The Value of Weeds

Zen Master Dogen, who lived in 13th century Japan, encapsulated his entire teachings of Zen in a single written work entitled the Genjo koan.

It is said that the whole of his teaching is actually contained within the opening four stanzas of this work. They are as follows:

"When all dharmas are the Buddha-dharma, there are enlightenment & delusion, practice, life & death, buddhas & creatures. When the ten thousand dharmas are without self, there is no delusion, no enlightenment, no buddhas, no creatures, no life & no death. The Buddha way transcends being & non-being; therefore there are life & death, there are birth & death, delusion & enligtenment, creatures & buddhas."

Dogen concluded this passage of the Genjo koan with the following metaphor:

"Nevertheless, flowers fall with our attachment, & weeds spring up with our aversion."

Spring in New England has been uncommonly wet this year. At a time when many families are trying to minimize expenses due to the worst economy in decades, private vegetable gardens populate the landscape. And with all the rain thus far, the grass & fields are resplendent with the vernal glow of spring.

I have planted a vegetable garden in my back yard now for the last five years. It all started when I was recovering from surgery to eliminate a malignant tumor that would have ended my life. There was a three month period after the surgery during which time I was waiting to be tested to determine if all of the cancer had in fact been surgically removed from my body. It was during that recovery period, five springs ago, that I planted my first vegetable garden.

The practice of gardening yields many unexpected lessons. For example, while anxiously waiting to see if the plants I had put into the ground would take and bear fruit, weeds sprang up everywhere with no encouragement whatsoever. In fact, once planted, much of the ongoing process of tending a garden involves hours and hours of weeding.

For a long time my relationship to weeds could only be characterized as one of sheer hostility. Why, for heavens sake, do these weeds flourish so well in spite of my enmity and repeated efforts to control them?

At some point, I don't remember when, it dawned on me that the weeds in my garden share an affinity with the troubling thoughts & emotions I carry around in my head day to day. It was then that I first got a glimpse of what Dogen might have been pointing to when he wrote, "... and weeds spring up with our aversion."

The more unwilling I am to have weeds in my garden, the more troubling they are to me. By the same token, the more I try to control and push away difficult thoughts and emotions that surface in my mind, the more prevalent they seem to become ... the more they "spring up with ... [my] aversion."

Parenthetically, cursing & detesting the weeds in my garden does nothing at all to forestall their appearance or slow their growth. Nature doesn't care how I feel about her weeds ... she makes room for them even if I won't.

Incidentally, my mind functions in much the same way. Despite attempts to control and/or avoid aspects of my experience that reverberate as unwanted thoughts, images & emotions, they just spring up of themselves. It is just the nature of our minds. The appearance of these unwanted thoughts is not affected by our aversion to them. In fact, our aversion will only strengthen the likelihood that they will appear. If you don't think that is true, try to push an unwanted thought out of your mind and watch what happens. Funny, if you don't want it you've got it!?

When we find ourselves at this juncture, it is easy to get stuck, feel hopeless, become angry, etc., etc. Although it is at these times that a vegetable garden becomes a teacher.

Mother nature loves all of her creations equally well, without judgment. She is totally accepting of her infinite brood. Everyone and all things are welcome at her table. Within the unfathomable matrix of life, all things have their unique form, function & value. Everything is perfect & complete just as it is ... even those pesky weeds ... even those pesky thoughts ... even those difficult emotions.

So from this perspective a weed is no more or less valuable than a tomato plant. And in my garden I choose to have tomatoes. That means that there can not be a weed where a tomato is growing. So I remove the weed knowing that another one will grow in its place. The weed provides me with an opportunity to be in service to the other plants in the garden that I value. But I do not value them over the weed.

I also value the weed for the sacrifice of its life so the tomatoes can grow. I value the weed for its great bodhisattva action.

And what about those pesky mind weeds? I need them in my life as well. They present themselves to remind me of what I need to attend to in order to grow in the life directions that have deep importance for me.

You sure can learn a lot in a garden. It's all there. Life and death, decisions about important life choices, service to others and the value of weeds.

REGARD ALL DHARMAS AS DREAMS

Deeply seeing into and experiencing the interconnectedness of all of existence is a precondition for genuine compassion. Even if one has a philosophical or conceptual understanding of the interconnectedness of life, it is not enough to generate true compassion. Why is this?

Without the direct and deeply profound experience of oneness, we can never actually feel for others. It is the actual feeling of oneness that is the basis of feelings for others. It is a felt experience, not an idea, image, or concept.

Ordinarily, deep seated awareness and natural feeling for others is obfuscated; i.e, clouded over, by our entanglement with fixed notions of "how the world functions." Part of the problem is due to our use of language; the medium of intellect and communication which is structured by the core assumption of separateness and the existence of fixed entities. The Dalai Lama described this rather succinctly when he said:

"The view of the world as made up of solid objects with inherent properties is reinforced further by our language of subjects and predicates which is structured with substantive nouns and adjectives on the one hand and active verbs on the other."

Without ongoing meditative practice (zazen) it is difficult, if not impossible, to defuse the effects of language and its power to continuously reinforce the notion of fixed entities, events, structures, etc.

It is only when all our fixed ideas and concepts about the "nature of reality" are completely let go of that the experience of the interconnectedness of all of life can be directly realized along with the emergence of true love and compassion for all beings, including ourselves.

Zazen is a razor sharp sword for cutting away the stranglehold that language has on our ability to let go of fixed ideas. The more that we practice zazen, the easier it becomes to see the provisional "reality" that is built into the very structure of language itself. The reality that we "think of" and in turn, construct, becomes less important than the direct experience of reality that is beyond the ability of language to describe.

"Regard all dharmas as dreams," is a gentle reminder for us to not get caught up or hung up by verbal descriptions of reality. They are by their very nature limited and incomplete so it's OK for us to let go of them, over and over and over again. Just hold them lightly and then release them, like a freshly caught trout, and keep to "not knowing" as often as possible. Our very own inherent love and compassion, which is none other than the basis of the interconnectedness of all of creation, will manifest.

It is then that we can truly be of service to others empowered by the love we feel for ourselves. To the degree that we clearly see that "self love" equals "universal love" are we able to be of service to others.