Monsanto, Monarchs, and the Meditation of Weeds

On the whole people might be better off if they threw away the crops they so tenderly raise and ate the weeds they spend so much time exterminating. Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus

Photo credit: katmystiry from morguefile.com

I have a fondness for weeds. For the forgotten, dismissed, and marginalized. Anyone who visits my garden in mid-summer probably wonders if I’ve let it go. And it’s true. I don’t tend to it very much. The wild nettle patch is left to grow right next to the somewhat cultivated beans. Purslane wiggles its way between stalks of wavy squash. Lambs quarters lap up the sun that break through the canvas of tomatoes. During the early months, I do my best to give everything enough space. But once July rolls around, I mostly stay out of the way.

Last July, I saw a pair of monarchs in a field. The first I had seen all season. Summer nearly halfway over and not a single monarch! This is one of the consequences of colonialism and economies built on profit and endless growth. The loss of biodiversity. The erasure of the small, vulnerable, and unprofitable. I hope they make it, but we might be facing a near future with no monarchs at all.

When I saw the Gibbons quote above, I immediately thought of Monsanto and monarchs. How our own government quietly legislates the means for planetary demise. All the while telling us that this about food production and feeding the hungry.

The hungry. Yes, we are hungry. But most of us don’t even know why. The loss of connection to the very land we live on. The failure to recognize that many of the plants we call “weeds” have been used for centuries as food, medicine, and so much more. Perhaps the nettle tea I drank last night is prompting this post. Or maybe it’s the fresh dandelion greens I snack on regularly while I “tend” to the garden.

In my view, we cannot speak of things such as “decolonization” without remembering the weeds, and all the ways in which our lives have been tied together throughout history. My love of dandelions, for example, is also linked to the knowledge that they were one of the plants brought by my settler ancestors. My love of all things herbal medicine is tempered by the fact that white folks and privileged others continue to colonize and denature indigenous plant wisdom and healing practices. And my love of milkweed is propelled by a desire to keep the monarchs alive.

Truly loving weeds is a practice in discomfort. Not unlike spending time in meditation, or other spiritual practices. Self and other rub together again and again. For every joyful story that arises, there’s also the sting of other stories, historical and present day, that remind us our our disconnections. Lost selves. Failures to see into the true nature of things, and act accordingly.

The Ghosts of Empire

Out walking this morning, I noticed the effort people put forth in cities to contain the growing environment. The streets that slice across and cover large swaths of the land. The sidewalks that mirror the roads. The alleyways that linger behind our homes and businesses, attempting to hold creeping weeds at bay. Trees circled by grates and other holding devices. Lawns of imported, uniform grass mowed flat and inconspicuous. And for whatever breaks through all of that - weed wackers, poisons, more asphalt, the occasional hands of mostly elderly folks living alone, perhaps forgotten, with too much time on their hands.

I think of lines from Shitou's Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage: "When it was completed, fresh weeds appear. Now it's been lived in covered by weeds."

Somehow, most of us have forgotten this. Maybe never knew it all at - consciously at least.

Over a hundred and fifty years ago, American artist Thomas Cole painted a series of paintings charting the rise and fall of Empire. I remember first discovering them during a traveling show of 19th century American landscapes several years ago, and being in awe of the grandness of the images.

Now, though, they feel like ghosts taunting us "modern Americans," living as we do in a crumbling empire.

Elementary school comes to mind. Discussions of what the world might look like after nuclear war. The horror that multiple generations of children have had to think about such things happening.

What would last? Rats. Cockroaches. Twisted up trees perhaps. It's hard to have a real sense of what nuclear bombs can do when you are nine years old, but you're mind is open to possibilities in a way adult minds' rarely are. So, things get strange, very strange. Like elephants with rat heads flying through fields of black smoke.

Perhaps today's children are more worried about terrorists destroying their homes, or some generalized form of environmental collapse. Nuclear war still lingers, but isn't the only major specter haunting us. I've heard people use various Buddhist terms to describe this day and age, but more and more, the Hungry Ghost Realm seems most appropriate.

More lines from Shitou spring forth: "Who would proudly arrange seats, trying to entice guests?" Isn't this the whole basis of the modern, settler colonialist world so many of us live in today? Aren't we all called upon to be proud arrangers and enticers, regardless of the consequences?

The pockmarked, synthetic, damaged, and obliterated landscapes we live in reflect exactly this. What it comes down to is that most of us really can't handle the weeds that always appear, no matter what we do to keep them away. I used to obsess about clarity. Wanting a mind that could basically see the future, including where those weeds might appear, how I should deal with them.

Just another form of intolerance and resistance to the wildness that is our true nature. When the empire was completed, fresh weeds appeared. Now it's been lived in, covered by weeds.

Let it go. Let it go.

The Zen of Monsanto and Weeds

On the whole people might be better off if they threw away the crops they so tenderly raise and ate the weeds they spend so much time exterminating. Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus

I have a fondness for weeds. For the forgotten, dismissed, and marginalized. Anyone who visits my garden in mid-summer probably wonders if I'm just not tending to it. Which is true. I'm not. Partly out of neglect, and partly out of a love of the wild.

When I saw this quote today, the first thing I thought of was Monsanto and the GMO revolution. A revolution not being televised, and one I have zero interest in supporting. Never mind the human dietary consequences, the push by Monsanto and other giant companies to control and manipulate plant life is about murder. About death to the wild diversity that brings our planet alive and makes it what it is.

Murder to the point of extinction for short term profit. It has to be one of the stupidest moves humanity's elite has made throughout it's history.

I had a poem about Monsanto published recently at Turning Wheel Media. One of the things it speaks to is our human desire for comfort and ease, and how giant corporations like Monsanto thrive on that. In fact, some of us become to attached to their products that it's akin to having another lover in your life. I recall the mother of my sister's childhood friend who drank a case of Diet Coke daily. You read that right. A case. Maybe not a full a case everyday, but she probably averaged that over the long run. She didn't live to 50. And I'm guessing that even after she found out about the negative health impacts of soda pop, she kept on drinking it. Wedded to it, and the company that makes it.

Weeds are the antithesis of ease and comfort. In the practical sense, their appearance mucks up uniform lawns and tenderly raised garden beds. Psychologically, weedy thoughts can stir up all sorts of emotions, from confusion to perverse desire. Spiritually, it is the lowly weed that frequently blows through the seemingly perfect answer we offer to life's deepest questions. How often have you thought "I've finally got it," only to have some simple and forgotten thing appear right along side the answer, almost as if in mocking.

The lowly dandelion, with it's bright yellow head, can grow in almost any soil, thriving in some of lousiest conditions imaginable. Every spring, I'm amazed at it's early appearance here in Minnesota, when the weather is still up and down, sometimes even poking through fallen snow from the tiniest cracks in sidewalks.

Eliminating weeds means destroying our toughness, tenacity, and flexibility. Whether we do it for profit or out of a mistaken sense that the best food comes from weed free conditions, the results are the same.

When I look back at the history of Buddhism, its best teachers might be considered weeds. Wild and unruly. Their ideas spreading in all directions.

Who the hell could tame someone like Ikkyu or Milarepa? You might, like the best of gardeners, manage some of the mad growth of their life stories, but that's about all.

Apparently Milarepa was fond of drinking nettle tea. So much so that his skin turned green in some accounts. You might wish to prune that detail away. Seems like anything bordering on supernatural or unexplainable is being pruned away by a lot folks these days. But there's no doubt in my mind that regular consumption of weedy teas changes you. Just as drinking diet Coke changes you.

Weeds remind us of this. They get in the way of our notions that we're separate. That we can keep out anything we don't want to deal with. If Monsanto or some giant oil company poisons the soil 1000 miles away, it impacts all of us. There's no escape.

I've tried cultivating weeds in my garden. Deliberately up-earthing them and giving them a specific home. The only ones that ever survive are the ones replanted in a mess. They respond to uniformity by shriveling up and dying.

If we keep giving in to the push for uniformity, comfort, and ease, we'll go the way of the House of the Hapsburgs. Liberation is a dandelion splitting though the spring soil. Bend down and touch it, breath in the bitter sweet fragrance. This is what you are truly longing for.

Zen Weeds

As a gardener, I was intrigued by this post, especially the first section:

A few months ago I saw a notice of Zen center calling for volunteers to come in on Saturday to remove weeds from the lawn. I had trouble with the apparent picking and choosing in that, and asked the author if he also saw trouble in his invitation.

I received the response that he was celebrating the life that the weather has brought us, and he was looking for help to extinguish some forms of the life he was celebrating. He explained he was holding two opposing views at the same time, and that's OK. Also, he did not consider the plants that are in certain places to be "bad" plants, nor did he consider certain types of plants "bad" plants. He just had a preference for both the location and types of plants in the landscape, and so he was planning to take out some plants to enjoy others. He felt preferences are not bad per se. It's his relationship to his preferences that can cause suffering, not the preferences themselves.

I felt a bit like he was not seriously addressing the question of whether this weeding was really right action. But I also thought I was possibly being a bit immature in my concepts of picking and choosing and the related Buddhist sin.

About the time I started regularly gardening, towards the end of my undergrad days, I become interested in herbal medicine. And quickly learned that many of the common weeds gardeners, farmers, and lawn enthusiasts tends to despise are, in fact, medicines. Dandelion, plantain, goldenrod, milk thistle, nettle. All of these have excellent health benefits and - their tenaciousness usually translates into invasiveness if left unchecked.

Probably reminds some of you of certain habit patterns you have. The critical thinking that turns into heavy negativity and pessimism. The awareness of potential dangers that turns into chronic worry. The desire to satisfy your sweet tooth that turns into overeating.

Like with "weeds," I've noticed a lot of all or nothing thinking surrounding these things. Note the presence of anti-intellectualism in some spiritual circles, thinking that thinking itself must be eradicated or else it destroy our chance at liberation. Or how people decide to become vegans and remove all possible "toxins" from their diet, not because of it being an appropriate response to their conditions, but because they believe this is the "only way" to be in accord with the precepts.

There's a lot of ignorance when it comes to the nature of ecosystems. Conventional gardeners and farmers think nothing of removing - often eradicating - every last plant they deem "unnecessary." Never mind the medicinal qualities of a given weed, how many folks are simply clueless as to how these plants are supporting other species and the soil, which benefits the plants they want to grow?

The author of the post above seems, in the end, to fall on the opposite side. He tries to sound open to the possibility that removing some "weeds" could be right action, but his words in total point towards not intervening.

Which brings us back to the first precept. The precept of not killing. A lifelong koan because it's impossible on a relative level to not kill anything. Our lives depend upon killing something in order to feed ourselves. That's the bare minimum.

In my own garden, plenty of "weeds" flourish. I leave wild patches grow, which brings in more bees and butterflies. I have a patch of nettles that I trim throughout the summer, both for teas and greens, and also for growth control. I also regularly remove those plants that attempt to take over the plants I'm intending to grow, and use their decayed bodies to enrich the soil.

I'll readily admit struggling with hatred towards the grapevines that spread like mad every year, despite the annual attempts to remove them completely. Perhaps they are my ecosystem teacher, and I probably would do well to accept that I'll never rid that yard of them completely anyway.

Your thoughts?