B io ph ile Issu e 18 - Biophile Magazine

IarranginggarbageA Buddhist approachto compostby Wendy JohnsonWendy has been gardening andpracticing meditation at Green GulchFarm Zen Center in northern Californiasince 1975.t wasalmostdarkwhen I cameupon thebobcat, walkingalone on asteep overgrowntrail far above theGreen Gulch valley.She had been deadfor weeks, her blackrimmedlips pulledback in a snarl of protest,tiny soot flies scouring herempty eye sockets. Her bellywas slit open and she lay, disemboweled,in her own dry blood. The acridstench of death rose off her matted fur. Iconsidered carrying the bobcat down tobury her in the farm compost pile but decidedagainst it. She was her own sovereignpalace of decay, already well-consumed. Iplaced her, instead, off the trail, onto a softmound of chain fern and lady’s bed-strawand hurried down the mountain while Icould still see.This was more than ten years ago, butI still think of that bobcat, especially inthis autumn season as we build the lastbig compost piles of the year, arranginggarbage in one giant heap sealed withmoldy oat straw drenched in stale greenpond water.Much as I love cross-legged sittingand the Bodhisattva Vows, makingcompost is my core religious practice.“Life into death into life,” intonedmy garden teacher Alan Chadwick as hesupervised us in the ancient alchemicalart of creating a compost pile, a practicefollowed by Chinese farmers for more thanfour thousand years. I take my place in thisgardening lineage that reveres and relieson rot and decay as an abiding source ofsoil fertility.Compost is an untame culture, turningon the dark side of Nature’s wheel of lifewhere all beings come apart and are recombined.The same clan of microbes andmaggots, nematodes and mites, bacteriaand fungi that helped to decompose thebobcat on the Zen trail so many years agoare the engine of decomposition in everycompost pile. The gardeners’ task is only tocreate a hospitable site where the cultureof compost can unfold.This work is deeply simple. All you needis a shady piece of ground large enough fora compost pile that is at least 1x1x2m. Firstyou fork open the soil beneath your proposedpile and arrange a base made of oldplant stalks, stems, and soft woody debris.Next you mound on top of this base a deeplayer of green, nitrogen-rich materials likegarden weeds and grass clippings, mixedwith animal manure and kitchen scraps.The following layer is dry, carbonaceousmaterial like straw and old leaves, or woodchips and sawdust, all well watered sothat your pile is as moist as Avalokiteshvara’shuge heart. Continue to layer yourcompost green material and then let dryuntil you have a tall, noble pile, as high asyou can reach.Every compost pile is alive, a teemingsangha of billions of invisible microorganismsdigesting your autumn mountain ofgarbage.In a fewshort daysa healthycompost pilebegins tosteam withmetaboliclife asclouds of heatlovingbacteria breakdown raw protein andcomplex carbohydrates intoamino acids and simple sugars,generating temperatures as high as72º C. This breakdown stage is followeda few weeks later by a buildup stage thatlasts for more than a month as complexfungal networks absorb the pile’s free gasesinto their web work of mycelia, reducingleaching of nutrients, disarming pollutantsand disease pathogens, and physicallybinding soil and compost together, creatingstabile aggregates that increase waterinfiltration and retention.In the last stage of decomposition a fewmonths later—or sooner, if you turn yourpile—your mound will be alive with sweet,woodsy-smelling compost laced with up toone hundred industrious compost insectsper square foot, intertwined with writhingred compost worms testifying by theirpresence that decomposition is complete.“All conditioned existence is of thenature to come apart,” observed theBuddha twenty-five hundred years ago.Although this may not be corroboratedby the Pali canon, I am confident not onlythat the Budda’s teaching was stimulatedby upright sitting beneath a sacredpipal tree, but also that in the vicinity ofenlightenment there is always a smokingdung heap alive with bobcat bones and rottenmelons, arranged to become the deep,black ground of awakening.52 Biophile Issue 18