A Way to Live: Toward a Buddhist/Permaculture Ethic for Smallholders and Others

Toward a Buddhist/Permaculture Ethic for Smallholders and Others

Natural farming, the true and original form of agriculture, is the methodless method of nature, the unmoving way of Bodhidharma. Although appearing fragile and vulnerable, it is potent for it brings victory unfought; it is a Buddhist way of farming that is boundless and yielding, and leaves the soil, the plants, and the insects to themselves. -- Masanobu Fukuoka

While no one owns the word "Permaculture" Mr. Mollison has asked that anyone intending to make actual money as a Permaculturist take a Permaculture Design Course. As I have not done so, this mini-ebook is free. It may be copied and distributed freely, provided it remains complete and unaltered, including title, author, copyright notice, and all content.

By the same author:

100 Poems
Collected Poems
Homecomings
Iron Buddhas
Starvation Ridge
Viewing Jasper Mountain
What To Do About Trees

All these may be purchased in print, PDF, or Epub from lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/risabee. You may also search under "Risa Bear" on amazon.com. If you cannot afford them, contact me (Risa Bear) at risasb [at] gmail [dot] com and I will point you to a free PDF.

Introduction

I'm Doyū Shōnin/Risa Bear and I'm a nun/priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who said: "Take care of things and they will take care of you."

This booklet is assembled from posts from the blog A Way to Live (http://risashome.blogspot.com/)

A pair of ethics toolboxes

The following can be regarded as a pair of ethics toolboxes for designing a life. I'm still not clear on how to merge them into one, so this is practically a repost. If you've seen it all before, think of me as my own target audience, thinking out loud.

The first is derived from Buddhism. I find its core survives Occam's razor. Its basics are: four truths. And: eight ways for those truths to be manifested in your life.

Your author in skinnier days.

Truth one: it's rough out there (second law of thermodynamics).

Truth two: it's unnecessarily extra rough because we want things to be different than they are.

Truth three: Not much we can do about others but we can change our own behavior, so that things are less rough for us, at least internally.

Truth four is a simple method for these behavior changes. Here is the method with its eight parts -- they are interrelated; are really aspects of one thing, but broken down for utility.

Right view. See what's happening.
Right aspiration. Care about the things that matter, not the things that don't. Notice the things that matter are not things (esp. as in "possessions").
Right speech. When communicating with others, delete whatever would hinder them from discovering the truths and using this method. For example, hurtful snark (I did some of that just yesterday 😧).
Right action. Do not do unto others what you would not want done to you. Heard that before?
Right livelihood. Do not do for a living that which would hinder them from discovering the truths and using this method. Example: fracking engineer. The best occupations are probably agricultural smallholder and the crafts that support smallholders, along with infrastructure workers and the health professions, preferably preventive care. I would include teaching, but prefer it in the form of apprenticeships.
Right effort. Conducting the parts of the method with due diligence.
Right mindfulness. Clarity of thought concerning the truths, the method and their goal of non-harm.
Right concentration. To achieve clarity of thought, discipline the mind. Simply refusing to load it up with extraneous chatter (from television or Facebook, for example) is a start. I attend Soto Zen Buddhist retreats. Your mileage may vary.

The second toolbox is the Permaculture Design principles, as formulated by David Holmgren in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002). I find them to be, ultimately, the same box differently adumbrated.

The core ethics are generally expressed as "earth care, people care, and fair share."

Social Darwinists (those not interested in ethics) tend to dispute these a bit, especially the third one. If you're one of these, likely you didn't get this far. You'll have bailed, perhaps with a "hmph," and continued on your unhappy way. Socialism, as practiced by sovereign states, has not always led to ideal (whatever that means) conditions, but it is not inherently bad to help your neighbor, while it is inherently appropriate to help. Permaculture, like Buddhism, is effectively socialist and effective socialism, when not abused for personal gain. Try these three ethics. You may find you like them.

The ethics are applied in, usually, twelve kinds of activities usually called principles.

Observe and Interact. By taking the time to engage with nature we can design relevant solutions.
Catch and Store Energy. Developing systems to collect resources when abundant, we can use them in need.
Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting useful rewards from your work.
Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or nonresilient practices.
Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – as opposed to non-renewable resources.
Produce No Waste – “Waste not, want not.”
Design From Patterns to Details – Observe patterns in nature and society. Test their appropriateness broadly, rather than losing yourself in detail.
Integrate Rather Than Segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop, creating efficiencies and resiliences.
Use Small and Slow Solutions – "Small is beautiful."
Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” -- be resilient.
Use Edges and Value the Marginal – These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
Creatively Use and Respond to Change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.

The principles are applied in seven "domains" that have been elucidated. These: The Natural Realm, Building(s), Tools (Technology), Education/Culture, Health (Well-Being), Economics ("as if people mattered"), Governance (participatory democracy preferred).

I'm aware that some leaders in Buddhism and Permaculture have historically and have continued to fall short of the ethics enumerated here, particularly in the treatment of women by men in positions of authority. So what's new? I'm all for rooting out the predatory. But I'm going to practice as long as I see the utility of practice.

You are here for only a moment, less than a moment in the universe's time. Clear the mind, open the "heart," open the hands, work for and with and not against.

Right action can be all eight spokes of the wheel

An analysis of the four truths and eightfold way of Buddhism as a unified concept which could be expressed as Right Action.

Primum non nocere, a medical directive, 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 drawing the Buddhist and Permaculture toolboxes 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 in the sense of "obtain a yield." 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 (that's "morality," a different kind of animal). It is as simple as breathing. Want happiness? When you rise up in the morning, set your face toward the doing of right action, that is, whatever is kind, true, and necessary.

Permaculture ethics 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.

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

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" 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 polyculture 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.

Right seeing

We begin by seeing our mistake. Separateness in the here and now is illusory, and our mental pictures of the past or future, laced with a desire to have things our own way, are also illusory. The universe with all that is in it is one thing. This is why it is right to resist the spreading of poisons in agriculture, the land, the skies, the sea, and in our cities, and to resist the spreading of fear (oppression) and of war (oppression also). The cause of the spreading of poisons, fear and war is the lack of accountability due to greed, and the correction of this sickness is accountability -- accepting responsibility for both the visible and invisible costs of our actions, and adjusting those actions accordingly, so that we may act with clarity and justice. Capitalism is (or certainly has become) systematized avoidance of justice. We can do better than this.

Right desire

Desire is sometimes given a bad rap by good and thoughtful people. That's because it is conflated with acquisitiveness. We often wish to accrue money, fame, a lover, electronic toys, a car. But surely it is not wrong to desire health, cleanliness, comradeship, companionship, mercy, and justice for ourselves and others. So, right desire can be the motivator toward living a principled and clarified life. We see by this how far from these good things we can be led by advertising, propaganda, and selected "news" -- which may be but advertising and propaganda put forth by the unprincipled for the sake of a greedful and almost universally hurtful agenda. On a warm day we may desire to walk together to the lake or to sit under a tree and look across the river toward the mountain; in cold rain we may desire to sit by a fire with tea. These are good things; yet by wishing as much for others we find the springboard toward right action.

Right saying

The world is coming to be defined by competing slanders and obfuscations. Clarity, honesty, openness and nurture are revolutionary. What really needs to be said? Are you the one to say it? How, when and where will it be most helpful? There are those who break silence only when it will be like a sunrise, and we know to treasure them.

Ethics are not your beliefs, they are what you do

Key to understanding why there are eight parts to the long- established Buddhist way and twelve principles to the more recent Permaculture way is this concept of "right doing."

If we are alive, we do some things. But perhaps some of them are thoughtless things. Then it behooves us to think this through. To do well, it may help to have (and keep to) a plan. (If we are uncomfortable calling what we do by the names given here, we may use other names. The important thing is the action.)

The Buddhist way may in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have done to yourself.

The Permaculture principles are thought to be an expression of three ethics, caring for the earth, caring for people, and fairness -- which is really but one ethic, and may also in general practice be reduced to the Golden Rule.

Everything unfolds from the observation that there is one observable reality, regardless of how it may be described, and that therefore in some sense there is no one or nothing from which we can be divided. Care for the earth is people care and is sharing.

So we can try this experimentally. See, feel, say (or refrain from saying), do, earn, strive, think, and manifest caring and sharing. We may find that it works, and that our cynicism has been a hindrance. Why should we ever be bored a single moment in an awakened life dedicated to right doing? It's not really harder than wrong doing.

Work well

From right doing, right work naturally flows. It is understandable if one has had to keep working at a fast-food place to help support one's children, but one must also keep an eye out for a better livelihood, as fast-food places poison the population.

In general few jobs meet this principle, as the world system has grown toward wage slavery to enrich those already rich, to most of whom the prospect of such enrichment doing harm to the population is of little or no concern.

It can be helpful to learn a craft or trade that may provide safe and nutritious food, clean water, goods or services that are as free as possible of harm through exploitation -- or debt, which is exploitation at one remove (including the system whereby corporate entities prioritize shareholders rather than the good of society and the biosphere).

It can be objected that looking into the probable effects of work is attachment to outcomes. Not necessarily. The spirit of one's commitment to the eightfold way is to acquire a certain level of skill in not doing harm, not to acquire praise or reward for so doing. Remain in the now and do well.

Focus, focus!

Action, to be correct action, must spring from focus. If we react mainly to provocation, or take action aimlessly, our contribution will be correspondingly small. If we visualize a worthwhile project, and concentrate on it day and night, our impact will be the greater.

First we ascertain that our vision is "worthwhile." Then, whether we mean to create a one-acre food forest or manage a great nation's food system, we must focus on the task at hand and give it our all.

We can see, as we work through these principles, how each of them is a facet of a single principle. It becomes clear to us that right desire and right focus are practically the same. Right focus and right avocation, or livelihood, are also the same. The path is described as having eight parts so that we can absorb the lesson in manageable chunks.

Dogen uses the words "die sitting, die standing" to indicate the urgency we should bring to taking our path seriously. That doesn't mean don't have a sense of fun or play. It does mean not frittering away our minds endlessly on inconsequential matters -- a major trap for us in these times.

Right singularity

I've been covering, in my idiosyncratic way, the eight points of the eightfold path promulgated by Gotama when he snapped out of his long bout of meditation, determined to save the world. We've arrived at the last one, and it's a doozy.

Meditation is said, when undertaken correctly (whatever that might be), to get you the whole enchilada.

Well, it does. But it's generally offered embedded in pietistic hooraw: that "various levels or modes" thing can easily, and I suspect very often, be the money clause: "This stuff takes years, kid. Support me the whole time and I might get you there."

I like and recommend meditation's ability to show, experimentally, such reality as we're equipped (as brains with sampling systems -- eyes, ears, etc.) to appreciate. And it takes some appreciation of what's what for there to be some justification for the other seven aspects of the path.

But it would be a mistake to go sit with the idea of "attaining" some kind of holiness. Attempting to become someone special (which is patently impossible) is exactly what Gotama would have you not do -- it would be the very illusion he returned to his friends to warn against.

So let's do a simple intellectual exercise. 'K?

You can imagine animals and plants arising from the biosphere, not as anything separate from the biosphere, the planet, the galaxy, the universe, but as aspects of all of the above -- it's all one thing, taking a variety of shapes, like thoughts in a mind. Yes?

But, wait -- are you an observer, outside of this image, or are you in it? The center of the universe, or an aspect of the universal?


Stolen from Paul Watson (Sea Shepherd Society)

I think we have to understand ourselves as, in our individuality, provisional beings at best, an aspect of the universal, to go on from here to the twelve principles that have been adumbrated as those of Permaculture. As foraging and farming and trading beings (which we have to be to live) we intervene with the plants and animals around us for our own benefit. How we do so may matter: what if they are our equals? What if it's important to show some respect? Hmm?

We know we have been destructive. How do we become less destructive, or are there even ways in which we can be constructive? If we are going to undertake to change the world for the "better," it's awfully important that the results be, umm, for the better.

'Cuz if we don't have good evidence for what we're doing, better we shoulda stayed on that couch, watching the commercials.

The holistic way

If we look up "holistic" we find, apart from the narrower medical term, that it means "characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole."

It is a term used by Permaculturists and is the point of Permaculture; treat this life (the "world") as a whole system of which we are a part, rather than as a set of resources (separate from us: objectified) to be exploited for profit, regardless of externalized costs.

I think Permaculture as a mass movement is a bit hobbled by the perception that many people and media have that it is limited to New Age and hippies. If it were to shed that perception (as it is beginning to do) and become more widely implemented, it would (will) run afoul of the authorities, who have no intention of being supplanted by an ethical (hence largely anti-capitalist) agenda.

That said, with the fossil fuels rapidly approaching a EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) of 1:1, the planet heating as a result of the massive overuse of same, and the likely consequent famines, resource wars, revolts, and corporate and governmental collapse, those who have been feverishly working to create sustainable practices may or may not find a way for humanity to muddle through but remain the only game in town.

I think the ethic (the "three ethics") as stated on permacultureprinciples.com is spot on. "Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share." Viewed through the monist glass, we can say that all this is Earth Care, people and their basic needs being a part of the holistic whole.

Here are the principles again:

1. Observe and Interact. By taking the time to engage with nature we can design relevant solutions.
2. Catch and Store Energy. Developing systems to collect resources when abundant, we can use them in need.
3. Obtain a yield – Ensure that you are getting useful rewards from your work.
4. Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback – Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or non-resilient practices.
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services – as opposed to non-renewable resources.
6. Produce No Waste – “Waste not, want not.”
7. Design From Patterns to Details – Observe patterns in nature and society. Test their appropriateness broadly, rather than losing yourself in detail.
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate – By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop, creating efficiencies and resiliences.
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions – Small is beautiful.
10. Use and Value Diversity – “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” -- be resilient.
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal – These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change – We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing and then intervening at the right time.

And, we'll go over them one by one.

1. See what is right to do

"Observe and interact."

In recent years we have, by whatever causes, had fewer infestations here of insect pests, slugs and snails.

Perhaps one reason is that we keep an eye out for ways to encourage predation of these. By maintaining habitat refuges, we're seeing an increase in 1. garter snakes and gopher snakes, 2. tree frogs, and 3. orb weavers, yellow garden spiders, and barn spiders. Also, we encourage 4. the ducks and chickens to spend time in the garden and orchard, especially in winter. When we find a ladybug or other beneficial on our walks, we bring it home if it seems okay to do so.

Through observation we can adapt to some changes. For example, we spotted a trend in increased supply of plantains, amaranths and false dandelion on the premises. We looked these up and ended up adding them to our diet and using the plantains for topical medication as well.

Bigger changes are leading us to other thoughts. Poison oak is on the increase, showing up on level ground and not just in the trees as formerly. We think from this, and hearing that rattlers are also extending their range, that our climate is drying and may affect the well, as our limited groundwater is seasonal-rains dependent. We can collect rain and drought-proof the garden somewhat, but may also need to add a water barrel and rotary pump for visits to the river, less than two miles off. We're nearing the end of our career here, but there's no point being driven off the place prematurely through lack of observation and interaction.

2. Power up

"Catch and store energy."

Our budget at Stony Run Farm hasn't been up to what often comes to mind with this principle, which is a set of solar panels. But we do in fact catch and store energy.

1. A 3X50' bed of potatoes stores a lot of solar energy in the form of a wheelbarrow full of spuds. We eat about two thirds over the winter and then plant the rest the following spring. Rotating beds seems to help reduce the risks associated with using your own spuds for seed. Ours are Yukon Golds, Reds, and German Butterball.

2. We do buy in some wood for each winter but also manage our own coppice and woodlot. This is another form of solar, similar in principle to the potatoes (photosynthesis). One warms you on the inside, the other on the outside. Splits, rounds and smallwood go in the woodpile, which faces the sun to season the wood. Leftover branches and twigs, such as the pine boughs shown, are treated as chop-and-drop mulch material, scattered around beneath fruit trees or incorporated into the garden beds. One heap of twiggy "waste" is left for a wildlife safe zone. Many of the trees in our rotation we planted ourselves. Saw used here is electric, and we buy 100% wind from our co-op.

3. We also use passive solar in the form of a used hot water heater with its jacket and insulation peeled back and painted black, resting on a pallet inside its own cold frame. It's tapped into the main line between the well and house, and serves as a pre-heater for the inside electric hot water heater, reducing costs half the year. In two decades it has never needed maintenance.

4. Homemade solar dryers consisting of no more than a plywood box with a window on it, with holes in the ends, have served us well, perhaps because we have had such low humidity (and getting lower! Gulp) in summer.

There are gigabytes of such projects, mostly in PDF form, at this link:
https://www.cd3wdproject.org/CD3WD/INDEX.HTM

See also https://risashome.blogspot.com/p/sources-and-citations.html

3. The grace of gathering

"Obtain a yield"

This principle is quoted a lot in the context of PDCs, or Permaculture Design Certification courses. In short, pay the teacher something. I'm not against that (I support it), but until more designs actually provide the landowners with a living rather than just expensive landscaping, the twelve Permaculture principles will make slow headway in a world that is running out of time to implement them and thus save itself.

What's the holdup? BAU (Business As Usual). BAU does not like the systems analysis approach on which Permaculture is based, and defunded Systems science during the Reagan years.

In the BAU growth-for-the-1% economy, run by the likes of Monsanto and Walmart through bought officials, land will remain expensive and the majority of those (largely trapped in cities) who most need what Permaculture could theoretically do for them will regard it as impracticable and out of reach.

Those who wish to and can go WWOOFing or join an ecovillage or buy a small acreage and build a CSA should do so and not wait for the post-civilization agrarian revolution (assuming there will be anyone left to do that).

For the rest of us, I propose a smaller model: grow something, however small, and give it away.

[First, the big stuff that would really help with that: politically, consider working to expand Medicare to all and replacing the welfare/crisis industry with Basic Income (in other countries than mine, these may have other names/vehicles). Get the punishment mindset out of social interaction. Justice really does precede low-carbon productivity.]

Next, if your day job is no more than living on the minimum BI provides, and you are able-bodied, go volunteer. I would encourage as many as possible to spend their days urban farming, as my autistic son who is on SSI does -- in his case for a food bank, which would be less necessary under BI.

For the rest of us, who would then use BI as a springboard to some form of entrepreneurship or who already have a day job, all so inclined and able might consider doing our Permaculture on the scale appropriate to our means, be it one potted lemon tree. This might be Craft, alternative energy production, infrastructure maintenance, search and rescue (your favorite activity here), or microfarming.

It is traditional for women in the Vietnamese diaspora (and so probably back home as well) to work at a job or the family business until retirement age. Then they turn to the back yard to assure a supply of fresh vegetables for the family. They grow the things they do well, and trade with friends and neighbors. They are "obtaining a yield" yet do not subject themselves to BAU's punitive regulations on small/organic farming and small business commerce, or to BAU's regressive taxation.

1. Tomatoes, squash, eggplant, apple butter. People may not care for most of your home canning, but they will eat your apple butter.

2. Duck eggs and chicken eggs resting on a foraged bench.

3. Greens being harvested for fresh consumption, for poultry, and for dehydration for later use by both humans and poultry.

4. A persistent weed, Japanese knotweed, being collected for food, fodder, mulch, compost, trellising poles, bee hotels, and kindling.

4. No. Non. Nyet!

We can all find something to criticize in the way civilization is going. "No, non, nyet," we say all day long on social media. But the Buddhist principle of "right saying" suggests another approach we can try, more closely related to a saying I've often heard: "Is it kind? Is it true? is it necessary? Then go ahead and say it."

"Apply self-regulation and accept feedback."

Efficient or resilient systems require noting and correcting inefficient or non-resilient practices.

My old anarcho-syndicalist labor cooperative, The Hoedads, ran on Robert's Rules of Order, but also appended to the end of each meeting a session borrowed from Communist Party committee work, known as "Crit-Self-Crit." We would each rise in place and air a grievance we had with anyone, or clique, or the whole team, followed by a grievance we had with our own performance. Dialoguing was not permitted; one had to wait one's turn and even then responding to a specific criticism, other than to contribute to a solution, was discouraged. In this way we had time to consider the viewpoint that had been expressed, and perhaps acknowledge the truth in it and rise to the moment, making a public and private commitment to do better for the sake of all. Solidarity is People Care.

1. Ask your site what it wants from you, through close observation and interaction. Watch the seasons and learn.

2. Contemplate what you have seen and learned in a place and state of reflection.

3. Observe what is happening off-site as well, remembering that everything affects all. Here we see smoke from tundra and taiga fires over a thousand miles away. What does this mean for the world? Your region? Your locality? Your site? How should you respond?

4. Check your findings with others and be prepared to discover, in everyone's accumulated wisdom, your mistakes. Freely acknowledge these when they have been confirmed -- this too adds to the pool of knowledge.

In this way, your commitment to Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share will be honed and strengthened, and in your short time in the world you will have made a contribution.

5. Use all, waste none

"Use and value renewable resources and services"

My first thought when contemplating this principle was the adage: "reduce, renew, reuse, repurpose, recycle." And you do see some of that here: at 2. the harvest/forage bag has been made from a conference tote bag by snipping the handles at one end and sewing them to each other to make a shoulder strap, while at 3. the compost bins are made from pallets and the mailbox is repurposed as a rain-proof hand tool bin.

But it also means to let the earth gift you with things you may use and then return to the earth.

1. Perennials give and grow back, just as trees offer fruit and nuts and then offer them again.

2. Annuals provide fruit and veg but also seed, so that they may come again.

3. "Wastes" become compost gold. Water goes onto the soil, then out to the sea, becomes clouds, returns as rain and snow.

4. Our straw comes from local wheat farmers, and the following year comes from local wheat farmers again. The trellises are made from shoots from hazel, maple, ash, knotweed, and even Oregon grape, all growing on the premises, and renewing from the land cyclically. "Services," indeed. As these become soil and become food for us and the other creatures here, we make some small return via the composting potty and the kitchen "waste" bucket.

There's really no such thing as waste -- the continental plates will subduct all. What there is is spoilage -- making the things you have used into things that are (in the nearer term than geologic processes) harmful or unusable for others.

On a grand scale, the Pacific Garbage Patch would be an example of such spoilage, or the Love Canal, or whatever has been touched by the Tar Sands or nuclear industries. Closer to home, lead paint, Roundup usage, or motoring to the store with a V-8 to buy cigarettes, say.

Watch what happens to the stream of gifts from the Earth you sample. Where do the beanpoles go? The apple cores? The old fence boards?

Respect the cycle.

6. Waste not, want not

"Produce no waste."

1. Gather barn bedding, leaves, grass clippings, kitchen wastes, aged humanure, woodlot waste -- anything that is compostable, does not pass along disease, undesirable chemicals or plastic.

2. Heap and turn, or bin and worm. There are good texts on ways to do so. Keep under cover in rainy weather to prevent leaching out.

3. Distribute. Make enough to feed all beds, or it may be, pots. Consider using more where crops are hungry feeders, but give something to all soils if you can.

4. Reap the rewards ("Obtain a yield"). But remember to return all wastes -- leaving roots intact to rot in place, for example -- either by chop and drop, or carrying them to the heap or bin. If there are wastes that must be burned due to disease or pests, consider returning the ashes at least.

During the off season, if you have one, consider allowing stock (in our case poultry) access, to eat up pests and weed seeds. Meanwhile, start all over at 1.

Let your soil's seasons be to you like your days, with an awakening, sustenance, productivity, and rest.

If you have acres, do this. If you have a few containers on the porch, do this.

7. Patterns are the yellow brick road

"Design from pattern to detail."

Four views by evening light.

"Permanent" and temporary structures, walkways, paths, beds, guilds, garden architecture, pastures, woodlots, shade, sun, and wildlife corridors should interlock to the advantage of all concerned and also reflect your own needs, movements and temperament.

Know in what direction are summer and winter sun and shade, where the weather tends to come from, and the state of your soil and watershed. (I would add first and last frost, but who knows, these days?) Remember humanity is a heat engine and way over energy budget: what are things you can do to lower the cost to others of your short time here?

The buildings shown here, for example, are insulated, shaded, and have white walls and roofs. Many of their materials are recycled and recyclable.

Go lightly on the earth and others and also build soil!

8. All together now

"Integrate rather than segregate."

Create efficiencies and resiliences (Yin and Yang, if you will).

1. This is the poultry moat/orchard, an example of function stacking. Outside fence, slowly becoming a hedge that yields blackberries, plums and wild cherries, is a woven wire deer fence for excluding deer, coyotes and stray dogs from poultry area and garden. Inside fence, lower left, is a welded wire poultry fence and keeps poultry out of the garden until wanted. Fruit trees are planted on a north-south axis to shade one another's roots. They also provide shade to poultry as well as protection from glide-path predators. Poultry pick up fallen fruit and predate on slugs, snails and insects headed for the garden, drop some fertilizer. Chickens, ducks and geese have overlapping but not identical dietary interests.

2. Polyculture; species mixing. Different perennials and annuals mix it up in some beds with a range of heights and leaf and root patterns, allowing some plants to look for slightly different nutrients and water profiles than others, varying sunlight and shade, hiding some plants better from their predators. We never got the hang of companion planting charts but sometimes we get lucky!

3. Variation in height; trellised crops alternate with low-growing spreading crops, assisting each other with partial shade, moisture conservation and weed suppression.

4. Graze; instead of gathering a bushel of this here and that there, one can work one's way up a single bed, finding what's ripe and what's appealing and bring in a fresh meal. Potentially what you're bringing in has less predation, less nutrient depletion, less drought shock, was what your body was really hungry for, and will be eaten fresher. Do the same for poultry or stock; they like their lettuce in season as well.

9. Small is truly beautiful

"Use small and slow solutions"

Holmgren and Mollison began developing the Permaculture Principles in the era of publication of E. F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: A Study Economics as if People Mattered. Recommended, especially the chapter on "Buddhist economics."

The Permaculturist is enjoined to consider edges and diversity partly because foraging is more sustainable than farming, and one place you can forage is in the garden! This year we have an abundance of chard that came up on its own as a result of our having let a plant go to seed. It's doing better than any of our transplanted greens.

One leaf meal: volunteer Fordhook chard.

1. Cut and bring in.

2. Wash and cut up.

3. Steam stem pieces 20 min.

4. Add leafy green pieces and steam 10 min. Salt and butter to taste and serve.

Making a meal from something that "just came up" is even more local than your CSA. Think of the ways that fits into "Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share." Invite the neighbors to have some and you will really be on a roll.

Fordhook dates from the 1920s and was a Burpee developed strain. The stems are to my mind even better than the greens. Transplants well. Does like well composted loose soil and lots of water. Tolerates both sun and shade and lasts through most of our summers and most of our winters. Seeds prolifically and volunteers grow true to form. Seed companies say it grows to 18" high but they are being modest. Many specimens over three feet not counting those that bolt in heat waves.

When I see so many of my friends and neighbors thrown out of work, I'm reminded of that moment in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano when the protagonist's car breaks down, and a crowd of the great mass of unemployed gathers, which he views with suspicion until one of them wistfully says, as nearly as I can remember it from a distant read: "Maybe I could look at it for you. I used to be pretty good with my hands."

The generation now in charge has mostly not read E. F. Schumacher, which is a sad fact. My copy of Small is Beautiful (Perennial Library, 1973) is forty years old; it's a crumbling paperback, yellow and a bit musty, that has traveled with me, long un-reread but treasured, crisscrossing the Northwest with me when I worked in the woods, and the nation when I worked in Pennsylvania.

If we thought Schumacher's views were important then, we should read him now. Everything he found urgent has become more so. Samples:

...one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion ... is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it has been erected .... it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income. (20)

And:

By "limits" he means three things; fossil fuels, natural systems with their feedback loops, and human limitations (that they can tolerate only so much of a life that is functionally no more than slavery, or consumerism, or both). He believes if he can prove his point with any one of the three, he has made his case.

Economics, as practiced by industrial society, is in Schumacher's view fatally fragmentary: the society's judgments

are based on a definition of costs which excludes all "free goods," that is to say, the entire God-given environment, except for those parts of it that have been privately appropriated. This means that an activity can be economic although it plays hell with the environment, and that a competing activity, if at some cost it protects and conserves the environment, will be uneconomic. (43)

Thus you have the strange condition in which extraction of oil from the ground, poisoning the land, water, air, and ourselves, is an activity which can be rationally charted as economic (and therefore a good) while actually threatening all life.

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single- minded pursuit of wealth -- in short, materialism -- does not fit into [the] world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment within which it is placed is strictly limited. (29-30)

One effect of the fragmentary view of the world encouraged by industrial economics is that agricultural work is regarded as of little value; since agriculture is seen in this view to be simply another kind of factory, and no "profit" can be extracted from it unless it is practiced on an industrial scale, more farming must be done by fewer and fewer people and the rural population is displaced into the cities to look for work there, adding to the enormous problems of social disintegration and grinding poverty that appear in urban settings.

The subtitle of the book is "Economics as if People Mattered." Schumacher was a Catholic Distributist, and regarded the work of St. ThomasAquinas as the underpinning of his understanding of science. He knew that much of his audience would be unwilling to hear him if he made much of this at the time, so he devised a clever and famous chapter, "Buddhist Economics." (Emphasis mine.) A discussion framed in Buddhist terms served his immediate aims just as well as one framed in Christian terms, for his point was that economics ought to serve humanity and not the other way round; and economics cannot serve humanity on its terms, for that which makes us human is unquantifiable in dollar amounts.

What is desirable to the materialist economist is undesirable to the Buddhist economist and vice versa, so that their aims in the short term are diametrically opposed. This is because the Buddhist economist has an interest in the long term, which is an interest that is unquantifiable in the industrial economist's system.

Buddhism is concerned with the alleviation of suffering so that one can focus on understanding one's self and the universe better, with the aim of right living, of choosing a path that promotes one's own well-being and that of all others: what are called "sentient beings" in Buddhist lingo. So the way of Buddhism trends toward peace and the way of a materialist system trends toward the opposite:

As the world's resources of non-renewable fuels -- coal, oil and natural gas -- are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must inevitably lead to violence between men .... Before [materialists in Buddhist countries] dismiss Buddhist economics as nothing better than a nostalgic dream, they might wish to consider whether the path of economic development outlined by modern economics is likely to lead them to places where they really want to be. (61)

All well and good; but as with almost all liberals, one might expect that at this point Schumacher will rest on his laurels, having simply noted that what we are all doing is a Bad Show. But, unlike others, he has a specific set of proposals toward what might be a Better Show.

Schumacher notes that when local people produce local goods for other local people, the relationship, the bond, between them, that sense of well-being for which industrial economy can find no place in its equations, is strengthened.

Hence what are called "economies of scale" -- nation-states, multinational corporations, mass production, and export -- are false economies because they encourage bankruptcy in those three things, the state of the planet, of its non-renewables, and of the well-being of its beings.

Whereas local economies, inefficient as they are in those equations, tend to conserve the Three Things.

It's true, notes Schumacher, that in what are called Third World countries, there are what might be called one-pound (or we Americans could say one-dollar) workplaces, and life is marginal and sometimes prey to drought, disease, etc. But the cure proposed by the industrial economy is to bring in one-thousand-dollar workplaces, which cannot be justified economically except through extractive export strategies that ultimately only benefit the industrial chieftains in the developed countries.

Local people, on seeing the implementation of these impressive workplaces, often give up (and forget how to return to) their own one-dollar strategies, expecting full employment, except that the one- thousand-dollar solution, due to its capital cost, cannot be emplaced quickly enough to provide this. So from marginal existence a great many of them go straight to a starvation existence. Also, full employment was never a goal of the industrial economy in the first place. Fear tends to be regarded by the captains of industry as a great motivator, and pools of underutilized labor can be tapped for new projects at "reasonably" low wages.

Schumacher proposes an "intermediate" solution.

Devise the one-hundred-dollar workplace, using technologies that can be built and managed locally, to produce a higher standard of living by marketing the product locally.

To the objection that local people from a one-dollar background have no buying power, he answers that with the ten-times-cheaper- than-industrial-scale one-hundred-dollar workplace, you can do ten startups simultaneously, with the goods from one workplace affordable to the workers in one of the other nine.

There is thus no need to export, eliminating the need to carry on in the extractive and eventually bankrupting manner to which the West is addicted. Also, rural populations, by recovering a measure of independence and self-worth locally, are then not so easily driven to the urban ghettos, which reduces the strain on the megalopolitan cities which our industrial economy has created.

This sounds Utopian, but in fact his approach has been extensively tested. To show what would be examples of intermediate technology, applied to local economies by the local people themselves and not by well-intentioned but locally ignorant strangers, he formed, with other scientists and interested parties, a barely capitalized organization called the Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG).

They still exist, as the nonprofit Practical Action (http://www.practicalaction.org/), almost fifty years later.

ITDG, with little real cooperation and much disdain from the developed nation-states and megacorporations, has for four decades doggedly kept up its mission of demonstrating the economic and scientific principles of E. F. Schumacher, and carried out numerous local initiatives, always sharing the lessons learned with anyone who seeks them out.

In the field of local energy development, they began with the obvious: people in developing countries depend on biomass for energy, and open fires waste energy. So ITDG designed low cost cooking stoves to reduce impact on the forests and other vegetative cover, as well as the tremendous labor expended, usually by women and children, in going farther and farther to strip the landscape of available fuel.

When a locality is ready for more, Practical Action is ready with more: micro-hydro plants, small scale wind generators, solar lanterns, biogas.

A serious bottleneck for local production, which cannot easily reach even local markets in rural areas of undeveloped countries, is transportation. Practical Action offers expertise in locally controlled construction of cycle trailers, improved ox and donkey carts, and efficient low-technology road building.

I refer those interested to Practical Action's website to grasp the scope of their activities. None of the ideas described are vaporware; they have applied them all in the real world and have the stories of local communities where the projects are being carried out.

See their links on agroprocessing, food production, information and communications technologies, small-scale mining, water and sanitation, disaster amelioration, advocacy, and education.

One might think that Practical Action would have an extensive Peace-Corps-style volunteer program. That's not the case. They seem to be a low-overhead operation, focused on getting information into the hands of the rural populations that need it, rather than bringing in mysterious expertise as if from some "higher" realm, deus ex machina, to carry out projects little understood by those they "help."

What is wanted is accessible knowledge, the kind created not for but in cooperation with rural populations in "Third World" countries, the kind of knowledge that takes root in the heart of the woman or man who says, "yes, I can do this." And we are all and have always been the "Third World," whether we think so or not.

10. "In diversity there is beauty and there is strength"

"Use and value diversity."

1. On the land, as in human relations, diversity is strength. Try everything! Some trees, perennials and annuals will do better, some will not like your climate or soils. For those who work with animals, it's much the same -- one five acre place might do well with a Devon cow and calf, whereas another, with smaller available pasture, might require a Dexter. Do early spring gardens do better here than fall? What greens last through winter freezes? What flint corn or what winter squash seems happier here?

2. Explore the native and non-native field and forest biota and geology for further utility. Are there acorns? Abandoned fruit trees, or wild plums or persimmons? Walnuts? Black walnuts? wild grapes? Edible berries, seeds, annuals, biennials, mushrooms? Which make good medicines, teas, seasonings, dyes, basketry, axe handles, beanpoles, wattles? What animals are there, and which are predators to your plants and animals, which are appropriate to hunt (if you do)? Fish, eels, clams, mussels? What's legal or illegal, abundant or under pressure and needing conservation, and what are the seasons?

3. Experiment and extend your range of skills for your own benefit and pleasure as well as to benefit your family, friends and neighbors. Can you sew, mend, design an interior, clean house, paint, plumb, do carpentry, electric, roofing, assemble hardware, install appliances, cut glass, caulk, set tile, grout, lay bricks, set a stone wall, bed a pathway, maintain tools, cook, preserve foods, bake, dance, sing, play an acoustic instrument, do martial arts, perform a play, chair a meeting, tend to the sick, attend a birth , comfort the dying, meditate, survive, evade, escape, tan leather, shoe a horse, dip candles? Or maybe only a few of these, but are willing to bank them at the community center in exchange for others? Also, when you've learned a skill, how about extending your range, trying new things with new ingredients or materials? Shown is a small loaf of spelt/rye/oatmeal bread with duck eggs, sea salt, veggie crumble, and brewer's yeast, baked in a crock pot. Next, perhaps we'll try in a Dutch oven on a rocket stove.

4. What do you know of your site, its watershed and region, and what they have to offer? Explore (where it is not trespassing) the fields, woods, streams, and bodies of water. Where does the water come from and where does it go; what is its quality? Where are the prevailing winds? Are you prone to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes? Where are the straight saplings for your stamping shed roof, round heat-safe rocks for your sweat lodge, flat rocks for your path to the compost heap, "trash" fish for your fertilizer? Where is the nearest doctor, dentist, veterinarian, grocer, etc., but also who is the go-to blacksmith, wild foods teacher, seed-saver? What birds and animals live (year-round or seasonally) in which areas -- are there rattler dens and poison oak or ivy to respect? What is the history here? How were things done in the past? How do local, state or province and national jurisdictions impact the site, locality and region? What are the current social and commercial impacts? What is changing, and can the changes be met with adequate adaptation? You cannot, maybe, discover all this, but by seeking may find much, and then you will never suffer boredom.

It's worthwhile to widen the variety of vegetables, cover crops, shrubs, trees and livestock to be found on the premises where you do your food scene, as monocultures, such as only doing tomatoes, results in faster depletion of specific nutrients and trace elements, which may lead to dependence on bought-in fertilizers and supplements, possibly damaging your soil and your watershed and affecting your health and that of your neighbors (including beneficial wild species in your biome).

Apple juice tastes better when you use range of varieties in the press, perhaps including crabapples, but what about throwing in a pear, a pawpaw, two or three persimmons, a handful of goumis and some grapes and blackberries if they are on hand? You're on your way to creating a health food made up of what's happening around you, in much the same way as a bear, passing through the woods and over the streams, assembles a varied diet from huckleberries, salmonberry, thimbleberries, Oregon grapes, mushrooms and salmon.

A cherry tree can do many things for you, as can a maple tree, but each does it differently, with different end results, and with some overlap. We have both residing on the south side of the house, for shade, and have added butternuts and figs in the same area. And who's to say this is not beautiful landscaping?

And it can be an exercise of right seeing, right action, right livelihood, right awareness to study your surroundings and discover how yet another vegetable, herb, berry bush or tree fits into your surroundings, and its products into your life.

What things prefer partial shade? Which ones tolerate tree roots? Which "weeds" should I encourage? What do I do to get unsprayed filberts without worms (catch them on a sheet, not letting them touch the ground)? Who is around to trade vegs and seeds or sell me a pair of ducks for the slugs? I don't have enough land (patio, balcony) to do any of this ... do we have allotments, community gardens, vacant lots in the neighborhood for the use of which I can sign up or negotiate? Does the city give away leaves? Should I build a bike trailer to go after them? Is it legal to add a beehive here? If not, can I change that?

In every aspect of life, asking how one thing can do many jobs, or many things can do one job may add resiliency, which may be superior to its opposite, efficiency, in increasingly chaotic circumstances.

Though our place looks nothing like it, we have referred to this chart in planning:

a) House b) garage c) wellhouse d) garden shed e) barn/poultry house f) garden beds g) fruit trees h) chicken moat i) optional goats/sheep j) truck access k) walkway l) shade trees such as mature cherry or walnut. Not shown: plantings of tea, spices, berries, grapes, lavender, etc. m) place for humans to zone out.

Perhaps you wish to do these things and cannot access land of your own, a rental, or a community garden. In that case, you might try what Aaron Newton did in his neighborhood, and which he reported on in my all time favorite blog post by anyone ever. See: http://poweringdown.blogspot.com/search?q=neighborhood+design

11. Peripheral visions

"Use edges and value the marginal."

1. Go out to where either your greens have made a whole lot of big side foliage you don't use at table, or have gone to seed producing volunteers (volunteer chard shown), and gather about forty leaves.

2. Stuff your Excelsior or Excalibur or solar dehydrator with them.

3. When they're brittle, fish them out and strip dry matter from midribs. Clean up and crumble to desired consistency. To make powder, run the crumbled greens in a dry blender.

4. Dry can (bake) in jars and open to use as needed. Good for up to five years in our experience.

Kale, collards, chard, beets, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, dandelions, false dandelions, lamb's quarters, turnip, kohlrabi, lettuce, and tatsoi, along with herbs to taste can all be included in this.

Use in breads, soups, frittatas, quiches, on meats, on potatoes, in eggs, power drinks, hot cereals, salads, wilted salads, stir fries, etc. Also can add to feeds such as poultry feeds. If you've hung onto it too long (eight years, say), there is always the compost

Caveat: spinach and amaranths contain a lot of oxalic acid and so some should not consume them in quantity.

Habits of urban, suburban, and, in my area, even rural people are: drive to work (or the unemployment office), gas up the car, get groceries, maybe eat out, come home, watch television, meanwhile going farther and farther into debt. But suppose you lived close enough to your work to commute via feet, bicycle or bus (or train), grew (much of) your groceries and foraged as well, and allowed these activities to take up 'TV time'? Maybe a little less debt?

If the neighbors will permit it (perhaps by letting them in on it), what about grapes and kiwis on the back-lot fence? If the city or borough or county or parish doesn't mind, what about gardening the front yard, the right-of-way strip, the odd triangular bit on the corner that's not part of anyone's city lot? I volunteer at a small state park that is severely underutilized, and the rangers have tacitly offered me all the filbert poles, filberts, apples, black walnuts, wild mustard, and the like I can gather when my gorse pulling is done.

When I walk the dog, I wear a cloth bag over each shoulder and explore the pasture fence lines of the neighborhood. Apples, crabapples, rose hips, Oregon grape, and acorns are the current crop. Earlier there were plums.

When I lived alone in the city awhile back, I lived mainly on rice from a steamer, but added diced apple, quince and Asian pear slices, dandelions and lamb's quarters, with traces of lavender, mint and rosemary, all garnered from abandoned strips in the alleyways. There was even kale. My entire budget that year was four hundred fifty dollars a month. Most of my earnings were sent to the home place to help retire the mortgage.

Here at home one fence line is turning into a hedgerow, and affords blackberries, Oregon grapes, grapes, crabapples, wild cherries, beanpoles, and composting materials. The seasonal creek's banks provide all that plus firewood and stones. I take my filbert (ok, hazel), willow, ash, maple and even Japanese knotweed poles to the compost heap and strip the leaves into the heap before moving on to the trellising.

From the garden we get all the usual things but also dandelions and other delicious weeds, popular with the chickens, as well as plantains, red clover, and other medicinals. Any part of the 'yard's' margins not doing anything else is put to work raising comfrey for the poultry and the compost heap.

Watch the seasons in the margins. For Buddhist purposes, this post is under 'right seeing' and 'right awareness'.

In some parts of the world, as well as among some marginalized populations in this country, all this is routine. Learn from those whose native language is not your own, learn from the parks, stream banks, abandoned lots, fence lines, property boundaries, edge plant communities and feral animals. What works for them?

Maybe it will work for you.

12. Prepping??

"Creatively use and respond to change."

Four stages. 1. Broadfork 2. Mulch. 3. Drip irrigate. 4. Harvest.

The current situation here is drought. More drought now, in August, than we had last year at any stage, which was more than we've ever seen at this site. So the plants are doing as well as they are, I think, because we broadforked the beds and are spot-watering a lot of the plants at their bases. Those that start to wilt get immediate attention.

It is very difficult to garden right now in Pleasant Hill, Oregon.

Yes, I know guilds are supposed to be helpful. For reasons I won't go into, this particular garden must be kept tree free. But I have done what I can around the edges. Also we are trellising in every other bed in the far back, which really seems to help with partially shading the beds in between. The summer squash bed and the winter squash bed I don't worry about -- they have formed a solid canopy.

As to prepping: when it really hits the fan, there will be rationing, first in one place and then another. As that comes your way, you'll encounter increasing propaganda as to how prepping is really hoarding.

You know what hoarding is; it's irrational storage of stuff you're obsessed with, to the point of your being unable to function well -- you can't get to the bathroom because your heap of Pez bottles is in the way.

There's nothing irrational about, say, food preservation: canning, drying, freezing and fermenting your produce. Or buying farm produce cheap at the height of the season and processing it yourself in batches.

They're gonna yell at you anyway. You should be buying stuff (with your ration card) at the supermarket like everyone else; who do you think you are? Get in line!

World War II home front propaganda posters made the distinction; those stocking up sacks of flour while others did without were in violation of the law; but those who could produce extra food for their families were encouraged, as that much more food could then be sent where it was needed.

So this rationing thing is meaningful up to a point, particularly in the cities. (watch Wartime Farm, especially the later, more desperate episodes.) If half the people in a siege have food and the other half don't, it gets harder -- much harder -- for everyone to pull together. But there has always been, even in fourteenth century Europe, the hope of the siege lifting, and life returning to "normal."

This time, there's a pretty good chance life is not going to be able to do that. Possibly for thousands of years, if ever:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/TF.html

See also:

https://risashome.blogspot.com/2024/11/fwiw-part-3.html

https://risashome.blogspot.com/2024/11/fwiw-part-3_13.html

Infrastructure as we currently know it is not built to stand up to the coming changes, and it looks like we cannot afford to upgrade. People, especially in urban settings, may begin to misbehave. Preppers may be overwhelmed, and it will be at that point that they'll appreciate that the zombie movies were a horrendous metaphor.

At some point my neighborhood is going to have to band together and figure what are its resources and liabilities. At my age, I have little strength left and my sight and hearing are going. If I want to appear to my neighbors to be a resource, I may have to offer them potatoes. And there is satisfaction in having those to offer.

And then what, you may ask. Well, no one lives forever. If it comes to it, as I yield up my last jar of pickles, I may have to assume the role of Bret Harte's Mother Shipton:

"I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's what they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away. -- "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"

There can be satisfaction in that, too.

Between now and then, just in case there's any such thing as a soft landing, or just because it's the right thing to do, improve your odds too of being useful to yourself and others.

Observe the changes and interact with your human, plant and animal neighbors in a resilient and respectful manner, adapting as as you go. Find non-grid and non-fossil-fueled ways to catch and store energy, and prepare to share these locally. For as long as possible, feed yourself and not just others. Accept criticism, especially from yourself. Promote and exemplify the use of renewables, making no waste to the extent possible. Follow natural patterns and cycles, integrating yourself with your surroundings and recognizing the ultimate unity of all things great and small reveling in the diverse forms this unity can take. Work the margins and roll with the punches.

Personally, as I resolve to live by the Permaculture principles in the above paragraph, I also resolve to see, feel, say, act, work, strive, think, and focus wholeheartedly while I can. One does not have to make a religion of it. Sitting and watching a sunset, then washing the dishes before retiring for the night, are momentous things. When the time comes that I can no longer do such, I would prefer to go out well, and to be remembered as having been more a help than a hindrance to those around me.

From the ten ox-herding pictures and Permaculture Design to a way of life

One of my all-time favorite things is the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, an effort to explain in graphics the typical "spiritual" journey of a Zen adherent.

The idea is that when we notice something seems "missing" in our lives, we go forth in search of it, and perhaps we find that a certain amount of self-discipline will get us what we think we want. In this case of this metaphor, the Ox represents "enlightenment." But, in the end, there was really nothing missing, the universe (of which we are a manifestation) is one thing, and in full realization of this we begin to forget ourselves and come back to the human community prepared to offer the benefits of this realization.

This herding of the ox resembles the process of noticing that civilization is damaging the earth and all its inhabitants, and of seeking an alternative to it. One of the alternatives some find is Permaculture, which with its adumbrated three ethics and twelve principles can be a handy framework for rolling up our sleeves and pitching in.

One might regard the pictures as applicable to the process of signing up for (and paying an ungodly amount for) a Permaculture Design Course (PDC), taking the hands-on classes, and receiving a certificate as a Permaculture Designer. The last image, "Entering the village with bliss-bestowing hands," lends itself to that nicely.

I'm not going to tell you not to go do this; we probably need all the Permaculture Designers we can get. I think there are some adjustments that could be made to the current system; correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it seem a little as if PDC teachers seem to be certifying more PDC teachers than keyline diggers, gardeners and foresters? Not everyone has all skills, and for a community to adopt a solution there may have to be some division of labor.

After a change of heart (mind), it's a good idea to also have a change of hands. As in calluses.

Toby Hemenway wryly notes the relative success of Transition as opposed to the PDC model, and points out that Rob Hopkins, the movement's co-founder, is a certified Permaculture Designer. He's kind of quiet about it, though. People tend to organize themselves in ways that are already familiar to them, and he's figured out how to play to that.

The genius of Hopkins' approach is that at first it's rather like organizing a Garden Show. Folks get together to eat, play music, watch a puppet drama, swap plants, and treat themselves to a not- overlong whiteboard session on how to muddle through should industrially-induced scarcities (of energy, food, affordable housing, clean water) threaten to strike in their neighborhood. It's issue-oriented and open-ended.

The open-ended bit is where the power of this approach lies. At the initial event, roles are propagated and a date fixed for the next get- together. And the next. Instead of a six-week intensive, it's a lifetime community learning experience, with coordinated action to build resilience into the group, the group's families, friends, neighbors and beyond.

Also, the "authorities" seem to have relatively little problem with Transition as a manifestation of community spirit. It seems a bit like the Rotarians as seen from the outside. Any time you can get the mayor to attend a ribbon-cutting for a storefront food-and-gardening supplies cooperative or a labor exchange is a definite plus.

Those bearing a PDC certificate who set themselves up as a teacher of PDCs or as a small business -- an independent site designer helping owners start their polyculture gardens and food forests -- are doing a good thing. Not only does the world need all of this it can get, it fits under Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood. Getting paid to do it means not starving, as well, which fits under "Obtain a yield."

I think, though, that last picture in the ox-herding series contains one more step. "Entering the village with bliss-bestowing hands" involves the whole village and involves a gift-giving, gift-exchange local economy. This is neighborhood action, and it cant ake diverse forms; many of those involved will have never heard of Permaculture or even Transition Towns. Yet aspects of either will be found throughout, because good principles have a way of showing up, simply because they are often already known to be the best way to do things. Tradition can be a stumbling block but it can also be a guide.

Folkways often embody winning strategies.

Recognizing that the universe is one thing and what's going on is not primarily about me, I find myself doing what I know, as it seems time is short. It may not be the whole Permaculture enchilada, but the village is all around me, the day is wasting, and there are calluses to be earned.



"I enter the village with bliss-bestowing hands, having given up leashing of the ox forever."

1 comment:

Doyu Shonin11:56 AM
Practically any Buddhist list can be mapped onto the Permaculture principles. Try the Precepts (https://www.sfzc.org/offerings/establishing-practice/sixteen-bodhisattva-precepts) or the Paramitas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81ramit%C4%81), for example.

Stony Run Farm: Life on One Acre

A Way to Live

Toward a Buddhist/Permaculture Ethic for Smallholders and Others

1 comment:

Keywords: click one to see all posts tagged with it.

Archive: See all posts for a given month