Spring Comes, The Grass Grows By Itself

Here is a version of a talk I gave at the Kansas Zen Center, in Lawrence, about nine years ago.

Good morning. Thank you for coming to practice.

Recently, Margaret and I have embarked on some home improvement. This is truly to enter the cave of poisoned grass, to arouse the mind of acquisition and to stimulate it over and over. There are so many decisions to make, about flooring and walls and countertops. And so many things to buy. So we’ve made this meal of poisoned grass and we feed and feed. This is truly suffering. And we have to see it through to the end. Well, we don’t have to. We could stop now if we wanted, but that would mean living in a very messy situation for a long time, so we choose to complete the project.

The first bit of improvement we did was to put in a new lawn. This is very appropriate, because our home is also Tall Grass Zen Center. Ironically enough, however, we had a totally pathetic front lawn, almost as much dirt as grass. Sometimes we’d joke, I’m going out to mow the dirt now! And certainly it grew tall, but that was only the weeds. The lawn resulted from poor soil and years of neglect and not enough sunlight. We have these two forty year old oak trees, and they block the sunlight, so the first thing we did was have them professionally pruned. But we weren’t sure what the next step should be.

Then one day I saw this sign, “ask us about organic lawn care,” and I thought, oh, we could do that. One reason we haven’t done much for the lawn is because we are leery of putting chemicals into the ground. So I went home and asked Margaret what she thought and she thought it was a good idea and I called the company and someone came out and gave us an estimate—$830—which was higher than I’d hoped but lower than my worst fear. One of the reasons it cost so much was because they recommended putting down a huge amount of organic compost—somewhere on the order of ten cubic feet, a truckful, almost enough to fill this room. Margaret and I talked it over and said, OK, let’s do it. And these people came out with all these machines and dug up the lawn and lay down compost and seed and hay and that was that.

Now, this isn’t usually the kind of consumer I am. I like to do a lot of research, to solicit different bids, talk to people, dicker. And right away some problems appeared that made me doubt the wisdom of doing business with this company. First, there was this problem with the fertilizer, and that took a couple of phone calls to straighten out. Then there was this problem with a lack of directions. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I had no idea what to do with the one thousand square foot plot of dirt. After a few phone calls I got my first written instruction: start watering right away! But that didn’t help me. I didn’t know how often to water or how much to water. I didn’t know anything. I made several more phone calls, and finally this man asked me, well didn’t you get our brochure. No. He promised to send it. Ironically enough the brochure arrived with the bill. And this is kind of funny, because it seems to me that although they really took their time getting us the instructions, they sure didn’t waste a minute issuing the bill. But they arrived on the same day in the same envelope. Funny.

We were instructed to water twice a day, three times if it got really hot, which fortunately it didn’t, because we had no idea how we would manage that. The first time I went out to water, I suddenly remembered that one of the reasons I’ve never gone in much for lawns is because they are ecological disasters. They require a lot of water and we are living through a drought—just ask the farmers; more and more of the wheat crop fails every year because there simply isn’t enough rain. So there I was spraying vast amounts of water onto the dirt and suddenly envisioning a drought-proof rock garden with maybe a few aesthetically placed native plants and kicking myself for acting so impulsively and not looking into other options. But I’d already paid the $830 dollars—not on a credit card but out of my savings—and I wasn’t about to waste that so I just kept watering.

So Margaret and I went out there twice a day, watering and watering. My misgivings grew and grew because nothing was happening! Nothing seemed to be growing. And our neighbors were teasing us a little—nice plot of dirt you got there, Christina! And I started to wonder if I had been ripped off. How do I know they put all that compost down? How would I know if it was organic or not? Maybe it was just sludge. And maybe the seed was old. Despite my misgivings, though, I’d sometimes find myself enjoying myself. I’d do 108 prostrations and go out and simply water. It was kind of nice, in the pre-dawn light. A lot of my neighbors would be out taking walks and we’d say hello. But mostly I worried.

One afternoon, as Margaret and were bending over examining the dirt for signs of life, I told her that I had a very bad feeling about this. She asked why and I told her, “I don’t trust those people.” She said, “I don’t trust them either, Christina. But I trust the grass, I trust the seed.” This is a great teaching. It cut through all my doubts and concerns. Oh, sure, the grass knows how to grow. You don’t have pay the seed or persuade or compel or shame it into growing. It simply grows. There’s a Zen saying that encompasses this point, “spring comes, the grass grows by itself.” I’m very grateful to Margaret for reminding me of this, for putting my mind to rest. It’s one of the reasons that we started Tall Grass Zen Center, so that we would have the opportunity of building a sangha, a community of practitioners, so we could remind each other of the teaching, of our purpose. In Buddhism we speak of the triple gem, buddha, dharma and sangha, the teacher, the teaching and the community of practitioners. Of these three, the sangha is the most important. I would therefore like to encourage each of you to come practice at the Zen Center as often as you can, to let other people help you in your practice and to help others in theirs.

I’d like to talk a little about this phrase, “spring comes, the grass grows by itself.” The phrase “by itself” doesn’t mean “all alone.” As I’ve already said, the grass doesn’t need any special encouragement to grow. But its growth takes place in an immense network of interrelationships. This is signaled by the phrase “spring comes.” Spring brings longer days and more light and warmth, both of which the seed needs to germinate. And spring also brings rain. The grass also needs the soil. And you know, the soil isn’t some inert substance like concrete. It’s alive, full of microorganisms, and not so micro- organisms, and the warmth of the sun wakes them up, and they begin eating and digesting and defecating and fornicating and reproducing, and all that activity helps the grass to grow and the grass by growing helps those beings to live.

This is actually a pretty clear illustration of karma, which is the name we give to the law of cause and effect. Spring comes and the grass grows. Cause and effect. So everything happens by natural process, and this is true for us as well. “Spring comes the grass grows by itself” also means that when conditions are ripe, our enlightenment will appear. We don’t have to do anything special to make our great mind manifest. Of course, conditions do have to be right and we can create the right sort of conditions for enlightenment to appear. The right condition is practice. In my experience daily practice is essential, but so is coming to retreats regularly. Practice is sort of like watering the lawn. All the water helps the grass to grow; all that practice helps our enlightenment to appear. One of the reasons that Margaret and I chose the name Tall Grass Zen Center is because this is kind of practice we want to encourage, practice that isn’t focussed on an outcome, such as enlightenment, but that is complete in itself. I encourage you to practice this way.

Karma, the law of cause and effect, is very interesting. For example, Margaret and I kept watering the lawn and sure enough after a couple of weeks a few blades began to appear and day by day more blades of grass began to appear and pretty soon we had this beautiful green plush lawn, which I can honestly say is the envy of the neighborhood. So this lawn appears and pretty soon a new effect appears, what the capitalists call “pride of ownership” appears. We buddhists call this “attachment.” Every time Margaret and I drive up to our house, one of us will say,” look at that beautiful lawn. We grew that. It’s ours.” So pretty soon a new problem appears. There are lots and lots of dogs in our neighborhood. They eat lots of food and that means that they make lots of shit. And everyday their owners take them around on leashes, and they just seem to love doing their business on our lawn. Most of our neighbors are pretty responsible and they carry around little plastic bags to clean up after their dogs, but still, Margaret and I just hate the thought of dog poop on our beautiful lawn.

I’d like to tell you a little about one incident that happened last weekend. You know, this practice changes you, but the changes are very subtle and sometimes you can’t see them. I’ve been practicing pretty hard for about three years now and sometimes it seems like nothing changes. I’ve still got this yadda-yadda going on continually through my mind. Oh, maybe those lawn care people are trying to rip me off, what can I do, and then there’s my job and then there’s Margaret and then there’s my evil department head and yadda-yadda my life is so hard. But every once in a while something happens and I can say, oh, yeah, this practice changes you. So last weekend I happened to be looking out the front window, and I saw this woman letting her dog crap on our lawn, and so I stepped outside. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say. She saw me and pulled her dog along and walked away. Not fast, but I could see that she knew that she was doing something wrong, and she didn’t want to face it.

So I was just standing there not feeling anything really or thinking anything. I remember that there seemed to be kind of green flow. Everything is very beautiful right now; we’ve had a long wet spring and everything is growing. At the back of my mind was the thought that in a minute I’d have to go and get a plastic bag and clear up the mess, but I didn’t feel one way or the other about it. Then this really amazing thing happened. The woman, who had walked out of sight, suddenly reappeared and said, “Do you want me to clean that up?” Now this, it seems to me, is true Zen practice. I don’t know anything about this woman; I doubt that she practices Zen. But Zen Master Hae Kwang says that Zen is recognizing correct situation, correct relationship, correct function and then just doing it. So this woman recognized her mistake and came back offering to correct it. Now I do practice Zen and I was in a pretty good space so I promptly said, “yes, I do.” I wouldn’t always answer this way. If I had been feeling angry for example, I might have said, “no, it’s OK, I’ll do it,” not because it was really OK but because cleaning up the shit would have fed my delusion that I am the most imposed on person in the universe and would have enabled me to cling to that sense of having been treated unjustly. The woman said, “I forgot my plastic bag.” Suddenly, her situation became clear. She wasn’t an irresponsible person, she was a person who had forgotten something. So I said, “Let me get you one,” and as she cleaned up the mess we chatted. It turned out that she often has to go clean up after other people’s dogs and it really bugs her, so maybe this is why she turned around.

What happened there was the fruit of my practice. When I stepped out of house I didn’t know what to say and so I didn’t say anything. And this created the space for the woman to correct her mistake. I didn’t try to make this happen. It simply happened. And more and more it seems to me that the less I say, the better. And my growing ability to keep my mouth shut is proof that this practice has really helped me.

Listen. The world is in really bad shape right now. India and Pakistan are threatening to destroy one another. The U.S. is continuing to flatten Afghanistan. And it’s happening everywhere, as people bump up against one another, too often over religious conflicts. What happened between this woman and me is the true fruit of Buddhist practice. We could have come into conflict, but we didn’t. She and I together managed to make a little moment of peace and understanding, managed to bring a little more love and compassion into the world. And this is how it will happen, individual by individual, household by household, block by block. I hope that you all will practice has hard as you can, for this world.