Pulling Weeds, or Mental Training in Action

Only a week ago the spring retreat of samatha and teachings on upaya came to an end, the intensive of practice and study that we hold every year during the Easter holidays. Once again, Casa Virupa has proved to be an excellent space in the service of our small experiences of a little more space, a little more clarity and a little more kindness. In any case, little can be shared about a retreat. And, besides, this is not our aim either. Instead, we would like to do something less ambitious: to talk to you about the plants in the vegetable garden and what they teach us about practice.

Using the metaphor of working the land to speak about mental cultivation is by no means original. We would even venture to say that it is one of the most common images our tradition offers us, with all its teaching resources. This is hardly surprising given its context of origin: a fundamentally rural society whose Pali canon is full of references to farmers, buffalo herders and craftsmen, apart from the more expected mentions of renunciants and ascetics. So much so that explaining one of the central teachings of Buddhism, karma, through the simile of sowing and harvest surprises no one. We do not even notice that a metaphor is being used; it simply seems to us that karma is explained this way: we reap what we sow, and suffering or liberation are the fruit of our actions. We read in the Dhammapada:

You can know that an action you have performed
is not good when it is a cause of remorse
and whose fruit produces tears
of pain.
In turn, it is known that an action performed
is good when one does not regret
having done it and whose fruit is
happiness and peace of mind.
A bad action appears to be pure
honey while the evil that dwells within it has
not yet ripened; but, as soon as it produces its
bitter fruits, the suffering begins.

Without any pretension of being original, we take up this simile once more. On this occasion, to consider the two movements that, often, explain what a practitioner must apply in order to mature: view and method.

When we arrived at the vegetable garden in silence, Eli told us, with unshakeable serenity: “These plants here are broad beans. Anything that is not this, pull it up and leave it in the same place where you found it.” And here the karmayoga begins, with a very rich symbolic meaning. This simple instruction consisted in distinguishing between good weeds and bad weeds. Applied to mental training, the same gesture defines the capacity for discernment, which knows how to tell apart what we should nurture and what, because it causes more suffering and confusion in oneself and in others, we want to diminish. For this very reason, we read the Buddha:

Weeds are a plague for the
fields, just as hatred is a
plague for human beings. Therefore, the offering
made to those who have freed themselves from
hatred yields abundant and beneficial fruits.

In the typical repetitive formulas that make up all the sutras, a device so characteristic of oral traditions, the Buddha applies the same comparison of weeds to other afflictions besides aversion, such as desire or delusion. Beyond this quotation, we are interested in observing the capacity for discernment from an experience as basic as distinguishing the sown plant from a weed, in order to tell what suits us from what does not; what Buddhism also calls “relative wisdom” (sherab in Tibetan). In our Western tradition, this ability has received other names, such as “criterion” (in the philosopher Jaume Balmes) or “judgement” (in Immanuel Kant's third Critique). Although the thoughts to which we refer diverge from the Dharma in many respects, they share a special appreciation of such a rare ability, far more valuable than the mathematical application of an ideal model to reality. Criterion, judgement or relative wisdom are, by contrast, highly sensitive to circumstances; they are what truly guides us in our lives, because what suits us now may not suit us in a while; just as nettles are usually weeds, yet I will gladly harvest them if I want to make a delicious soup in homage to Milarepa.

As this wisdom matures, it will not be limited to dismissing some plants and tending others. It will be able to recognise the potential in every weed. But not in order to eat them all: the ones we pulled up and left lying there would also serve a beneficial function for those that would grow more strongly. In the same way, working with our most deeply rooted tendencies means learning to handle them, learning to recognise them, not abandoning the field when they appear, becoming more humble about what we are, and valuing virtuous fruits by contrast with less desirable ones… So much so that, as our practitioner's palate improves, when we see a weed we will directly see the fruit of the training, the opportunity for transformation and the strengthening of virtue. This is an idea very characteristic of Buddhism, especially of Vajrayana Buddhism, which is built on the aspiration, the conviction and the practice of including all experience in the path, so that nothing becomes an obstacle to awakening. The way of tantra is devoted to helping us understand that our present situation is not far from a liberated experience but is, in fact, its very condition. Trungpa Rinpoche, one of its representatives whom we most appreciate, explains this to us. In his words, “Without respecting samsara, the world of confusion, one probably cannot discover the awakened state of mind, nirvana. Because samsara is the entrance, it is the vehicle for reaching nirvana.” And, in most of a chapter well worth reading, titled precisely “The Manure of Experience and the Field of bodhi”, Trungpa Rinpoche develops this central idea with the same image that concerns us here:

says the Buddha, the inexperienced will separate the clean from the dirty and try to throw away samsara and seek nirvana, but expert bodhisattvas will not throw away desire and passions and everything else, but will first gather it all together. That is, one must first recognise and admit all of that, study it and bring it to realisation [...] this is the only way to begin. Then they will scatter [all those negative things] across the field of bodhi [...] they will scatter them, using them as manure. From those dirty things arises the seed that is realisation.

But perhaps the most revealing point for people with a tendency to over-intellectualise, who appreciate the metaphors and rhetorical subtleties of the Dharma but are less inclined to apply it, to pick up the plough and drive it into a wild mind, is the indispensable role of method.

Returning to the vegetable garden: I had already begun to work, I had already romanticised the task of touching the earth, I had already saturated it with dharmic similes, I had already realised that this too was a distraction, and I had gone back several times to the tiny plants gathered beneath the irrigation hose and around the stems of the sown plants, pulling them out with nails increasingly black with damp soil. Then boredom, tiredness and laziness set in. Understanding the instruction was not enough: the time for method had come.

And what does method mean? Doing, applying, concretising, committing, returning to the object of attention, persevering, sustaining, strengthening, consolidating, keeping up, fulfilling, guarding, repeating… We could go on, but we have probably already got the idea. Not surprisingly, the first obstacle to mental training is laziness, and the first antidote is doing. Doing in spite of laziness. Doing against laziness. Doing above laziness. Doing regardless of laziness. And, finally, doing with joy, without laziness, because, with enough patience (which is evidently part of method), we will be able to savour the fruits that ripen some time after sowing, or some time after clearing the field.

It is imperative to praise the role of method, all the more so in a text that theorises about the Dharma. Yet the experience in the garden also taught me that method alone limps. So I chose to focus on pulling up weeds without heeding the temptations of daydreaming and literature. With that somewhat harsh energy that arises from wanting to win ground against resistance, the task became mechanical, the spirit dried up, and attention collapsed into an obstinate automatism that had lost sight of the fact that the gesture was, above all, about training a balanced and joyful attention.

Now that we have built bridges with the philosophy of here, we will turn to a classic image of Western thought to express in other words one of the most beautiful insights of the Dharma. Immanuel Kant, however extreme the abstraction of his transcendental philosophy, identified very well the interdependent relationship between the concepts and the experiences they refer to. And, with him, we say once more that method without vision is blind: a stubbornness that uproots everything, that loses the freshness and sensitivity proper to an awakened discernment, that consumes enthusiasm. And, likewise, discernment without method is empty: empty talk, sophisticated rhetoric, the worst of philosophy, which turns its back on life.

So may there be many more years of wise contact with the earth and of vigorous cultivation of our minds, so that everyone can taste the fruits of the Dharma.

Bibliography:

• Buddha Shakyamuni (2022). Dhammapala. Buenos Aires: Hastinapura.
• Trungpa Rinpoche, Chögyam (2012). Meditation in Action. Barcelona: Kairós.