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.