The Institute of Buddhist Studies provides graduate level education in the entirety of the Buddhist tradition with specialized instruction supporting Jodo Shinshu Buddhist ministry.
on gardening |
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No Trace
A few miles north of Green Gulch Farm is Muir Woods National Monument, a pristine stand of old-growth redwoods. Lately, I’m there a lot helping to pickax open the seized soil in Bohemian Grove so that broad-rooted native grasses can reclaim the tight ground. For the last five years, it’s been my civic duty to volunteer in the woods and work on the compacted ground where a giant Buddha was once constructed. More » -
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Tell It Slant
Of all the seasons in the garden I love the dead of winter best. In icy February when storms from the Gulf of Alaska pelt the frozen ground with hail, the bare-boned skeleton of the dormant garden stands revealed in the stiletto wind. More » -
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Seeds of Plenty
Almost fifteen years ago, at our annual gathering of ecological farmers, I received a bulging handful of Rainbow Inca flint corn from my gardening sister, Dru Rivers of Full Belly Farm. “Plant this corn,” she urged me, “and save some seed to share with new farmers next year.” The beauty of this heritage corn captured me from the first with its dense rows of russet gold, steel blue, and burnt orange kernels wrapped under dark burgundy and pale dun husks. When we ground the corn at harvest time, it yielded a soft mound of lavender-hued meal that we added to our Thanksgiving bread. Best of all, Rainbow Inca corn was generous; even after the first growing season we returned to the Eco-Farm gathering with plenty of seed to share. More » -
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Roots
Whatever you have to say, leavethe roots on, let themdangleAnd the dirtjust to make clearWhere they come from. —Charles Olsen Winter rain, falling for ten thousand years. I celebrate Groundhog Day on my hands and knees in the muddy sludge of the February garden, grubbing out the tangled roots of Michaelmas asters in the rain. Although it is best not to dig in heavy rain, I have no choice. The asters must be lifted and divided before they leaf out so that they have time to become established in the summer garden. Already spring has begun to slit open the primeval eyelid leaves of the flowers; they reveal their first pale green retinas of light, winking against the dark soil of the garden. More » -
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Whitefly Zen
As a front-line organic gardener allergic to pesticides of any stripe, I have ample opportunity to practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in our huge, teeming garden. Lately, as clouds of pests and beneficial organisms descend onto our spring crops, I begin to see that Zen practice itself if a kind of “integrated pest management.” “Keep your enemies close, and practice diligently as if to save your head from fire,” I mutter to myself as sucking whiteflies blanket the lower leaves of our heritage tomato plants growing in the greenhouse. IPM has some very simple guidelines for practice that arise out of an ecosystem approach to working with pests in the garden. In these guidelines I hear echoes of naturalist John Muir from almost a century ago: “When we try and pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” This is sound Buddhist teaching, and so are these IPM guidelines from which core Zen principles step boldly forth: More » -
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A Taste as Old as Cold Water
Timeless spring has its sharp teeth buried in my back flank, urging me to finish the last plantings of April before summer rises up out of the warm ground to claim the garden. Today, Sarah and I are planting a young olive tree on the edge of the Edible Schoolyard garden at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in north Berkeley, with the help of a few rapscallion seventh graders. And, hard as I try to resist, the primordial olive is pulling me down again into the well of time. More »
