steep rather quickly, so if a person is not used to that small hike, it becomes a ready lens for how apparently out of shape you are. Now, I can stride up that hill with ease, thanking that quick slope for toning my glutes and thighs on our daily walks. 

Cresting the slope I am greeted by a row of pines decorated with holes made by persistent woodpeckers. The pines have dropped a fair amount of their needles onto the road. The needles of the trees today are quite unlike the needles of the earlier months--as opposed to a rich green they are now a vibrant orange, and they have recently been dropping with such voracity that the road appears to be an orange carpet; only the occasional muddy pothole gives its true nature away. 

I think about how aware my body is of the moon and the stars; how living out here in the yurt has provided me with the opportunity to navigate many times solely by moonlight or--if it's a new moon or cloudy--to navigate by all of my senses barring sight. Living out here has enabled me to become familiar with a family of deer, as well as the sounds of cavorting great-horned owls as I fall asleep. It has enabled me to live in a tangible paradise, where on Fridays I could get off of work from the garden, walk a hundred feet, pick a few plums--either of the wild or domesticated "elephant heart" varieties--and play ukulele, draw pictures, or write letters on my porch until the supper bell rings. What kind of life is that? How can I be so fortunate?

This transition is good, and feels right in my bones. I am excited to live life more fully in the community, with my community. I am remembering how thankful I am for this place and again being amazed that such a place exists, and I can call it my home. Green Gulch is by no means perfect, but it also definitely isn't not perfect, either. 

So, for now, I am ready to say hello to my place in Cloud Hall…and bye-bye happy yurt.

Get to Know a Farm/Garden Apprentice: Jack Thomas

Last weekend I was able to spend the afternoon with the charming, intelligent, warm, friendly, thoughtful, delight of a person named Jack. I am quite fond of Jack. He is unceasingly kind and welcoming to everybody who lives at Green Gulch, as well as seemingly every other being he encounters. He is already a living Bodhisattva incarnate. I hope you enjoy getting to know him better!

Catherine: Hello! I am with Jack…oh, can I use your last name?

Jack: Of course

C: Ok, I am with Jack Thomas. Hi Jack.

J: Hi Catherine

C: So, I think a good place to start is to talk about what you'd say you do here, at Green Gulch.

J: *Phew* Um, wow. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is the farm apprenticeship. That's the primary substance of my day. So, let's see, that kind of work goes anywhere from 8:30 or 9:00 to in-the-neighborhood-of 4:15, 4:30. And, the apprenticeship, as probably many of the other interviewees have mentioned, is primarily focused on learning the ins and outs of working on and maintaining a small, organic farm. So, at Green Gulch there's seven acres, approximately, maybe five or six of which are in cultivation at any given time; and we have a pretty small crew, and it consists of, I believe, five staff members, and two--or three--formal leadership figures, and then the rest are apprentices. So, we do the labor. We sow the seed, we plant out starts, we prepare the fields for plantings, we harvest what we have grown, and then…maybe all of this has already been covered *laughs*

C: No! It's great!

J: Ok! *laughs*

C: I want to hear exactly how you…what you think you do.

J: How I conceptualize this?

C: Yeah.

J: Yeah, so I mean that kind of work, the processing, the very hands on--the creating of the causes and conditions for produce to come out of the earth, and to distribute that produce to the hungry patrons of Mill Valley and San Francisco--I am a part of a team that facilitates that process. 

The second thing that comes to mind, which is probably--wow, definitely--the heart and soul of what I do here is practice! So, it pervades…practice pervades work, it pervades the apprenticeship. It is the water through which I swim at Green Gulch, and it begins before work, and it ends after work, when I go to bed. *Pause* I mean, I could talk about the schedule, but really it's not even confined to morning zazen, or to service. And, it's not even necessarily confined to Green Gulch, although this is where the wheel of my practice began turning, and is encouraged and supported to turn. But, yeah, I would say, as often as I can remember, every minute of every day, what I am doing is practicing just this life *pause*.

I am trying to navigate between how do I answer this question keeping your audience in mind. Like, I don't know exactly which concepts I need to articulate more clearly. Or, if it's just a conversation with you, just telling you how do I…when you say "What do I do here?" and when my answer is practice…I feel like I can go in so many directions with that. Is there anything that is more helpful?

C: I think it's more the latter. I mean, if people read my blog consistently, I talk about life here pretty frequently.

J: Ok.

C: So, they have some sort of idea of what that means. And, also, I've found that a lot of the people who read the interviews actually live here.

J: Sure.

C: So, they know that that means…and, yeah, what I'm personally more interested in is your take on the practices.

J: Oh my god, I could talk about practice all day.

C: Ok, let's do it!

J: Great! So, ok, I did not have very much of…I did not have a consistent practice before coming to Green Gulch. I was living in Boston, Massachusetts when it began. I was a sophomore in college, at Tufts University, just outside of the city actually, in the Somerville/Medville area--holla!

*Catherine giggles*

And I was really unhappy. I felt very overwhelmed, and that I wasn't giving school what it deserved. And because school is so expensive, I felt like I was wasting a colossal amount of time and energy and money--my parents' money, my own time and energy--in an environment that just wasn't…I didn't feel like I was thriving even though I was doing lots of potentially fulfilling activities. I was singing acapella, I was a part of this orientation group, this wilderness orientation club that I loved. I had great friends, but there was part of me that was existentially preoccupied, and also incredibly anxious--just trying to juggle classes with social life and acapella and other commitments was totally overwhelming. 

And my sister sent me this book, it was Wherever You Go, There You Are by John Kabat-Zinn and I began meditating after that. And--in conjunction with counseling--those were the only two things that made me feel better, like I could calm down. And then the following year, junior year, I started listening to ZenCast, which is a podcast distributed by, and created by, Gil Fronsdale.

C: Oh!

J: Yeah, who was actually just here a few weekends ago, at Green Gulch…and that was my self-medication, in a really big way. I started on car rides, on bike rides, any chance I got, I was listening to ZenCast and to Audio Dharma and to the Alan Watts podcast…and so it was like I was beginning to massage my existential crisis. I couldn't really reconcile the size of the universe with my existence and my place in the world. I felt meaningless…and those podcasts helped me interface with that kind of thinking in a new way, that actually gave me a little bit of space and room to breathe, and some tools with which I could see those thoughts, and take back or embrace them, make room for them.

And…I would say I really didn't do too much meditating in Colorado. I don't think I mentioned that--when I took time off and started listening to these podcasts, I moved to Colorado. And I used to not just listen *giggle* on bike rides or car rides, but I would smoke weed on my aunt and uncle's roof...

C: Mmmhmm!

J: …and look up at the vast Colorado night sky, and listen to these podcasts.

C: Ha! That sounds lovely.

J: It was phenomenal. That was the first time I realized that the night sky is actually three-dimensional and that you can see it in 3-D. It's not just like a sheet with poked holes in it, there's actually depth. And that blew my fucking mind.

*Both laugh*

Yeah, then I decided to go back to school and I realized that in order to succeed in that environment I needed some parameters---that I had to incorporate the tools that I had introduced myself to, that Gil had introduced me to--in my daily life, and I started going to the Cambridge Meditation Center on a regular basis for their "35 and Under" sitting group. So, that was weekly, and then I would frequent the Greater Boston Zen Center…infrequently? 

*Both giggle*

Like, maybe I went a total of seven times, or six times, over the course of two years. But, I would sit with them on Saturday mornings, I think it was from like nine to noon. We would do periods of zazen and kinhin, and service--with Josh Bartoch, who was great, he's doing a wonderful job out there. That's where I first chanted the Makka Hannya Haramita Shin Gyo, and loved it. I've been a sucker for ceremony and service since going to Catholic school and high school. Yeah, and the more that I invested myself in these opportunities to meditate, in these sanghas, these little sanghas…*long pause* Yeah, the more I did that, the healthier I felt. So, let's see, what happened next. 

Oh, ok! So I began volunteering…I volunteered at the garden at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center…and somebody--I think it was my first day volunteering--someone was like, "How do you like this, Jack?" and I said I loved it! I loved working with my body, I loved having my hands in the soil and supporting plant life, and serving this organization, the CIMC, that made such a big difference in my life. And, this--I don't even know who it was, this angel--was like, "You know that you can do this all the time? There's this farm that is also a Zen center out in California!" *giggle* And it was like fireworks in my head, because I had always felt…I was born in Redwood City, and lived the first two years of my life in San Mateo. So, being told that as a kid growing up, you know, "actually Jack, you were born in California, you're from the Bay Area…." I always felt a longing. It's like I'm a homing pigeon!

*Catherine laughs*

I just wanted to return! *giggles* Back to the land of origin, back to the motherland…and so, when they said "you could do these two things that you love in your…in the place of your birth" I knew that I would go there, I knew that I would come to Green Gulch. So I applied at the end of my senior year, to come out for a two-week guest stay; and then I ended up getting a sales job and cancelled my guest student stay, and worked at a tech company in Kendall Square, just outside of Boston, across the Charles. It was for eleven months…and about six months into that I realized that…no…well, three months in I was like, "I do not like this!" I mean, it's challenging work, I can see it being fulfilling for a certain type of person. Like, if someone was really competitive and really a great cultural fit, like very much into sports, and probably a male, and probably straight, like a dude! And it's such a fun environment if you're comfortable with all of those things…and I was not. And on top of that, being a call monkey is really hard! Doing telesales is a difficult job. So three months in I was like, "screw this!" and I almost quit, and then I decided to give it more time, to try to tackle this beast. So, six months in, the game had changed, I was doing really well, but knew it wasn't for me…and I thought, "Ok, I'll ride this out because it's not a bad gig, it's paying the bills. I'll at least stay here through my lease. I need a contingency plan, I need something else set up for when this window's, when this tech-job window, is up." And so I reached out to Green Gulch and I got in touch with Francis Dwyer! *giggle* And he was like, "Yeah, unfortunately, the farm apprenticeship for this upcoming summer is already full, and there's a wait-list. So, you can't do that. But you can come out in the summertime and do your two-week guest student stay, and get a feel for whether or not this is the kind of place that you want to spend a serious amount of time." 

So, I made plans to go to Green Gulch in July in the summer of 2015, and buckled down at work, and just kept my nose to the grindstone. Then I got my two-week break, in the summer, and came to Green Gulch, and was floored. The way I described it at the time was: it was like a puzzle piece being fit into place; after years of looking--I finally, finally!--found a community of people who thought about the world the way that I did, that cared about aligning their daily life with their morals and values. And, who also didn't shy away from heady philosophical, or psychological, or existential, really abstract conversation. That's just where my mind just gravitates, like I'm always…like I'll be at a bar with friends, and I'll be like "How are you?", and they'll say, "Oh, I'm doing this and this and this and this," and I'll be like, "No, how are you?" *giggle* Like, "Tell me about yourself, let's be real!" And I always felt like I made people uncomfortable going for very substantive conversation, in settings that maybe were not designed for that. It was a misalignment in that way…but not at Green Gulch. That is the bread and butter of our relationship here--being real with each other, saying what's on our heart and mind, really, and immersing ourselves in the cosmic mystery…also, the mundane mystery.

But anyway, I felt an immediate resonance, and I went back to Boston and started…I set up a little altar in my room, and started sitting a period of zazen every morning, before work *giggles* They have these little pamphlets, the prayer pamphlets, so I would chant the prayer pamphlet. So, I memorized those, and I would read from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and I'd burn incense, and it was a very beautiful morning ritual. Actually, I came back from Green Gulch, made this altar, and then my first day back to work they offered me a promotion. And…*chuckle* I had to tell them "Actually, I'm quitting" *giggle* "I'm so sorry!" And I thanked them, and they were very supportive. It was a phenomenal place to work! The company is called InsightSquared. I felt like their professional development was off the charts. I felt very well taken care of. My career was a priority to them. They wanted me to succeed as not just a bottom-level call monkey, but they wanted me to develop to be a contributing member of the team for the long term. That was the tact that they took with all of their sales people. So, in that regard I just…I have nothing but great things to say about that company. 

And it wasn't a fit, so they gave me big hugs and sent me on my way and then I spent the next month enjoying my time with friends and meditating. That was really the turning point in my practice, when it became a daily exercise. I began meditating regularly, I began feeding my brain, and began paying attention to what I was digesting--like through visual media and in written word. That summer---I guess my lease was up in August, so that summer I spent with friends in Acadia National Park and at Walden Pond and in Portland, Maine, and then once I moved out I began a cross-country road trip that the final destination was Green Gulch. 

Then the journey really took a turn, and shit got so real. Like living in this little community, this village at Green Gulch Valley--probably the best analogy that I've come across for livelihood and practice here is--I think it's a Zen saying, or maybe just a Buddhist analogy for Practice Periods, actually--*giggle* Its going to be literally like Catherine: "tell me about your practice" *both laugh* Jack: life story. Wall of text!

C: Yeah, but that's okay! This is great! 

J: Ok

C: I'm kind of relieved that I don't have to ask a whole bunch of questions. You're just doing it!

J: Ok, great! *giggles* Ok! *laughs* 

*Catherine is laughing a lot*

J: Ok, so for Practice Periods they say it's like being rocks in a tumbler, where we bump up against each other in such close quarters, and our edges soften. I would say that the first four months of practice and work practice and immersion in the container, they felt a lot like that. It took me forever to get my bearings, and I didn't know what my practice looked like. I continued to love sitting zazen, I continued to….*sigh* I feel, like, ecstatic during services. So, loved that, and began trying out dokusan and practice discussions. So, in terms of formal practice, I really liked that, but didn't understand or know how to take my practice with me from the zendo into the rest of life. I was really blessed in my first…it was October, November, December, January…my first four months living here I had a roommate---and one of my really good friends, actually---they were like…they influenced me in a really big way, and showed me, everyday, the many ways that practice can be something that we carry with us all day. So that became a focus of mine, like "Ok, I feel very…I'm holding myself in my body intentionally, and it feels very good in zazen. And I'm paying attention to the quality of my thoughts and studying the self in the zendo." And then I began, with their guidance, and with the support of this community, to do the same outside of the zendo, at work…and in social situations, started to…like, social busyness…and…why is that? Why am I acting the way that I'm acting around these people, and why do I act differently around other people? It just felt like layers and layers of my habits, I could finally see all of the bottoms that are pressed dictating my unconscious actions in the world---and suddenly, I could see the machinery behind that. So, that continues to be my practice today---paying attention to, and becoming very intimate with, this person. I would say another huge practice would be the practice of love, and of self love, which actually is a practice of liberating all beings, of loving all beings. 

Actually, maybe this is a good time to share this:

C: Ok.

J: I have…these are intentions--practice-oriented intentions--for the month of September.

C: That's funny, Duras did the same thing.

J: Yeah.

C: She talked about it in her interview too.

J: No kidding!

C: Yeah.

J: So I'm…Duras' intentions inspired mine.

C: Oh!

J: She asked--we had an email exchange--and she asked if had any intentions for this month, and this was my response to her. The first is, "At every opportunity, with great perseverance, remember and return, whole-heartedly, to the seat of awareness." Which is also the observer position, and I think of it as being…when you hear Reb talk about the buddha-mind seal or the buddha-mind, I think all of those things are the same. It's the witness to all thoughts and mental objects and experience. So, return to that place at every time that I remember to. "Let go of mental objects; let form, formations, perceptions, and consciousness swirl around me, and neither touch nor turn away from them, like the eye of a storm." So, that's one. The next one is: "No hesitation. Offer myself in service of others, in service of practice, in service of each moment. Do this with dignity, sincerity, and humility, characterized by"-- and this is quoting the I-Ching--" a passively firm correctness". That is from Hexigram-2, "Receptivity". The next is: "Accept and pay attention to guidance, and be a student of life". The fourth is: "Realize peaceful and righteous persistence"--again this is from Hexigram-2--"as I endeavor to take good care of this person, with an emphasis on eating in moderation, paying special attention to sugar, peanut butter, bread, and second helpings"--We could say more about that--"with emphasis on getting good sleep regularity and following through on my commitments to the farm, to friends, to 12-Step work, and to family". And, there are 2 more; one is "Be receptive like the Earth"--this is all from Hexigram-2--"be receptive like the Earth, like a hard-working mare, like an open doorway". And then this next bit is from a poem that I love by Rumi: "Be receptive like a reed flute for Your breath"--capital "Y" like the Beloved--"like wax for the buddha-mind seal". And then the last one, the last intention for practice, is actually inspired by Dina! My dear friend!

*Catherine giggles*

It is: "To love outwardly endlessly". So, maybe that's all I'll say….In response to your first question!

*Both laugh hard*

C: That was great!

J: *giggling* good!

C: I know so much more about you! Something that I think would be interesting would be to know more about what you feel about working outside and working on the land and working on the farm.

J: Mmmm, mmmhmmm. *long pause* You're saying you don't want to know more about practice?

*Both giggle*

C: I think you're super cute but---*laughs*---I'm thinking let's delve into some different areas.

J: Yeah, we can cover some different territory, so to speak.

*Catherine laughs*

J: So…wow, my relationship with the land has changed since arriving at Green Gulch. I've always had an appreciation for the Earth, going back to when I was a kid, I loved being outdoors. My family de-emphasized small screen media…like, I definitely watched movies growing up, but there was a cap on the amount of television time I had during the day. We had a swimming pool, I was obsessed with catching bugs, all things outdoors--that was my playground, was the forest behind my house. And then, when I got a little older I went to a summer camp in Estes Park, Colorado! Holla!

*Catherine giggles*

And so for a month every year I developed a sense of awe…and a big part of my soul felt connected to the mountains, because that was my safe haven for…I think I was a camper there for five years, during some really difficult summers in my life, and so it was---I mean that place formed me in really important ways. Maybe one of the most important ways it informed me was in giving me an appreciation or the Earth that I wouldn't have had. So, I see that coming up at Green Gulch, like the difference between my office job, where I had two huge computer screens in my face all day--I would have a head-ache going home at the end of work. And then ironically, in order to escape from the headache or feeling drained at the end of the day--in order to soothe myself--I would watch Netflix, which is another screen. So, my exposure to nature was limited. And, now, I spend the vast majority of my time outdoors--the vast majority of my waking hours outdoors. Like I said, from 9:00 to at least 4:15, 4:30--hands firmly planted in the Earth, and getting sweaty underneath the sunshine, or more often, muffled in the mists of this North Bay Green Gulch valley. 

Something that's maybe unique to this summer and to this internship is this subtle attunement to the weather, feeling---certainly earlier in the summer--my mood would reflect the environment around me. On sunny days, high-energy, and on cloudy days, more mellow vibes. Certainly, that's true because I'm working on the lettuce team. There are three of us: It's Emila, the farm elder; and Zach, who's a staff member, he was an apprentice last summer; and myself. Because lettuce is so sensitive to sunshine, to direct sunlight, on the mornings that the sun was not shrouded by cloud we were hustling. I mean we would ramp our production up like three-times as quickly on sunny days, so really my material reality, like the way that I would think and act, was dictated by the weather. And continues to be.

Another thing I would say is that the same awe that I would have of mountains in Colorado I have for the generative power of the Earth. I feel, at this point, minimally involved in food production. Even though I know that without the work that the farm crew does there would be no produce--like, we wouldn't have anything to hand over to customers at a farmers' market. We really do--I don't even know the percentage…it's…we do a fraction of the work involved in creating the substance, in creating the value. It's more like we arrange, we do the logistics. Like, we'll do transport, we'll make sure the seeds get to the right place and that they get watered…but the Earth! The Earth and the sky and the sunshine, that is where all of the power is coming from, that is where the real creativity happens…and it's astounding. I mean we are just flooded by produce. We're hustling to process the quantity of greenery that is overflowing--like, it's flooding us--out of our fields. I have no idea how that happens. I don't really understand, still, how a seed that is so tiny can create ears of corn, or a chard plant from which we harvest for weeks. So, that's miraculous and mysterious.

C: Can you see yourself doing farming work if you were to leave Green Gulch?

J: I can, yeah. I thought about this because there are some people on this apprenticeship crew--the 2016 season--that think like farmers, and I'm recognizing that while I have a lot to offer as a member of this crew, I don't think the way that a farmer thinks…yet, at least. I think it comes naturally to some of the people that I work with. But I do derive great--I mean immense--joy from this labor. I don't know if I would want to be the captain of a farm, like lead that initiative solo, but I could be a partner in a farm endeavor, for sure. I would really like that…because there's something about the manual labor, about working really hard, and getting sweaty with a crew of other people, and being outdoors all day…totally invested in a cause I care about, which is creating food, which is an essential need--for all forms of life, but specifically humans, supporting healthy human life in a way that is healthy for my body. It's exercise, so I'm taking care of this person in a way that's sustainable for the planet. It's organic, it's…we're not using very many--well, any--chemicals. No pesticides, minimal amounts of machinery, and that's important to me too. So, yeah, if there were an opportunity to work on an operation like Green Gulch--in that it's a small, organic farm--elsewhere, then yes. I could totally see myself doing this.

C: Would you say…Im curious if you can identify certain passions that you have.

J: Mmmm. Yeah, I mean, I can. I have…are you just making sure that it's still working?

C: Yeah, usually I do the interview for about 45 minutes…so that's 9 more minutes.

J: Cool, ok.

C: *laughs* Go! *laughs* It's so great! It's so great.

J: Passions! Yeah, I'm passionate about this practice! I…*pause* it has been transformative for me. I feel…*pause* like I've come back to life--in living at Green Gulch and working here--in a way that I didn't think was possible. For so much of my life I was…numb. To myself, and to how I felt, to my emotional life. I didn't feel like who I was was acceptable, and so I was constantly finding ways to repress difficulty, and keep my head above water…and present as a very happy, successful person. Through meditation and Zen Buddhist practice at Green Gulch I feel awakened to all of myself, and I feel a capacity for intimacy with other people that I did not know that I was capable of. And I am so passionate about honoring…I am so passionate about helping other people help themselves, in a way that---like, if there are kids out there, or if there are adults out there, that are struggling in any way similar to how I was struggling, and if they find their way into this community, then yeah I want to help them in a way that I wish someone had been like, "Jack! Let me help you!" It's difficult because I think, on the one hand, getting from where I started to where I feel now is the kind of journey that an individual has to choose for themselves, and it's the effort an individual has to make alone. And by alone I mean that they have to make the decision to show up for this work again and again and again. And it goes without saying, none of what I did happened independently. All of it was through the support of family and friends and the Green Gulch community…and infinite causes and conditions, literally. I can't name the all. But, yeah, I feel passionate about helping people with the tools that helped me--with mindfulness, with 12-step programs, with Zen Buddhist practice--through Dharma, essentially. Because I've seen…it transformed me and I have no doubt that it will help other people. So, I feel passionate about that.

I feel passionate about continuing to do this work with myself, which I have a feeling is going to last until the day that I die, and maybe into infinite future lifetimes *laughs*. There's this quote that goes…Wait! Let me get out my (journal).

C: Ok.

J: *sighs*…It's by Winston Churchill.

C: Ok.

J: I quote this a lot! *giggle*

C: Ok! *giggle*

J: Let's see…"Every day you make progress, every step maybe be fruitful, yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you'll never get to the end of the journey, but this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and the glory of the climb". Yeah, I feel passionate about continuing to study myself. And to open myself to myself and to other people, to walking the path of practice, essentially. And I feel really passionate about love!

C: Mmmhmmm!

J: I feel like that has been the key to transformation for me. Like learning to accept myself unconditionally, and learning to love other people without condition. Like, whoever you are and whatever you're doing with me, I will love you. Period. So, when I heard that--this came from Dina too--this idea that, yeah, there are difficult situations and there are people who are hard to work with, but, one: who is it who's really hard to work with? Is it the actual person? Or is it my own internal landscape and what I'm projecting into that person, and what's coming up for me is difficult? So that is a pivot that never occurred to me, and that's why it's a practice of self-love. Because I'm learning to be spacious and gracious with the parts of myself that I hate or reject or find difficult--and project into other people. So, she introduced me to that pivot, and then to the notion of love, period. Love, no matter what. 

And, practicing that put all of my religious exposure into a new context. Like, looking at The Bible now, and being like, "Oh! Jesus wasn't fucking around" He was serious! And I've met people that do this practice, and their lives are changed…and it's the same thing with the Bodhisattva precepts, or with all of Dharma. This practice of love has made me realize that if you actually try to exercise the admonitions and encouragements of these spiritual sages--all of our ancestors--it works! With time, my edges have softened. I feel a tenderness and care for myself that I didn't a year ago when I arrived here. I feel an acceptance and an inclusion…I keep coming back to this word--an intimacy with other people, a dependence--an interdependence with other people--that I did not feel before this. I feel very passionate about continuing to do that work and to open to my life, and to open to love, unceasingly.

C: Good, that's great. Yeah! We're at 45 minutes.

J: Nice!

C: Well, I try not to go past 45 minutes because it takes me like…

J: Forever?

C: …three-times as long to transcribe it.

J: Yeah

C: So…*laugh*

J: Great!

C: But thank you very much!

J: Thank you, Catherine! Always nice spending time with you!

C: Yes! Always nice spending time with you!

J: Thanks for doing this project.

C: You're welcome.

J: Yeah, I'm so excited to read everyone else's interview.

C: I'm excited for you to read them too, because they're all marvelous.

Polaroid taken of Jack at Singing Frogs Farm