Two times a year my sangha, The Village Zendo, engages in Ango practice. Hearkening back to the original rainy season retreats of the early Buddhist sangha, ango (meaning "peaceful dwelling") is a period of intensified daily practice. We are currently in an Ango period, and the study text for this period is a long poem by the Chinese Zen master, Yongjia Xuanjue, called the Zhengdaoge (Shodoka in Japanese). I have decided to read it stanza by stanza with an ear towards what it says about my farming practice, and will occasionally make posts on thoughts that arise
"There is the leisurely one,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Walking the Tao, beyond philosophy,
Not avoiding fantasy, not seeking truth.
The real nature of ignorance is the Buddha-nature itself;
The empty delusory body is the very body of the Dharma."
“There is the leisurely one…” What might it mean to farm leisurely? Hardly “gentleman farming,” rather a kind of poor man’s farming.
Chuangzi: So removed from civilization were they that they forgot how to speak.
Mumon: His speech is rough, his writing illegible.
To farm leisurely might mean farming
as if your life depended on it,
as if farming was your life,
as if life was nothing but farming.
As if:
In June Kazim and I pick deep red-purple serviceberries from the trees in Tappan Square in the pallid violet of twilight.
In the evening I pad out the back door and through the high grass to pick orange day-lily blossoms one day short of bursting open into a great steel bowl. Then I string them with needle and thread and hang them to dry for winter soups and stir-fries.
Hurrying ahead of the wave of frost, we work though the evening until even headlights aren’t enough, picking tomatoes and peppers, hanging the immature cayennes upside down so that they continue to ripen to red.
Cattails in spring, lamb’s quarters in summer, mushrooms in autumn.
Hang acorns in an onion bag in a toilet tank and with each flush slowly leach the tannins. Every week hang mint to dry for winter tea.
Save seeds at every opportunity. Seeds in pants pockets, shirt pockets, stuffed in backpack pouches. What were these again?
Read and dream and forget. Hatch plans.
Spend evenings chopping, washing, mixing, pickling.
