Confronting Failure

Today a neighbour came over.

He came to collect some cattle that had worked their way into our property. I had put them in our yards.

As the neighbour is a weekend farmer I expected the cattle to be with us for a few days. So I let them into a small paddock next to the yards.

We run a fairly lightweight electric fencing network. These cattle were not familiar with electricity. They jumped the fence. I put them back in the yards, fixed the fence, tried again. This time they did not even bother to jump the fence. They just walked through it.

Back in the yards. I wondered what I would do to provide feed and water for the cattle until the weekend.

Fortunately Dave turned up two days early.

He took his cattle and walked them down to the road and through a gate.

That gate. The one where the gatepost is held up by the gate rather than the other way around.

As soon as we removed the chain to open the gate, the post fell down.

My farm is full of these things. Jobs that I really want to do, but haven't. And every time I am confronted with one I feel dissatisfied - even ashamed. Today, with a formerly proud anchor post to my fence prone on the ground, I felt like a failure. This was not the trademark of a 'successful' farmer.

No matter how much I tell myself that I am walking to the beat of a different drum, I can't help feeling that perhaps I am just lost. It certainly feels lonely out here in the wilderness of my own uncertainty and confusion.

The post just is what it is - old and broken. It has not been fixed by me or anyone else. It is not as I would like it. I know I should not take it personally - but I still do.

Life is Amazing - Note to Self/World

La vie est incroyable tu es merveilleuse des sentiments, c’est humain mais ce qui compte, c’est ce que tu fais avec ce que tu ressens ta vie est un paradoxe la variété d’options offertes par notre monde et ton futur sont presque sans limite mais il n’y a qu’une de toi et tu n’as qu’une vie c’est une émotion profonde d’être restreint parmi toutes ces options et on passe toute notre vie à résoudre ce paradoxe; essayer de satisfaire tous nos désirs, c’est échouer mais il est possible de satisfaire nos besoins fondamentaux la sérénité n’existe pas dans le monde externe plus on prend du monde externe, plus on veut prendre ne nous mène qu’à en vouloir plus et le tout nous laisse dans l’insatisfaction continue le sérénité t’est disponible, elle est à l’intérieur de toi elle vient en donnant avec abandon et elle vient de ce que tu reçois sans restreinte le chemin du bonheur est interne c’est une route qui se fait avec d’autres, en compagnie tout le monde a besoin d’amour, de joie, de compassion, et de compréhension il ne faut pas se demander comment on peut en tirer profit mais comment on peut mieux être, comment on choisit notre aujourd`hui qu’est-ce qui va combler tes besoins fondamentaux et ceux des autres qui t’accompagnent sur ton chemin un choix judicieux est difficile à percevoir, on est facilement distrait, mais rappelle-toi quantité n’est pas égale à qualité, en avoir plus n’est pas toujours la solution, parfois moins c’est mieux et ce qu’on regrette peut nous surprendre parfois, rien faire est la meilleure chose à faire – ressens tes sentiments et soit, simplement fais de la place pour ton cheminement interne il faut laisser la contemplation sans contrainte te montrer le chemin vers une expérience réelle de beauté exquise

Life is amazing you are wonderful it is human to feel it is what you do with your feelings that matters you live in a paradox our world and your future offer almost limitless variety but you are limited there is only one of you and you have only one life there is a profound poignancy in limited limitlessness we struggle lifelong to reconcile the paradox trying to satisfy our unending wants will fail but we can fulfil our deepest human needs contentment cannot be found outside the more we take from the world the more we want the cycle of wanting and getting is never-ending dissatisfaction contentment is inside you it comes from giving freely and from what is given freely to you the journey to happiness is inwards it is a journey of sharing with others it needs human company everyone else, like you needs love, joy, compassion and understanding the question is not how to best profit but how to best be, how to choose today what fulfils your genuine needs and the genuine needs of others who journey with you a wise choice is not easy to see there are endless distractions, but remember quality is not quantity - less can be much more and regrets are found in strange places sometimes the best thing to do is nothing - feel the feelings and be make space for the inner journey let unrestrained contemplation reveal the path to a genuine experience of life's exquisite beauty

Right now is not easy

Sometimes I think I am going mad.

If I continue this inward spiral perhaps the concentrated energy of internal inertia will result in implosion?

I farm and I do other things as well.

Right now life is not comfortable.

Farming, the weather, cattle prices, my marriage, my children, my family, my other roles in life (and they consume a considerable proportion of my energy), the world... they are challenging. They are not bad, just not the way I would wish.

Today I learned that my father (he is over 70) has had his first real health scare. This on the back of so much other stuff that has arisen dependently over the last few months.

I am trying to bend...  not to break.

I love my father. Right now I can really feel our "aloneness" - his and mine.

What is this?

Why is it so?

On my most recent retreat, Martine urged me not to construct a buddhist universe that contained my reality, but instead to act in each of my 'roles' in life with buddhist intent - to creatively engage with whatever the moment had to offer.

I have no idea what the next week offers.

Creative engagement.. it beckons.

Interns and Buddhism

We have a regular relationship with a professional institution on the other side of the world. Each year we get an intern. Our current intern has been with us for 2 months and I must admit that it has been an interesting time. Plenty of opportunity for practice.

Today I tried to explain to our current intern: What are the critical elements of Buddhism?

My impression.

We are human.

We feel. That is inevitable... unavoidable...

It is what we choose to do with those feelings that determines the quality of our life.

An understanding of interdependence and impermanence allow us to approach our feelings wisely.

If we embellish our feelings with desire or fear we will fall into suffering.

And on it went.

Sometimes I feel I come from another planet. But the more I practice the more I am convinced that I have found the finger pointing at the moon.

Today the intimate relationship between fear and desire, and the power of mindfulness in dissolving their accretions, was revealed in a way that I have not previously encountered.

One of the hardest thing for me with interns is saying "Goodbye". I know that they will return to their life (on the other side of the world) and it is unreasonable to expect to ever see them again. When someone shares months of their life working and living with me it is hard not do develop feelings - sometimes quite strong feelings.

The sense of grief at the thought and reality of separation is palpable and ever present as the relationship develops. Setting oneself up for suffering! Without a doubt.

Fear and desire. Fear of loss, desire for something that is extremely unlikely to be (an ongoing relationship). Other fears and desires besides.

So I sat and looked around and felt - not what might happen, but what was actually happening. Just what was, not what might be...

Life is beautiful. Any way I look at it. The scenery, the smells, the people, the sounds, the animals, the plants, the sheer proliferation and mind boggling complexity of what goes on to make up this moment. When I sit and try to soak it all up, to experience it - it is too much...

And I share it, most improbably, with this person who I would not have met under any other circumstances. The chances of this happening right now are infinitesimally small.

But it has. Is that enough?

Farming for Other

Recently I had an ecological epiphany. 

There is an endless stream of opinion about what constitutes appropriate and sustainable agricultural practice. There is also a plethora of people providing their own personal examples. Each of these can help to define a framework for farming that is personally satisfying, philosophically and socially cogent, and ecologically sustainable. 

Over the past few years my farming inspiration has increasingly come from Buddhism. 

Stephen Batchelor, in talking of personal interactions, characterises a ‘wise’ relationship as one that is ‘caring and careful’. He writes of authenticity in terms not of what-we-can-get but in terms of what-we-can-give; not of being-with-others but of being-for-others. His approach reflects many of the fundamental tenets of the Buddha’s approach to a fulfilling life. 

In a similar way, we can restore a balance to our interaction with our world by accepting that we are an integral and inseparable part of something much larger. As Thich Nhat Hahn offers - it is a world from which we have emanated, and into which one day we will disseminate. 

When we consider only what we can take from our relationship with the world we practice disservice. Our relationship becomes dysfunctional, as though we exist separate from and uninfluenced by our environment.

We and our environment are interdependent - or, as Thich Nhat Hahn has said, we inter-be. 

Our ecosystem, irrespective of our impact upon it, will persist long after our particular emanation. However, we and our children are unlikely thrive if it does not thrive.

For farming the epiphany was simple. We mine our land for profit at our peril. If we simply look for what-we-can-get we miss the opportunity for enduring and proliferating thriving that is generated when we start to look at what-we-can-give.

This afternoon, I stood at a fence on the top of a rocky ridge. The fence had been destroyed by recent wildfire. I asked why such a hard won fence had been built on such a remote and unpromising piece of land. I suspect it was avarice. Will I restore it? I am not sure. But if I do I will do it as a labour of love. The fence will be-for-another.

Retreat Revisited

Just a few thoughts on my retreat of four months ago.

It is hard to articulate the enduring change.

I am still me - whatever that amalgam of circumstance and potential is.

None of my habits have gone - least of all the pernicious, selfish and ultimately destructive ones.

But the circumstance of retreat and its influence on potential have certainly wrought change.

I am more aware of the ludicrousness of the structure in which western culture frames my life - the terms that define conventional success or failure.

My frailties and hypocrisies stand more starkly against the complex background of familiar relationships.

The optimism for a creative and loving life looms stronger.

The old securities are revealed in their entombing vacuousness.

Sometimes I feel like a ghost, haunting a shell of someone who used to be me - looking for new territory to settle.

I have not found answers - but many dead ends are more starkly revealed.

Farming - Children and Resistance

How to farm with children?

We have made a decision to bring our children up on a farm. Fresh air, healthy life, working together... what could be better? 

Apparently almost anything according to our 16 years old. He has just spontaneously left home for life in town, without chores, with good internet access and close to his friends and social scene. He has no means of providing for himself - but that is another story.

It is certainly a moral dilemma. Everything I value can be realised in a life based on a farm. Not so for everyone. Until now we have been responsible for setting the context for our children. It has not been without resistance. In fact resistance to just about anything that could be construed as work, and resistance to anything that impedes their ability to do as they want.

We have pressed on regardless (effectively resisting their resistance!) Fully aware that our choices are not theirs, we have necessarily made some of the fundamental decisions that affect their lives.

I have agonised over this - unending potential for suffering here. Lead by example? Let them do whatever they want? Require them to participate in what we value? Hope that someday they will come to appreciate the choices we have made - as though somehow those choices are 'right'?

Over time I have retreated, and retreated... and retreated - trying to soften that inevitable desire to exert control and vindicate my historic choices. It has been a process or facing up to my resistance to the clear observation that the children do not value what I value.

If only they could see! But of course, I know they can - just they don't see the way that I see.

These are interests, plans, dreams and aspirations that are clearly not theirs. I feel a responsibility to provide and protect. Does it extend to providing information, or forming that information into guidance. Do our children have an innate nature that will lead them to a healthy relationship with the inevitable joys and suffering of life?

Pressuring them to comply with our desires has certainly not proven to be wise. But what is?

And I struggle - 'mine' 'theirs' - where do 'I' end and 'they' begin?

Alone with Others

I have just finished reading 'Alone with Others' by Stephen Batchelor.

To be honest I was really surprised. I came back from retreat having had what I thought was an insight.

Insights are always accompanied by uncertainty. Are they profound and useful? Will they stick or slip from my grasp?

So I was amazed to read something that Stephen wrote over three decades ago that spoke so clearly, rationally and with such a well developed exploration of exactly the insight that I had reached independently.

There's that word - independent. As if...

Irrespective, it was like a gift from the ether. It appeared with impeccable timing, to save me from slipping wholly back into a fog of general existence.

So what was the insight? It was about relationships. The path to relieving much of the suffering I experience in relationships is to shift from a stance of "What is this doing for me" to "What can I do for this". I understood this intellectually before I went on retreat. I understood it fundamentally when I left.

It is about motivation. David Loy talks about motivation being the primary driver of karma (in his talk 'What about Karma'). He quotes Spinoza that "Happiness isn't the reward for virtue - it is virtue itself" or "We are not punished for our sins, but by them".

The point I understood from David's talk - right motivation is crucial. Stephen talks in the same terms about authentic relationships.

My challenge is to understand and reorient my habitually selfish motivations in relationships. This will have to be done while trying to survive in a world where I am looking to do good things for others while others are looking for what good things can be done by me.

That said; If I, me and other are all empty and really part of the same, then that previous paragraph can be reduced to ... do good things while looking for what good things can be done.

Making Retreat Real

One thing I brought home from retreat was an altered view on making my practice real.

I have struggled with resolving a split identity. There is my conventional self with its varied life roles and pragmatic need to integrate with the world of other people. There is also my secular buddhist self with its clear understanding that much of what happens in the conventional world is contrary to my view of cultivating the path.

Of course the notion of self is empty, as is the notion of others. They are simply useful tags for the purpose of discussion.

The change was one of framework or context. I tend to take a monolithic and ideological approach to implementing my practice. It has to exist in an idealised global framework, into which I try and shove the whole of my perception of reality. It is probably a similar human tendency that led to the construction of religion in the first place.

On reflection, and on receipt of some deft guidance, I realised two things. First, the global framework is not real or even very helpful. All I have is my buddhist foundation. Second, that this is practice. It is not striving for perfection. In fact striving is probably anathema to the perfection to which I aspire.

Suddenly, all I can do is look for opportunities in every day life to act as I believe I should - to cultivate the path, to understand dukkha, to see its arising, to realise its cessation. Everything outside of 'me' does not need to fit this. What a relief!

Instead of worrying about the big picture and where I exist in that context, I can simply look for opportunities to practice my aspiration at every moment in my life. Mindfulness. If I 'succeed' or 'fail', these notions are empty too. I can respond with compassion, loving-kindness and sympathetic joy.

I suspect as I cultivate this path, my secular buddhist foundation will increasingly influence my responses to my perceptions of reality. At some stage, the feeling of a split identity will probably disappear.

Retreat

I have just returned from a week of silent retreat with Stephen and Martine Batchelor. I was not planning on attending, but they were in the country and the week opened up free of significant engagements.

It was my second retreat. The first was seminal, cementing my commitment to Buddhist practice. It set me on the path to farming without suffering. It also provided the first significant breakthrough at a personal level. An insight into my own version of dhukka, and the release of a reservoir of retained 'suffering'.

This time I did not commence retreat with any particular expectations. Instead I was looking for nourishment from practice with a group of similarly motivated people, and further guidance from Stephen and Martine, my Buddhist mentors.

The first two or three days of retreat always seem so... questionable? Why am I here? Is this really going to help? Why am I struggling to concentrate and stay awake? Is this really the path for me?

By day 4 I had found my level, and by the last day I did not want to leave, and I certainly did not want to break silence.

Needless to say the nourishment and guidance were there, albeit in slightly unexpected and occasionally unnerving ways. So was a deepened understanding of my practice.

Interestingly the work of retreat has continued in the week since it finished. Trying to bring the personal shifts and realisations back home has been a challenge. I feared that they were too ill formed and fragile to expose to the reality of day to day family and farm life.

So far my sense of calm and clear purpose has endured. The changes have not been so fragile and ephemeral as I expected.

Gardening as Practice

The garden is my preferred place of work. I think the garden encompasses two key influences.

First, the garden provides for a very basic need, food. We can intellectualise our needs, but they are also self evident. They require no justification. To eat is part of the process of life, to grow the food for eating directly supports the process of life. I never spend any time wondering why I am in the garden.

Second, the garden provides extended intimate interaction with the natural and living world. I have spend the last 25 years of my life training and working as an ecologist. I have directly managed ecosystems from the micro-scale of fungi and bacteria to the macro-scale of forests covering hundreds of thousands of hectares. The more I learned, the more I understood how little I knew. 

In the end I realised that my 'scientific' framework was an inadequate and deadening conceptualisation of the reality of living systems. Anything we do with science, even the most complicated and sophisticated of our models of understanding, is simply a poor facsimile of the reality of the continuous complexity of nature.

My move to farming, a form of applied ecology, was a reaction to this realisation. I wanted to really get to know a place. I wanted this knowledge to be holistic and intuitive rather than reductive and mechanistic. The only way I felt I could achieve this was through extended and direct experience. No amount of reading and extensive but superficial experience, no amount of conceptualisation was going to help me really understand.

My increasing alignment with Buddhism was another response to this realisation. I read a small passage from D T Suzuki once. He compared Zen understanding of a flower to that of an English romantic poet. Zen was holistic. Romantic poetry was, ironically, reductionist - dismembering the flower and reducing it to the sum of its parts. 

It is easier to maintain the focus of my practice when I work on something as basic as providing my family's food. It is easier to understand the emptiness of concepts when I am in an environment that cannot be adequately described by conceptualisation. 

Physical Work as Practice

I like physical work. Perhaps it is the place where I first experienced the tranquility of meditation. Not that I was trying. The rhythm of whatever I was doing took me to a different place.

Work is not really meditation in a strictly buddhist sense.

Access to Insight describes meditation as the process of mental clarification and direct perception. Meditation is aimed at overcoming the condition of suffering. The root-causes of suffering are concepts. Concepts result from ignorance and proliferate desires. In essence, the meaning we give to what we sense is a delusion. In pursuing that meaning we grasp at illusions that we expect to be substantial. We will always be disappointed.

Buddhist mediation is aimed at gaining more than an intellectual understanding of this truth. With this understanding comes liberation from the delusion and freedom from suffering.

Robert Pirsig, in describing romantic quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, refers to the existence of pre-intellectual experience. One that does not pass through the filters and classifications of our mind.  

Almost any type of repetitive physical work that does not involve active thinking can help create a sense of space. There is generally too much of the task in work to allow mental clarification but the space does allow a more direct perception what I am doing.  

Isolated Practice

Our farm is not particularly remote, but it is relatively isolated from a community interested in Buddhism.

It is also a major organisational exercise to get away from the farm for more than a day. Farming is not a regular job. There are no defined weekends or annual holidays. Sometimes it is seven days a week for weeks on end. Even when it is not, animals need to be checked for food and water every day. Unexpected happenings that require attention are the daily rule, not the exception.


To overcome isolation and travel constraints, I have used a number of approaches in my practice.

• Foremost has been my daily meditation, which I sit early every morning. 
• The exception is the one day a week where I try to spend a day concentrating on mindfulness (which, with children and a farm, I find a particular challenge). On that day I will usually  download a dharma talk, listen to the talk and then meditate at some suitable time.
• Reading is also important. At present I am reading the complete teachings of Ajahn Chah and A Path with Heart by Jack Cornfield (a book which up until now I have not been able to digest). Other important books that I have read include Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor. This book finally confirmed the possibility of faith without beliefs. Thich Nhat Hanh's writings formed a major turning point early in my Buddhist journey, They continue to enlighten. Other influential readings have included Walpula Rahula's What the Buddha Taught, Charlotte Joko Beck's Everyday Zen and Christopher Titmus' An Awakened Life. 
• I rely heavily on the internet as a resource, particularly on Dharma Seed for talks,  Access to Insight for a structured approach to practice and Tricycle for general interest.
• For self-reflection I often write - mainly in a diary but more recently in this blog. Writing helps me clarify my thoughts and strengthen my commitment to practice. The blog is an offering to others who find themselves in a similar situation to me.
• A circle of close family and friends also supports my practice in many ways. Some of them practice, some have their own paths. Some live close, but most are distant. Their help ranges from the practical to the esoteric. All of it is useful.
• I make regular dana offerings to those who have made teaching the Dharma their life. I am very thankful that people have made that choice.

At present my practice is concentrating on Generosity, Virtue (as expressed in the precepts of lay life), and coming to terms with the Eightfold Path.  I view The Four Truths as axiomatic. I am also slowly simplifying.

Converting from Conventional to Buddhist

Fifteen years ago we started with a farm that grazed cattle for slaughter.

Thirteen years ago we converted it to a farm that grazed goats to produce milk and stud goats for sale, manufactured cheese and grazed cattle for slaughter.

Five years ago we de-emphaised goats to self sufficiency, raised more cattle for slaughter, and introduced experimental horticulture.

Two years ago I realised that I wanted to make my life my practice. I no longer wanted to raise animals for slaughter. I wanted to that part of the farm as quickly as possible. However, I felt constrained to move at a speed that did not cause suffering for those close to me.

This called for a strategy.

The strategy was simple. (1) Convert the grazing enterprise to an enterprise based on cropping. The type of crops would be selected on suitability for the position in the landscape. (2) Any residual grass would be managed by: (a) fodder production; (b) grazing with a reduced number of animals - a number that is sustainable if they live out their natural life on the farm; and (c) burning where necessary.

The conversion would be a process. The transition out of farming animals for meat would take between 2 and 5 years. The shorter the better. Initially, when we no longer farmed animals for meat, there would be a lot of residual grass. As the area of crops increased over time, the amount of grass would reduce.

In practical terms the plan requires selection of a range of annual and perennial plants. In the more productive and accessible areas of the property the crops will almost certainly be horticultural (vegetables and fruit). Where the use of machinery becomes more problematic (slope and rocks) there will be increasing reliance on trees for food, for wood and for amenity.

To be sustainable the farm will be more than just a collection of crops. The design will aim for integration. I aspire to incorporate a complex range of beneficial interactions between the geophysical landscape, climate, humans and other biological components. The latter includes both plants and animals. It also includes a diverse range of biological components that I do not actively manage.

Aspirations for the farm

One of my most influential readings on farming was Masanobo Fukuoka's 'The Natural Practice of Farming'. Put simply, Fukuoka advocates 'do nothing farming'. Everything is as it should be. The less effort we expend, the greater the relative reward.

Another major farming influence has been permaculture - the idea of creating self-maintaining agricultural systems - highly designed systems where most of the work is done by the system itself.

They may seem some distance apart, one laissez faire, the other interventionist. However, they do share one key feature - the creation and/or maintenance of self-sustaining ecological systems that provide for human needs.

So, with these (and a lot of other things) in mind, here is an aspiration I have been kicking around for a few years (slightly reworded):

My aspiration is a large-scale garden, where nature dominates– a garden that nourishes the bodies, intellects and souls of my family and my community – a garden where we live healthy lives among the healthy plants and animals that we tend.

In more scientific terms - I aspire to create and maintain efficient, sustainable and stable ecological systems that support our family and community and provide for our fundamental human needs.

By stable I mean resistant and resilient to perturbation and capable of self generated adaption to changes in environment. By efficient I mean a high energy&materials output:input ratio. By fundamental human needs I mean my desire for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom (or any subset of those). 

Our community includes our immediate community but also the community of people who are concerned about or interested in the things that we aspire to.

My aspiration includes a permaculture landscape, the capacity to harvest and conserve, a practical design studio and workshop that supports our activities, an open and meaningful interaction with our community and all of this informed by a living philosophical and spiritual discussion.

This is not an outcome-oriented goal. I have no timeframe, and recognize the scope of the aspiration. I see this as the work of lifetimes, but no less worthwhile for all that.

And now, because of my new faith, it is to be a farm where I do not farm animals for slaughter, indeed do not treat animals in a way that causes suffering.

The question is not only how to act now to realise this aspiration - but how to do it without attachment.

Interlude on emptiness, emotion and annihilation

Tonight I am sitting up late. It has been a very busy week and it is over. I feel too tired to go to bed.

I don't have a normal weekly routine. No Monday to Friday - so my 'week' ends when I can and need to stop and recharge. This week end falls on Thursday.

In this tempest of life I have often tried to find a place where I can be peaceful. Obliteration has been one refuge, as has emotional escape. Habits, deeply ingrained. Habits that I have not completely left behind.

They are easy.

Now, as I stare at this screen and type, I contemplate emptiness. Not meaningless. Simply that all the meaning I interpret and attribute is empty of meaning.

I am still not sure that I completely understand it, but the possibility that all of my reality is constructed offers a profound freedom.

When I last went on retreat I found myself in uncontrollable tears, for hours, and then on and off for days. It was the draining of a reservoir of residual contained emotion accumulated over a lifetime of confusion, repression and misdirection. This reservoir was the product of the way I have constructed my own version of reality.

The retreat took me away from my habitual obliterations and emotional escapes. It created a crack in my emotional reservoir. The reservoir drained. It left a perspective on emptiness.

More recently I came to another understanding of emptiness. I have always dreaded death - viewed it as ultimate annihilation. The unanswerable end. My fear of annihilation drove my spiritual journey.

One morning, as I meditated, death presented as an empty 'fact'. I am no more here or not than I ever was. The problem is in the 'I', this temporary assemblage of matter and energy to which the 'I' is attached. My construction of death and my attachment to its opposite (life) are the necessary progenitors for the idea of annihilation.

'I' have never really existed. There is no dread or consolation in this. It is simply an acknowledgement that any view 'I' have of 'me' is not real. It is just shorthand that is sometimes useful for labelling a temporary and constantly changing phenomenon. Again, something different opened up for me.

So as 'I' sit here and type, it is a very different 'I' to the one who went on retreat and the one who sat a few months ago and had an inspiration about annihilation. The draining of emotion tied up in a constructed 'reality' and the pre-death annihilation of 'I' should leave me feeling less substantial. Instead I feel more real.

Aspirations or aversions?

It has taken some time to come to this - the reason for the blog in the first place.

Let's assume that I can decouple wanting from attachment.

The way I farm is not as I would like - it promotes suffering. Our practices are a pragmatic compromise, where pragmatism bows to industrial agriculture and local agricultural tradition - where compromise sickens the soul.

I am committed to so many things. There seems to be no time to be fully present or to practice. My desires drive me. They lead me to treat others (both human and other animal) without generosity, compassion, loving-kindness and sympathetic joy. I am driven by sensory desire and display ill will, sloth, worry and doubt.

So much that I would like to set aside! How to cultivate the path?

Do I set a positive vision of life in relationship to land to which I aspire? Then I can drive towards that vision purposefully, with each action contributing to my positive goal. As long as it is an aspiration (wanting without attachment), then the outcome can be viewed with equanimity.

Do I simply outline the things that I want to avoid? Then I can accept wherever the farm leads me with my energy focussed on cultivating the eightfold path.

Or do I do both? Maintain a aspirational farm and a firm focus on my cultivating the path - both serving to guide my actions now.

More pertinent to my immediate practice - how do I make a transition from farm practices that are traditional but unwise, to ones that conform with my aspirations?

Aspiration - Wanting without Suffering?

One focus for my practice is accepting life as it is - equanimity.

So whether my dog that is doing other than I would desire, or rabbits have just severely damaged half  the trees in my young orange orchard, or drought is tightening its grip on the land... or any aspect of the farm is other than I would wish, I am practicing viewing it all with equanimity.

This presents some major practical challenges for me. It also presents a major philosophical challenge - how to make things different in future without wanting for things to be other than they are right now. I both want to be here, but also want the future to be different from now in particular ways. 

I want... and in that wanting there is attachment, and in that attachment there is investment, and in that investment there develops the preconditions for loss, anger, frustration and depression - preconditions for suffering.

How can wanting and attachment be decoupled?

Aspiration is the term I use to express the possibility of 'wanting without attachment'. I aspire to changing the way I farm. That aspiration guides my behaviour now. I aspire to awakening. That aspiration guides my behaviour now. So there is a guide - expressed as an aspiration.

I accept what I am now, what the farm now is. I accept tomorrow's conditions are partly the result of today's behaviour - but not wholly. My aspiration may be realised tomorrow. It may not. Something completely unexpected may happen. This is not under my control. The result is empty, whatever it may be.

Aspiration can inform my actions now. but if it creates expectations that provide a yard-stick against which I measure myself tomorrow, then it will perpetuate suffering.

My current practice is to meditate on dissolving the expectations that build around any actions undertaken in pursuit of aspiration. If  aspiration can be decoupled from such expectations, I suspect there is an opportunity for equanimity.

Angry Farmer

This is a difficult one.

I don't think I am an angry person - anger is not my pre-disposition. However there are periods of anger, frustration and depression with life on the farm.

Most of them can be represented by questions.

Why won't it rain? Why didn't this person do that thing? Why doesn't that goat stand still? Why is my dog not listening to me? Why don't the children want to weed the vegetable garden? Why isn't the market paying fair value for my produce? Why can't my neighbour be more considerate? Why did the cattle walk through that fence? Why are calves so stupid?

I could write pages of  'Why?'s relating to the farm or, for that matter, family life or life in a community.

Most of them relate to that foundation of suffering - wanting the world to be other than it is.

This is what generates the angry response and the urge to lash out, to control or to abandon.

Nowhere are those urges more clearly on display than when working with animals. I have trained and worked with a number of dogs since I became a farmer. The dog I currently work with is Tambo. Tambo and I have based our relationship on buddhist principles. Tambo loves to work, he loves to do what I want him to do, he loves being around me. That is his nature. I love Tambo too - he is simply a gorgeous dog.

Despite all that love and goodwill, the world of working with animals if often at odds with my desires. Tambo does not always do what I want - he finds something interesting to investigate, he doesn't understand, he is too hot or tired,  he is scared, his genetic makeup runs contrary to my desires. I am left wanting the world to be other than it is - 'my' dog to do something other than he is doing.

All the while, the animals we are working are also making merry with my desires. They are somewhere other than I want them. They will not fulfil my desire as long as my dog is doing something other than I would like. Surrounding this are the inevitable sub-desires - deadlines, management 'constraints', ego, economic concerns, physical sensations, emotional pulls - its all about 'me'. Its hard not to take it all personally.

With Tambo I try to be positive. So why am I yelling so loudly? Why am I chasing Tambo across the field? Isn't he supposed to be doing the work? If only I could get my hands on him... But Tambo is too quick, too sensitive to my rising frustration and way too intelligent to come close to that black cloud of profanity for the time being.

Or maybe I laugh, give Tambo a pat and try again; wait for another time; use another method; give up on my desire.

In the end it makes no difference. This situation that seems so pressing and crucial just dissipates. The outcome will be whatever it is. If my cows are here or there it will make no difference to anyone for very long.

How much suffering will I generate for myself before I remember that?

Tomorrow Tambo will still love to work, he will still want to to what I want to do, he will still love being around me. Tambo is a wonderful teacher. I suspect all my other dogs were too, only I was not listening.

Farming Animals without Suffering

Now to questions that are exercising my mind at present.

If animals and ecosystems go hand in hand, if animals can help us grow crops and manage the land, then how do we keep animals without causing suffering? If we can keep them, then is it also possible to keep animals for food such as milk and eggs without suffering?

I must profess to have no answers.

These questions just prompt further questions.

Is domestication itself a form of suffering?

What about sex? Animals have a drive to reproduce. It is that drive that both provides the production opportunity and often begs the management action.

Is it realistic to expect to eat anything without causing suffering? Cropping is well know to involve serious collateral animal suffering.

What about those uninvited animals - the scourge of any crop farmer?

What about those uninvited animals - the joy of any nature lover?

When does an animal cease to be an animal? When it is a mollusc, or an insect? Or is it all those things that science classifies Animalia? Where is the sentient line?

Don't plants have feelings too? And bacteria and fungi?

Perhaps I should be a Jain?

Where does the 'middle way' sit in all of this?

Too much to tackle in one go. Perhaps I will try dealing with them one at a time.

Animal or Vegetable

So why animals at all?

I have often read that we should all switch to farming plant crops for direct human consumption. We could feed many more people with a lower environmental cost.

That statement does not consider some relationships that are demonstrated on our farm.

The first is that all land is not the same. The land I work with runs from a small river to a ridge of substantial hills. Near the river the soil and moisture are such that I can reliably grow many types of crops. I don't have to travel far uphill before the soil is not suitable for cultivation or cropping. However, these areas are suited to perennial pastures or trees. By the time I am half way to the top of the hills the slope and soils restrict sustainable land use to trees and seasonal grazing. In fact the majority of the land I work with is only suitable for animals and trees (and generally not crop bearing trees).

The second is that plants and animals go together. As a trained ecologist I tend to see ecosystems not agricultural production systems. Herbivores and herbs are synergistic, as are fruit and fruigivores,  detritus and detritivores, meat and carnivores. That does not presuppose that humans need to eat animals, simply that trying to remove animals from ecosystems is likely to have a range of unwelcome and perhaps unanticipated ramifications.

The third is that animals play a management role. The land we farm is in transition (more of that in a later post). In the meantime, we have a large amount of grass that, left unchecked, would constitute a serious fire hazard. This is something that is dangerous and against the law. Some of the grass may be dealt with by controlled burning or mowing. Both these strategies have their limits. Another management function of animals is biomass and nutrient cycling. Our organic permaculture farming strategy is dependent on recycled plants (cattle, goat and poultry manure) for fertility and soil carbon.

The final relationship is that the land we farm exists in a social fabric - of markets, technologies, industries and cultural proclivities. We live in an area where everyone farms cattle and no-one farms much else. There is a cattle market, saleyards, abattoir, transport providers, farm work contractors, product distributors and suppliers, even a yearly calendar of cattle related events. By contrast we grow a small garlic crop every year. There is no local established marketing, sales or distribution systems for garlic. We have to be grower, processor, marketer, sales and delivery. We faced the same challenge with our goat dairy. There are significant inefficiencies (cost/unit production) in swimming against the tide.

I will not use any of these relationships as a justification for continuing to farm animals for slaughter. However, each does present a very real challenge.

The question is not - 'Should we farm animals or plants?' I suspect I cannot do one sustainably without the other. The question is - 'How do we influence the ecosystems we manage without precipitating suffering?'

Farming Animals for Slaughter

Today we are tagging and emasculating calves.

Strange for a buddhist farmer. A pragmatic decision.

The moment when I realised that I wanted to stop farming animals commercially is still very clear in my memory.

We farm. Part of our farm is raising cattle for slaughter. Even when we ran the dairy the ultimate fate of our goats was slaughter. The ultimate fate of almost any animal in a production setting (meat, milk, eggs, wool) is slaughter. It is simple accounting. Farm animals are only productive during the prime of their life - when they are growing and reproducing. After that they become a cost with no income. They are either sold to slaughter, or they are simply killed. They do not retire to live out their days.

In some circumstances they do not even get a short life. Our dairy operation systematically killed almost all of our male kids at birth. We did raise the males for meat for a couple of years but there was no real commercial market. At sale we earned less than 20% of what it cost us to raise them.

So why did I want to stop? One of the key aspects of 'appropriate livelihood', which is one of the key steps in the Eightfold Path, is to refrain from raising animals for slaughter. 'Appropriate livelihood' was certainly an important consideration.

However, it was much more than that. I came to farming partly to address my disquiet with the way western agriculture was separating people from their food. As a result people are increasingly isolated from the inevitable ethical decisions that are made in the food production process. I did not like a lot of the decisions that were being made on my behalf.

Farming was a way of facing those decisions head on. If I was going to eat meat (and even then I was largely vegetarian) then I was going to take responsibility for raising, killing and butchering that meat. It would be done in a way that I thought appropriate. That connection could be shared with everyone who ate our meat.

I spent 12 years confronting my philosophy of ethical meat production with the reality of breeding, raising, killing and butchering animals. In the end I knew that the animals had no desire to be killed, and that the killing was causing a deep undercurrent of suffering in me.

Buddhist philosophy met lived experience. It was really a non-decision.

I wanted to stop, but how to extricate myself from this dilemma - a farm predicated on raising meat; a farmer no longer interested in perpetuating the personal suffering caused by doing so; a family with a heavy investment of time, effort, money and emotion in that farm.

The farm is in transition - more of that some other day. That is the pragmatic part. That is why I am still emasculating and tagging. But I will not kill another animal so that I can eat meat. Soon no animal on our farm will face that fate. No person will be asked to take on that suffering on my behalf.

What's this all about

This is about trying to make sense of an anxiety.

As Stephen Batchelor (www.stephenbatchelor.org) observes (to paraphrase): Death is a certainty, its timing is unknown, the afterlife a hypothesis - so what should I do now?

For now I manage a farm - I even have the privilege to 'own' a good proportion of what I am trying to manage.

When I came to the farm I had goals. About sustainability, about reconnecting people with where their food came from, about being innovative, progressive and influential. They were goals aimed at making this world a better place, my community a better community, and my family a better family. They were also goals that played to my ego.

When I came to the farm I also had questions. About what it was to lead a fulfilled life, a right life. About how I should conduct my relationship with the world.

Obviously these goals and questions were interconnected. Obviously I had to find some reference point for what was 'better' and what was 'right'.

Between 2001 and 2009 we ran a family dairy and cheese business. My parents, my wife and our children. We succeeded in so many ways (achieved the goals we had set ourselves). But I failed in one, the critical one. I was so busy working on and in the business that my relationships with the world, my community and my family had become distorted. The energy derived from my desire to be successful, and my fears of failing was causing all sorts of suffering. My ego had not taken over, but it had become an anchor.

Then we had another baby - and he helped us to make a change.

I had already read stoic philosophy and a number of westernised treatments of Buddhism. They had become my standards for 'better' and 'right'. They were also the seeds for change - the baby was the precipitating factor.

Since then I have been asking the question - what should I do now? My anxiety is driven by my inability to adequately answer that question.

For four years the farm has been in transition - with no definite goals, only insubstantial aspirations based on a slowly shifting philosophical foundation.

This blog will be an ongoing attempt to answer the question - what should I do now? How should I live in a world where I am not in control - a world of impermanence and interdependence. A world where I have responsibilities that I will not abandon. A world where our existential suffering can be transcended, but where so much of what I am inclined to do, what I have been taught to do and what I am encouraged to do, seems only to add to suffering.

It will focus on farming because that is my primary interaction with the wider world.