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Zig Zag Zen
My research for “Retreat” was pretty exhaustive, however one thing you find researching a particular era is that all the references within books and among the rest of the material (interviews, articles, documentaries etc) only relate to then-contemporary or historic writing. So while it’s natural that research will lead you further into the past, it’s harder to discover more recent things which might be relevant to you.
In writing “The Garden” the case in point was the Cuban urban organic growing revolution which happened in the early nineties with the collapse of the Soviet Union, with its horto intensivos and Organopónicos. It wasn’t that I missed it out of the book where it should have been included – I mean, it wasn’t countercultural as such, but the phenomenon was so fascinating within the context of “The Garden” that I had to double-take when I first came across it. I’m sure all the countercultural growers and farmers I interviewed would, in the nineties, have been incredibly excited about it. But no one ever mentioned it to me!
So, there are things that one misses out… And this book “Zig Zag Zen” first published in 2002, and then updated in 2015, was definitely one of them. It looks at the interface between Buddhism and psychedelics, most explicitly against the background of the counterculture. I read it with bated breath, nervous that I was going to have missed something significant out of my own history, and was genuinely relieved that I didn’t. I had read Rick Fields’ book “How the Swans Came to the Lake” (1992) but Fields’ excellent and entertaining article “A High History of Buddhism in America” is one of the neatest historical summaries I’ve read of the confluence.
Throughout the book, there are a lot of mentions of Chögyam Trungpa which didn’t surprise me, but was nevertheless good to see. Someone I hadn’t come across was Neem Karoli Baba’s student, the controversial Lama Surya Das. L.S.D, geddit? If there’s one omission it would be him, but the beloved Bhagavan Das, who I did discuss and interview, is a more significant character from the same niche.
Besides Fields’, the other really excellent article was an interview with Terence McKenna. McKenna is a magnetic personality and a very powerful orator, but what I’ve read of his writing, “Food of the Gods” (1999) is nonsense. Maybe because this article is a transcribed interview with Allan Badiner (Zig Zag Zen’s compiler), and flows with McKenna’s diction, it’s great.
What might be the most commonly acknowledged positive role of psychedelics is as a waystation. Alan Watts puts it, “many of us who have experimented with psychedelic chemicals have left them behind, like the raft which you use to cross a river…” But what McKenna manages to nail in the interview is that, “Psychedelics give people the power to overcome habitual behaviours.” However negative one could choose to be about them, the promise of that possibility is undeniable. McKenna wanted to see this combined with the compassion of Buddhism, “Buddhism and psychedelics are together probably the best hope we have for an antidote to egotism and materialism.”
I wrote “Retreat” in what was the summer of the psychedelic renaissance. Michael Pollen’s book “How to Change Your Mind” (2018), probably the high-watermark of the enthusiasm, came out somewhere in the middle of my research. If you’ve read it, you will know that my chunky little book pulls no punches in what is a brutal depiction of the aftermath of psychedelics in the sixties. The book could not have been much more negative about psychedelics, and especially the power-play around it.
I remember the distaste with which this presentation “Psilocybin & LSD: Lessons from the Counterculture” was received the first time I gave it to the Psychedelic Society. And at least two people who I had approached with “Retreat”, who I now notice are contributors to “Zig Zag Zen”, went from initial interest in “Retreat” to frostiness and anger upon reading it.
However, and I take no pleasure in this, in the five years since the book came out in 2020, when I haven’t been much preoccupied by psychedelics, there have been a depressing litany of abuse and scandals associated with them. There’s been a lot of coverage of this, and I don’t feel like adding to the censure, so google it if you are curious. The major culminating event might have been the FDA rejecting MAPS bid to legitimise MDMA-assisted therapy.
In retrospect, what’s cool about “Zig Zag Zen” is the surprisingly open platform it gives to a lot of psychedelic sceptics. There are extensive refutation of the drugs’ importance in an interview with Esalen’s Michael Murphy (who is chaperoned by his friend George Leonard), and a very powerful essay by recovering marijuana addict China Galland, in which she concludes as she avoids an ayahuasca ceremony, “I did not go to the jungle.” My favourite essay, however, is by Zen Buddhist Brad Warner, who I have only just discovered, and, a fellow nerd, am greatly appreciating.
In “Retreat” I took the angle that it was the process of the subject’s descent from the etheric heights that mattered; what Jack Kornfield describes as “the laundry.” This grounding, or alignment, in the process of descent constitutes the real “learning”. These lessons are not impossible, but harder, to glean from the quick comedown of psychedelics. Whether more likely to be grasped coming down from the spiritual high, or harder to learn from the psychedelic experience, this lesson might be described as a more-willing readiness to accept existence for what it is – with less compulsion, even, to go clambering up further mountains: “I have seen the peaks, thank you. There is a great deal which needs accomplishing in the valley.”
…unlike the tourist who will comfortably get back into the cabin and be delivered again to the valley, for the mountaineer (like Jung for instance) the return journey is fraught. Gone is the adrenaline that swept him to the summit, his rations are exhausted, the sun has begun to set, and the weather has closed in. It is raining. He may have figured out the path to the top slowly over a long period of time from the comfort of the valley, possibly even trying a number of routes before finally reaching the peak. To avoid becoming a statistic, the mountaineer will need to rally all their human resources to find their way down in the dark alive.
Me “Retreat” p 105.
What I didn’t know writing that passage was that a study in 2017, by Dr Martin Faulhaber at the University of Innsbruck of mountain climbing in the Austrian Alps, revealed that the most common cause of accident when climbing is falling, and that 75% of falls happen on the descent.
Just like I did, Brad Warner used the same analogy of the trip being like a helicopter ride to the top of the mountain. But his angle is slightly different. He says:
To a mountain climber, the goal is not the moment of sitting on top enjoying the view. That’s just one small part of the experience. It may not even be the best part. To a mountain climber, every view, from every point on the mountain is significant and wonderful. People who think that the pinnacle of the experience is that moment of being right on the tippy-top, don’t understand the experience at all.
Brad Warner “Zig Zag Zen” p182.
Brad’s big takeaway is that what Buddhist practice is about: “Learning to wake up by yourself.” He argues that you can’t just take “medicine” to achieve that.
So pleased to finally be starting in on growing from last year’s seeds. [Note to self, I need to thin that Amaranth out.] The grey cat, as you can plainly see, was delighted.
There has been some slight other activity through the winter. On the left, staked with an amaranth stalk, is a chestnut tree that I have grown from a chestnut I picked up on Hampstead Heath in the autumn. On the right, a lemon tree I’ve grown from a pip. These wouldn’t have fared so well outdoors through the winter – especially the lemon – so they’ve been indoors with me.
And in the garden, my brassicas are looking really well. Only a very little slug damage. The cold weather we’ve been having has surely helped. Last week I limed them, which was pretty some pretty advanced gardening shit.
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Alan Watts
With this, I am perhaps turning the last page on my research of the counterculture. When I finished “Retreat” I took a road which led me into the unusual terrain of self-help literature and the applications of psychoanalysis to business. That resulted in the comic book “TPM” which I remember as being incredibly satisfying to make. In due course, I’m going to do another print run of that.
In 2022, I was also busy with the “The ‘S’ Word,” another counterculture book, but about music and spirituality. Simultaneously, starting in August 2021, I was reading the books that informed “The Garden.”
Coming out of “The Garden”, headed back-to-reality as it were, I’m not inclined just yet to go on another research trip. I need to sort things out here on the material plane otherwise, as Stephen Gaskin put it, I’ll be “flappin’ in the breeze.” Therefore, currently, I only have a small pile of books to work through. Top of that list, sayonara to the mystic counterculture if you like, was Alan Watts’ autobiography “In My Own Way” (1973) which came out the year of his death.
I’ve read a number of Watts’ books, and they are uniformly enjoyable. Reading Alan is quite like reading a blog by someone very erudite. His writing is characterised by his freewheeling and informal authorial tone, which, because you’ve heard recordings of it, you can hear in your head. And he confesses many times in “In My Own Way” that he enjoys the sound of his own voice. His meeting with Carl Jung in 1958 is somehow emblematic of this, he reflects upon it that Jung “spent almost the whole time asking questions.” That’s another way of saying that although Alan was greatly impressed by Jung’s warmth, intelligence, and sense of fun, he didn’t really seize the opportunity to shut up and listen to him.
To be fair to Watts, this enjoyment of his own voice forms a part of his very healthy self-love. As he elegantly puts it, “since it is written that you must love your neighbour as yourself.” There’s not enough of that around. What we see on social media is the opposite, people showing off in a misguided attempt to curry each other’s respect and affection.
He’s certainly read all the important texts, and spoken to all the relevant people, but he lays it down in a very relaxed and non-judgemental way. But if the arguments in the books are always cogent, they are, even if he intended it so, a little thin on substance.
There was a great deal I liked. I loved the numerous references to gardens, gardening, and gardeners (the last always satisfyingly grouped together with other denizens of the alternative underground: “…wizards, yogis, artists, poets, musicians, gardeners and madmen…”). Watts’ account of the potency of matcha confirmed what I suspected from my experience of it, “Mac-ha or koi-cha, the powdered green teas used for the ceremony, would doubtless be banned in this country if they were widely known, for, taken in strength, they are highly conducive to the states of consciousness characteristic of Zen meditation…”. And I jotted down notes of further places to visit from his luminous descriptions of Japan, should I ever get the chance to return…
However, what has really lingered with me is his, not exactly comfort, but acceptance of himself as a “weird” fellow, following his own “weird”. That’s something that I too am beset with. Indeed, close friends have advised me to dial it up a little more! Watts quotes at length this story from the Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu:
The area of Ching-shih in the state of Sung grows fine catalpas, cypresses, and mulberries. But those of more than one or two spans in girth are cut down for monkey-perches; those of three or four for ridgepoles, and those of seven or eight for the solid sides of coffins for the wealthy. Thus they do not attain the normal term of their lives, and fall in mid-career to the axe. This is the danger of being useful.
In sacrifices of purgation one does not use bulls with white foreheads, pigs with large snouts, nor men with piles as offerings to the river. This has been revealed to the soothsayers, and such creatures are therefore held inauspicious [for sacrifice]. The sage, however, would regard them as highly auspicious.
Then there was a hunchback named Su. His chin touched his navel. His shoulders were above his head. His pigtail pointed to the sky. His innards were upside-down, and his thighs were against his ribs. By tailoring and laundering he made enough to live, and by winnowing grain he produced enough to feed ten. But when the authorities conscripted soldiers he stood in the crowd waving them off, and when a work-party was pressed into service he was passed up as an invalid. Yet when they doled out grain for the needy, he got three full measures as well as ten bundles of firewood. If a weird body helps a man live out his full term, how much greater would be the use of a weird character!
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Brown Rice and Aduki Beans
Craig Sams, who I have had the good fortune to interview for both my books published by Repeater, “Retreat” and “The Garden”, has used AI to make a song about Macrobiotic food. It came out rather well.
Sams makes the point that there’s almost nothing about Macrobiotics mentioned in the body of popular music. This is indeed strange given how massive the diet was in the hippie era.
In my research for Retreat I only came across two musical references, Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice”, and Bob Dylan in “On the Road Again” (“So I get brown rice, seaweed and a dirty hot dog.”) Sams had another good one, a novelty hit by Larry Groce, “Junk Food Junkie.”
Sams says the diet, “kept me in good health after I was unwell with hepatitis from my travels in Afghanistan and India.” At SEED, the restaurant favoured by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, he and his brother Gregory served Macrobiotic food.
Macrobiotics wasn’t a diet per se – my own take on it was that it was a method of balancing your food to establish some particular cosmic accord. If you wanted the etheric high of a cave-dwelling saint, you should eat only brown rice: “Yin”. If you were prepared to slum it with the rest of us in samsara, you could have some whiskey: “Yang.”
However, it tended to be understood by the hippies as an injunction to only eat brown rice. In fact, if Macrobiotics is understood correctly, any grain would suffice! Researching for “The Garden” I came across self-sufficiency guru John Seymour quite correctly decrying this:
It is ridiculous for a whole generation of freaks in Britain to grow up thinking that the only good food to eat is “brown rice”, for example. We don’t grow rice in Britain. We grow wheat, and we should eat that – it’s a much better food than rice anyway.
John Seymour “I’m a Stranger Here Myself” (1978)
I really went deep into researching Macrobiotics because, frankly, the depth is there. George Ohsawa’s early philosophical tract “The Unique Principle” (1931), published by the extremely highbrow and respected Vrin imprint, is one of the best books one can read about Eastern philosophy. In 2018, I visited sites in Kyoto frequented by Ohsawa and most notably the Macrobiotic HQ in Tokyo. I wonder if it is still there?
Between August 2021 and December 2024 I was researching and writing this forthcoming book about gardening, growing, and farming. Yes, I did learn a lot about those topics in my reading, watching, and interviewing (and can confirm, looking back with what I know now, that I didn’t make any mistakes!) – but I wanted to double down on that research for three reasons. Firstly, I wanted to make sure I really knew from a scientific and practical point of view what I was talking about. Secondly, I wished to learn more about plants purely out of personal interest. And thirdly, I had a view that this might be a qualification useful to me to get work. What shape that work would take, still not being totally clear to me yet.
Something that came up whenever I was looking into this area, as I was as early as October 2020, was the Royal Horticultural Society’s Level 2 qualifications. I’m glad I waited, because in September 2022 the course was updated, and it’s more appropriate to my interests now. There’s now a strong emphasis on biodiversity and sustainability. And with the introduction of conceptual tools like the Garden Health Plan (which combines abiotic and other factors with previous techniques like Integrated Pest Management to create a panoptic view of health), the whole course is by definition holistic in its perspective.
Before making the leap, I reached out to legendary gardener Jack Wallington, author of the classic “Wild about Weeds” and he kindly reassured me that the course was also very applicable to vegetable growing. Indeed, the RHS isn’t just about ornamental horticulture. Many of the figures in its hall of fame have an interest in what’s termed “productive growing” and “edible landscapes” – like, for instance, Rosemary Verey and William Robinson. Any residual snootiness towards growing food seems to be, if not entirely absent, then gradually eroding away. Certainly the high rigour and impeccable standards of the RHS are exceptionally useful in that sphere.
At the end of July last year I made a start revising for the RHS Level 2 Principles exam (on the right in the image above). The Practical half of the course is more weighted towards ornamental horticulture which, at the moment at least, I am less interested in. For instance, I’ll wager that 95% of the plants one is expected to identify in the Practical course are jazzy shrubs, roses, and ornamental grasses. However, to the contrary, I’m happiest identifying: flowers that pollinators like, herbs, fruit, wild flowers, weeds, crops, and trees. And I was able to bend the Principles’ syllabus to accommodate that preference. Indeed, I leave the course with a huge “My Plants” spreadsheet which I compiled of plants that I love which illustrate various horticultural points. For giggles check out this large entry, only one of 238, which I compiled:
Like other of the Rosaceae family can be affected by fireblight. A lack of calcium causes malformed dead cells scattered through the fruit called “bitter pit”. Apples suffer from apple scab, powdery mildew, orchard fireblight etc. Seed designed to be eaten and then pass through the digestive system of birds or mammals far from the parent plant. Fleshy portion removed if planting horticulturally. An important early-flowering resource for bumblebees and mining bees and a key nectar resource for early hoverflies and bee-flies. Orchard trees decay more quickly than say Oak and cavities which open out in them can be homes for Great tits and Spotted woodpeckers. Orchards also home for Bracket fungi. Different cultivars of apples require different cumulative hours of cold in the winter to produce flower buds. Chemical inhibitors prevent germination. Self-incompatible – has to be pollinated by a different plant.
My Malus domestica (apples innit) spreadsheet entry
Another advantage of the Principles course is that it can be done remotely – but that’s changing with the advent of at least one provider offering blended learning for the Practical course.
The RHS Level 2 material is typically described as being equivalent in difficulty to a GCSE. It’s been 37 years since I sat one of those! However, and here’s the clincher, the volume of information is enormous. One of my fellow course mates had this to say, “I came into Horticulture after 27 years of teaching GCSE at secondary level. Compared to what I have taught, the level of detail and volume of work in the syllabus seems massive.”
Add to this the ornate and convoluted way that the RHS asks questions, (from the same observer), “It felt as though the questions were deliberately trying to trip you up or focusing in on one minute detail rather than being a test of your breadth of knowledge.” That tricky way of asking questions (where it’s also not entirely clear what you’re supposed to be replying with in your answer), tripped me up on multiple occasions in my revision. It led, depressingly, to numerous failed pilot tests and dismal marks, even when I was reasonably confident of the material.
I do hope that none of this discourages people from doing the RHS Level 2 Principles course. If you get a decent provider with solid learning material, then it’s totally great. Bloody marvellous. I LOVED IT. I learned so much, and was genuinely fascinated by 99% of the material. Only garden design, of which there is only a little, left me cold – and to be fair, I am coming at all this from what is to most people today a very weird angle.
I sat the two unit exams this Monday and Tuesday after cramming the material very hard through December and January. I won’t get the results for a few months – and I’m really hoping I pass. However, if I fail I will pick myself up again and have another crack at it. It will be another opportunity to learn some more wonderful information.
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Protesting Farmers
I saw these two tractors today as I cycled through Islington. They were protesting the inheritance tax being levied on farmers. The loophole the Labour government is trying to close is to stop people buying farmland as a tax dodge. That would be great – but there must be a better way of achieving that?
The structural problem is that although farmers have what looks like a lot of money, it’s capital, not income. Anyone who know the slightest bit about economics knows the difference. Their income is truly appalling.
I’ve never met thriftier people than farmers, and that’s an essential survival adaptation. I do hope there’s some sensible solution – at the very least, the farming community needs sufficient time to adapt.
What happens when these family farms are broken up? The precedent is the state of industrial agriculture which is, essentially, a territorial agglomeration of what used to be thousands of small farms. That’s not good for food security or biodiversity.
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Life
I stumbled across this passage a few years ago in Fosco Mariani’s “Secret Tibet” (1951) – one of the great accounts of travel in Tibet before the Chinese occupation. Very beautifully and without recall to superstition, it encapsulates the vedic idea of the individual human’s spirit as a fragment of the larger universal consciousness; I think it would make an excellent reading for a funeral.
Running water reminds one strangely of human life. It first emerges so thin and small and devoid of strength. In its infancy it runs sparkling through meadows, among flowers and shining stones. Then the waters gain in weight and vigour and rush downhill; their youth is bold and happy, a time of singing and dancing in the sun, celebrating noisy marriages with tributaries, forming crazy little waterfalls and exultant little lakes. All is joy and high spirits. But gradually the slope diminishes, and the stream grows and becomes a river; youth turns into manhood. Its course is now more regular; it no longer runs crazily, but has become sensible and strong. It is less beautiful, but has become useful to agriculture and industry. What makes it attractive now is its calm, serene maturity. Enthusiasm, love, passion, beauty, have given way to quiet, useful purposefulness. At last it imperceptibly approaches the estuary; the lagoon-like expanses, the sadness and sweetness of old age. Then it once more mixes with the original waters.
Fosco Mariani: “Secret Tibet” p287-288
It’s been many years since I shared these “forms” sculptures in the local area.
These were the last eight remaining. I remember that they had a slightly different style from the others – more arranged around ninety degree angles – and so I took that as a sign to stop making them.
I kept the eight because I liked them. But I actually have two very pretty ones myself already, and in the spirit of letting go of stuff, I thought I would post them in the surrounding neighbourhood.
In case you missed it, here’s the forms film: