Let fall body and mind

 

 

"身心脱落!" T'ien-t'ung Ju-ching shouted,
finding a sitting monk half asleep.
He meant it kindly, but his urgency cracked

the air, a thundernote. "You must let fall
body and mind!" the old man pleaded. What
effect this might have had on the sleeping monk,

we are not told; Dogen, sitting nearby,
moved from a stuck place toward a resolution
he had sought. He then traveled home

determined to teach his people the simplest way
of letting go. "Sit," he told his students,
"just sit. In so doing you are already

Buddha; there is nothing to obtain."
I think I did not "have" a body or
a mind before I came into this life,

so far as I can tell, and so will likely
not have more when it's all over. If
there's a lesson in this, it's not much;

perhaps to take ourselves lightly, lightly,
giving without a thought as to return,
taking with thanks whatever will appear.

I watched my mother die, and held her hand;
it was her hand; then her breath came ragged.
Three times more her rib cage rose and fell,

but that, as they had warned me, was not breath.
The hand I held already was not her.

Late August blackberries

 I'm canning tomatoes and blackberries today. Zukes, hops, and tomatoes are also in the dehydrators. With luck, we'll make 83F, though the morning seemed quite cold to me.

You can see from all the fallen leaves from the young cottonwoods behind me that we are still feeling the effects of the drought. less than a third of the blackberry bushes are worth the effort but they are enough to keep me busy. You can also see the effects of old age here; I'm looking more and more like Andy Rooney. So it goes. 

Not being very patient when I'm harvesting, I've taken to carrying the pitcher from the blender in my harvest bag. It behooves me to do pretty good Q.C. when I do this; no one like to chomp on a stem. Some impurities are a good thing; it's the reason most country people have resilient immune systems. But we try not to be gross. 

These berries are considerably sweeter than the ones I was doing last week.

Five blender loads make a batch. After the last load I will blend some honey yogurt with the residue and call it lunch. When this has cooked down some in the slow cooker (lid ajar to let out steam), it will go into pint jars and be available to go with yogurt, pancakes, waffles, toast, or be repurposed with fruit juices or even wine. We have mostly white wine grapes as yet, and the blackberries help me pretend I'm making red wine ...

Right action and the second toolbox

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

A continued discussion of Permaculture ethics, realms and principles in the light of Buddhism.
"Earth care" is right action. Preventing soil loss, water pollution, excess atmospheric carbon, and radiological contamination are examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Using and responding to change" is right action. 

Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει All things flow. Ride the river of life.

The first toolbox as right action

An analysis of the four truths and eightfold way of Buddhism as a unified concept which could be expressed as Right Action. Discussion continued from a preceding note/post.

Primum non nocere, which which we ended that post, means, "First, do no harm."

It's rough out there.

That it's rough out there can be taken as a given. Some of us are insulated from the consequences of inappropriate action through the inequitable accumulation of resources, but the effect is temporary and I think a kind of self-harm accrues, to ourselves and our loved ones. Certainly harm comes to others.

Hence: "it's rough because we (whether ourselves or others) want things to be different than they are." We suffer when we have expectations or unrealistic intentions. Others suffer when we attempt, through action, to enforce our expectations. We take an inappropriate action.

"We can change our behavior," that is, we can learn to select appropriate actions.

So, "Right Action" could serve as the key concept for drawing the Buddhist and Permaculture toolboxes closer together.

Right view could be taken as observe clearly, which is a kind of action.

Right aspiration could be taken as a kind of action, in which one connects observation to volition. Separating appropriate desires from inappropriate desires, with an intent to manifest the appropriate desires, is an internal activity, but an important one. "Cessation from all desires" is a misleading concept in this context, as it lacks the qualifier "appropriate." If one fails to desire to breathe, no right actions will follow.

Right speech is certainly an action, through the choice to say or not say, as needed. A friend often says, before speaking, ask yourself: "is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?"

Hence, right action. And is your action kind? Is it true (correct)? Is it necessary? These three combined are what is meant by "appropriate" as used here.

Right livelihood is right action. If benefits accrue to you and others by your actions you already have right livelihood. Do not think this is limited by or to the earning of money.

Right action must be carried out, not merely thought of. One applies one's energy to the task. So right effort is about action.

Right mindfulness, also, does not just happen. To clear away obstacles and focus, though it occurs in the mind, is an internal action without which appropriate external activity will not occur.

Right concentration is what occurs in meditation, i..e., the suppression of distractions so as to observe directly. So we have come full circle in this exercise, as the finding that it's rough out there is an observation. You have taken the action to find that out, to discover the cause (which can be boiled down to selfishness) and the cure (which can be boiled down to selflessness).

"Ethics" need not be taught in a university, nor demanded in a church. It is as simple as breathing. When you rise up in the morning, set your face toward the doing of right action, that is, whatever is kind, true, and necessary.

I get by

I'm not the best fall gardener, but I get by. Seems like every August, I come across a stash of greens and roots packets that are years out of date, and, rather than try to do anything meticulous like sort by year, look up the viability date range, and do a germination test, I wind up funneling the lot into an empty seasoning shaker, stir them a bit, and head out to the bare spots in the garden with Darwin on my mind. The procedure involves clearing a patch in the mulch with the ho-mi (basically a right-angled trowel), testing the ground a bit (the beds harden up some over the summer), doing a little clod-busting as needed, shaking some seeds out over the "hill," and throwing some prepared soil (stolen from molehills) over them. I'm chintzy with the planting soil, so this method tends to favor the lettuce seeds over the others, which is fine by me.

Invariably, on these expeditions, I come across scads of volunteer potatoes and onions and such. I pocket them, take them in (it's approaching 90F out there anyway), give them a washing up, and carry them over to the chopping block to work up a fresh lunch.

Crock pot bread

Greased bowl on top of a trivet inside of slow cooker. No two recipes ever the same. This one has water or veg stock, spelt flour, oatmeal, cracked barley, brewer's yeast, sesame seeds, sea salt, a duck egg, yeast, honey -- practically no-knead, raised in the crock pot on low, then basted with olive oil and sprinkled with poppy seeds. Bake on high until it looks right and "thumps" right, then turn out. In our pot, about three hours. We slip a fork under the edge of the lid to let the steam out in the last two hours or so. Makes fabulous French toast.

While it's baking, go putz around a bit.

What to dry when the tomatoes aren't ready yet

Here we have a side leaf from a collard, or maybe a broccoli or cauliflower (much alike for my purposes), from which the bits we recognize from the grocery store have been harvested. It's a but chewy for use in the kitchen, and bugs have marred its looks. One might pull up the whole plant and add it to either the chicken yard's entertainment division or the compost heap.

Another approach would be to harvest it for the solar dehydrator.

There are many, many kinds of leaves appropriate for this -- even some kinds of tree leaves (but we're not "that desperate" at present). Here we have mustard, cabbage, curly leaf kale, Fordhook Giant chard, collards, cauliflower. Sometimes there is spinach, other kales, bok choi, or what have you. Even onion greens will do, though they seem kinda picky to crumble when dried. Much depends on one's patience at any one time.

You will notice we've thrown in a bit of rosemary, marjoram, sage, thyme, and oregano in this batch -- because we can. I figure the wider the range of nutrients, the more valuable the end product.

Once brittle dry, gather up and crumble with your hands, first stripping leaf matter from stems and veins, which can be thrown on top of the  mulch somewhere.

You may use the results as is; we prefer ours a finer size. Either the Universal grinder is put into service:

Or the blender. A small handful at a time will process nicely.

This jarful will receive some "veggie crumble" from the next batch, so as to be packed tightly with a minimum of air. One could also oven can; but this product is remarkably stable over the next few years. A few grains of rice can be added insurance.

Use? Alone as a dehydrated soup or in breads, soups, stews, quiches, on any meat or veggie dish. The sky's the limit. Well, maybe not with fruit or in ice cream.

Apple ring season

Apples are harder to come by this year than last, though not as badly as we had thought. Even though they could stand to stay on the tree longer, flavor-wise, worms are taking interest early (what's their hurry?) and so we have begun making apple rings. It's nice that we're still having hot days to run the solar dryers, too.

The peeler-corer slicer makes quick compost (or vinegar if you prefer) of the peelings and cores.

A single slice through half the spiral separates all the rings.

Three days in the sun will suffice to dry the rings enough to put away in storage jars or buckets. They are tougher to chew on than the store-bought variety, but healthier, and reconstitute nicely when used in pies and such.

Early August 2013

 

We've headed into August here much hotter than many of our friends back east -- yesterday, for example, we reached 96.2F. Watering has occupied much of my attention, as has hiding -- we have a room on the north end of the house where we can go if the rest of the place reaches 85. So there has been correspondingly little harvesting or processing.

Green beans are doing well. We'll eat some raw, but as this is a presumed rare heirloom (known to us as Ron's Grandmother's Bean) most will be saved for seed.

To keep cooking or canning from adding to the heat burden of the house, we have a temporary canning kitchen out of doors. Whenever I have enough of anything to fill the smaller crock pot, I know it will make seven half pints in the small canner. These are mixed vegs, so, since this is water bath canning, I raise the acidity with lots of vinegar. Pickled vegs go well with rice or pasta and can be a relatively complete meal.

Use everything

I use medium to large tomatoes in canning projects, especially mild salsas. I know to keep the peelings out, but don't like the step where you scald or whatever and slip them off. I want those! So what I do, peel them as I would a potato, salt the peelings down, add a little vinegar and haul them out to the solar dryer. That's my dehydrated tomatoes.

The naked innards then go into the crockpot with whatever other ingredients I want in my salsa, where they cook down to thicken with the lid ajar.

Those other ingredients often raise the Ph so I add a lot of vinegar to that as well. A couple of cloves of garlic, whizzed with the vinegar in the blender, invariably finish off the variable recipe.

For raw, I'm good with the itty bitty cherry tomatoes that escaped the peeling frenzy.

If the seeds are open-pollinated and you want them, save seed at this time as well.