Turning the Eightfold Garden Wheel
More than ten years ago at Green Gulch Farm I had the pleasure of convening a beginning class for ten- to twelve-year-olds on the fundamental teachings of the Buddha. We began in the library but quickly migrated out to the garden. Neither interested in settled meditation nor pre-digested religious philosophy, the rambunctious tween-agers I worked with were far more curious about the Buddha’s vow to understand and alleviate suffering. Realizing how many kids their own age were hungry and malnourished, even in the Bay Area, these eager students were keen to plant a not so noble eightfold path garden in the shape of a wheel sown to crops that could be harvested for food and that also responded to the teachings they were investigating.
This class knew plenty about suffering in its raw and cultivated forms. They also had a blunt grip on the causes of dukkha as well as on the possibility of the cessation of suffering. But what they wanted most was to break ground and work the grit of the Eightfold Path.
I learned from these young people that the Fourth Noble Truth is practical and clear, especially when you heed the Buddha’s invitation ehi passika, to come and see. I reviewed the classic grid of the teaching with the class, naming the eight folds of the path and mentioning that these folds were often divided into three groups according to the classic trainings of wisdom, concentration, and ethics or what the kids came to call “good work.” They drew a round wheel pattern on the ground and began to dig.
The first two spoke beds of the wheel were dedicated to wisdom. The kids marked these beds with blue signs for clear-eyed understanding and sowed a bed of French carrots with a scattering of Eyebright plants at the head of the bed for Right View. “What’s right view?” I asked as we raked in the carrot seed. “Probably no view is the most right-on view,” one boy commented as he watered the bed. In honor of Right Intention we planed a neighboring bed to cowpeas with a heavy undersowing of buckwheat to nourish the soil and build long-term fertility. “You know, you can eat buckwheat too,” I mentioned, showing the students a glass bowl of cooked kasha groats, an unwise decision on my part judging from their intentional, steadfast silence.
The “good work” series of beds for ethical presence were the kids’ favorite plantings. They chose brilliant yellow signs for these beds, deciding to plant the Three Sister trio of Mesoamerica, beans, corn and squash, as their guardian crops. For Right Speech they planted dragon tongue beans, since the ancient Incans used beans to communicate news all along their highland running routes. Nearby the students planted corn for Right Action, carefully choosing Rainbow Inca flint corn, which has not been genetically modified, a virtue the kids understood quite well even a decade ago. Last of all we planted Guatemalan blue squash, the third and eldest sister, for Right Livelihood. All members of the squash family cover and protect the earth with succulent vines while producing a wealth of durable and delicious squash that keeps throughout the winter, feeding the hungry.
The students were least interested in the Concentration threesome, even though they understood the terrain when they proposed marking the beds for Right Effort, Mindfulness and Concentration with bright red signs. “Red, like red lights, to slow you down when you are going too fast,” one speedy lass noted as she planted thick arcs of dark burgundy sunflowers for Right Effort. I refrained from mentioning the righteous effort it would take deft-beaked birds or deft-fingered kids to extract the oil-rich seeds of these sunflowers from their tightly-packed heads. For Right Mindfulness we planted lavender and rosemary plants for heart and mind together/in the present moment. Last in the sequence the students sowed Stone Age wheat for Right Concentration, since 9,000 years of continuous cultivation of this ancient grain has long nourished the germ of concentration.
