When Barton Stone first moved to his current home, he was faced with an “impossible tangle” of blackberry vines. That tangle- “impossible to me,” he says- stood in the way of his vision of recreating the woods as they were decades ago before the land was grazed by sheep.
At first, he saw the blackberries as “enemies” with which he must struggle. Over time, his understanding of Buddhist teaching helped him to see the blackberries as beings that shared the land with him. Now, he says, “we've learned to live together.”
Barton Stone is a food forester and Zen priest at Stone Creek Zen Center in Graton. On July 31st, he and Terrie Schweitzer will be leading a workshop called Gardening Without Enemies: A Buddhist Approach to Permaculture. The workshop will take place at Mamalanda, a 4 acre permaculture place near Occidental.
The focus of the workshop is to “learn to make peace with 'pests' such as blackberries, scotch broom and gophers, to move toward cooperation and abundance for all.” Mr. Stone says this first-time workshop grew out his own experience as well as discussions among the sangha at Stone Creek Zen Center of people's strong feelings about the species that interfered with the plants they wanted to cultivate.
Says Mr. Stone, “a lot of my permaculture friends feel their rage come up when they see their plants chomped by gophers.” The workshop will examine what Buddhists call the “hindrance” of hatred.
He says that once he learned to put aside his own hatred, he found, “blackberries are like bees- they are a wild creature we can kind of 'co-cultivate'- I do that by maintaining boundaries with them- by pruning them out of the trails and pathways. It's a conversation- I cut them with my pruning snippers and they cut me with their thorns- neither of us destroys the other.”
The result, he reports, is, “a wonderful, bountiful, generous supply of berries at this time of year.”
Other activities in the workshop will include “solitary time spent trying to establish an 'I-Thou' relationship with some of the plants in the landscape,” as well as such hands-on permaculture tasks as making “compost tea.”
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Stephen Colgan can be contacted at StephenColganMFT@sbcglobal.net
This webpage is dedicated to portraying the amazing diversity of Buddhist practice and culture in the Bay area. All suggestions are welcome.
Stephen Colgan also writes the Psychology and Spirituality Examiner page.
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Agriculture is man's first form of industrialization.
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