Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I’ve been teaching people composting.. I was teaching people to sort out the difference between organic and inorganic stuff. It was amazing to me that it wasn’t obvious. But if you don’t grow up with some real connection with the land, it’s not obvious. What’s the difference between onion skins and styrofoam? I should emphasize that. And one of the best things I think we used to do here with the farm was have groups of school kids come out. I assume that still happens from time to time, right?

And it was amazing to me to see the reactions of kids who had, their only experience of a potato had been french fries, right? And maybe they had some vague idea of what the shape of a potato was before it became french fries. But to see digging in the dirt, and some kids were kind of put off by that, yeah, digging in the dirt, right? And then these potatoes emerge. Some kids still recoiled, they didn’t even want to touch the potatoes, and other kids were just marveling at these treasures that were popping up out of the ground. It never occurred to them before that some potatoes come out of the ground. That’s essential education. And I think taking care of the planet in our practice, we need to, every day, continue to teach that to children, and to ourselves, and to adults who missed that part.’ (from the San Francisco Zen Center Archive)

It’s nice to hear Myogen’s voice come alive through these recordings, as well as to hear these stories from the early days of Green Gulch.