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MEDITATION
Spiritual Farming
by Chögyam Trungpa
When the basic nature of sentient beings, like the ground, is accompanied by the moisture of compassion and love, the seed of bodhi mind begins to grow. From this tree spread the thirty-seven branches conducive to enlightenment, and the ripened fruit of perfect Buddhahood brings about the happiness and welfare of sentient beings.
—Gampopa, Jewel Ornament of Liberation
Acknowledgement of basic ground implies the positive attitude towards the energy and potential to give birth to enlightenment in the nature of sentient beings. The person concerned with this particular ground is the farmer who lives on this plot of land. He is the ambitious farmer who wants to develop his property and he has definite attitudes towards bringing about its enrichment. His style of working with his land may not be particularly the ideal, but it does provide the energy which inspires the farming.
The farmer is unhappy about his situation. In fact, he is thoroughly confused about how to begin: it is uncertain whether he should relate to his dream or whether he should start something more frugal. In this connection nothing seems exciting except his wish to start the actual cultivation, which at this point is more of a hangup than vision. He inevitably faces the problem of deciding to whether he should abandon farming altogether, or try to follow through with his lifestyle, which is already involved with his arable land. The possibilities of farming are very limited in terms of adventure, but if he is willing to relate with the limited situations which include poverty, then this farmer has no choice but to begin with frugality as a stepping stone. This is often seen in the urban situation where there is no other possibility but just trying to speak the same language as the environment, which is the language of limitation, of no inspiration.
From a different angle, the very notion of frugality is purely a relative question, because it is the ambition of becoming a rich person that is the source of poverty. If this particular farmer is willing to accept the naturally occurring requirement of his farming situation, then he doesn't have to question about frugality or extravagance at all. If such a farmer regards his farming as an organic part of his lifestyle then success or failure becomes unimportant. The farmer has finally made his relationship to his farm. The earth needs a person to relate to: through the interaction of the two, cultivation begins.
At this point the farming is not an easy matter. There is a basic ground— impressionable consciousness— which belongs neither to the good or the bad, and also there is the commentator who views and watches the situation with the intent of taking advantage of it.
When the inquisitive mind, the farmer, begins to conduct his games, either he loses his contact with the ground or he manages to establish his relationship with it. The farmer's success depends upon his ability to establish his relationship with it. The farmer's success depends upon his ability to establish a proper relationship to the ground he is working with, he has to give up his ambition to become a truly successful farmer as such. He finds his ground tough, quite possibly embedded with rocks. Probably there is not enough water, because it would drain between the rocks. It is quite certain that the spot that the farmer has chosen doesn't live up to the expectations generated by his dream.
There is a secret message if you work with the soil with all of your energy. It might work. But this farmer's attitude is something casual —that since he has chosen this area it should work: otherwise he might sell this farm and get some other place. But then if he got some other place to farm, that situation might be the same as the present one.
The continual search for something better cannot work out. Acceptance of the site of your farm is the only way to relate to your particular style —it is the recognition of what is karmically inevitable. This plot could be farmed —it could be cultivated. At the moment of giving up all further dreams and expectations, the possibility opens that this highland rocky mountain ground could become productive.
We plow with patience, as Milarepa says, but it is patience that is plowing in this case. This tames the ground. We sow a seed —whatever is healthy, in this ground. Sowing the seed is an easy matter, but fertilizing is a difficult task. Acceptance of the negativity, which started piling up even before plowing and sowing the seed, becomes the manure or fertilizer. Collection of manure takes place right from the surveying of the ground on though the farming process. These negative situations are used to enrich the spiritual path.
The expectation of the farmer has to be an organic one as well. He is not to harvest prematurely, but must allow his crop to ripen properly. The narrow-minded discipline of patience is necessary, but if this becomes merely a way of inflicting pain on your body and your mind by certain contemporary militant methods, it could be regarded as perching on an egg. The appropriate discipline is to see clearly beyond the temptation to use other chemicals or artificial ways to force the seed to grow faster or be healthier. This is the dignity and simplicity of narrow-mindedness —by the practice of meditation, the right climate for the growth of the seed is provided: there is no way of urging it to speed up.
Since this ground does not have water, we have to water it quite diligently. Water in this case is the compassion of the Bodhisattva's path. If the farmer is willing to take interest in the irrigation system, he must be a constant person, willing to relate to every plant, to see that each one is communicated with properly.
Believing in the water of compassion is not quite enough. There must be an attitude of trusting nature to take its own course. And the process might be said to be shunyata experience of the student-farmer, that he finally accepts the law of nature without his security or preconceptions which are dualistic clingings. In the absence of dualistic clingings is simply dealing with the organic farming process. If you water the ground and apply the manure properly, it does grow. Wanting it to grow fast or slowly is irrelevant. You would simply be trying to apply emotional power over nature. So the point is not to give up emotions as such, but the mentality of power over others has to be surrendered. Once this farmer-student gives up his hope of personal influence over nature then a glimpse of shunyata or the freedom of growth of plants takes place.
Currently one hears that plants grow better when certain music is played to them. The farmer may believe that he can make plants respond according to his musical taste. But it seems totally arbitrary —are chrysanthemums from Japan at a disadvantage because they have never heard of Bob Dylan's music?
A person might have the fixation that the world is his own to manage, including the response of chrysanthemums to Bob Dylan's music. That can be seen as the anti-shunyata approach to seeing the reality that you want to believe in. People are so concerned with proving that the message of the primordial world speaks the absolute truth and they want to possess that truth self-righteously. But there is the possibility that the primordial message isn't the truth, but the primordial lie, which exists before you even thought of lying.
In fact, the very concept of ultimate truth is the ultimate lie. So we go racing between ultimate truth and ultimate lie, until we finally don't know who is telling the truth and who is not. The question is not so much who is on the right side or the wrong side, but who instigated the whole game. There's no room for logic in this case. As is said in the Prajna-Paramita Hrdaya Sutra, "Form is emptiness, but emptiness is no other than form. Therefore, form is no other than emptiness and emptiness is no other than form."
Finally, the questions of 'what is what' and 'what is not what,' get confused. Quite wisely it is said in the Vajracchedika Sutra, "the only refuge is the awakened, the victorious one, the only Buddha, the Dharma body." The community of sangha is the last resort. At this point the only way to relate to reality is the incantation that there is nothing at all from both subjective and objective points of view, which is the Paragate mantra-gone beyond completely, without any reference or perspective. So you lose the concept of coming or going, but at the same time, it is certain that ego is losing its ground and directed relations between this and that become irrelevant.
The farmer's belief that he is cultivating a mystical farm is challenged because he is uncertain whether the growth of this farm is really due to his enrichment of the property or whether the crops and the orchard have just grown naturally.
Yet there is some kind of magic, as is said in the Heart Sutra. This is the greatest incantation that could turn the world upside down. It is the farming process of letting things grow. However philosophical you may be, that philosophy is overwhelmed by the fantastic magic show that takes place in the discovery of shunyata and in growing these particular plants. The farmer has to yield to the organic process of nature. Having done that, he must come to believe that his watchful eye has no use. So the farmer has to give up being a farmer, and must realize that the farming project need never have been undertaken.
—from Maitreya, Vol. 3, Farming, 1972, Shambhala Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission from Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.
Photo by Martin Janowitz.
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