How Do You Compost Karma?
Years ago, while walking through a redwood forest, I laid face down on the soft ground and had the sensation of decomposing. I imagined slowly breaking down, first becoming the pine needles, then decomposing into finer and finer material, until I was eventually resting on the rock below, which was also decomposing. This experience was totally uncontrived and there was no sense of loss or fear. On the contrary, it had the quality of a very graceful and natural union. I composted. Of course, my sense of being an individual self returned, but that time I spent decomposing was and continues to be a great source of comfort and reassurance.
Ever since that experience in the forest I have had a compost pile whenever I could. If you are actually going to start composting your garden and kitchen waste, you are going to have to learn how to do it. It can’t just be piled up in some corner and constantly added on to. If we don’t learn how to tend to the compost, it will just begin to lump up and smell; it needs air and moisture, turning, and attention. I’m always in awe when I see that a broccoli stem has become unrecognizable. It melds into all that is around it. The warmth and softness come from the gentle letting go, the melding. Amazingly, all kinds of sentient beings—mites, centipedes, snails, beetles, ants, worms—arrive. They are the physical decomposers; they grind, tear, and chew materials into smaller pieces. What is so amazing is that we don’t have to ask these creatures to appear; they are just part of a natural symbiosis. Mature compost has no smell, no trace of its origins. When we surround our garden with compost, the plants are given the air, moisture, and nutrients that make up the compost. It is the gift from the compost.
I can think of no other metaphor that fits so well with our Zen practice. The corpse we are carrying around in that Zen saying is the unfinished process of the compost pile. It’s lumpy, multicolored, smelly, and not yet so helpful. Our practice can help us to let go of the egoistic corpse. This letting go happens by us being able to look at our thoughts, our life. What parts feel unresolved, uncomfortable, even painful? By gently breathing in these parts, looking at them, and then gently breathing out “Don’t know,” we can begin to compost, digest, meld our discomfort into compassion and wisdom. In the Gospel of Thomas, verse 70, Jesus says something that I find particularly relevant: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.” Without truly owning, looking at, tending to our undigested parts, we cannot grow and nurture this world. We actually need those parts to compost into our true selves! No two compost piles are the same, and yet when they are fully mature, they are always nurturing and without odor. They are ready to do their job.
So, you are composting karma when going back to primary point. You’re noticing and asking, “What is this? How is it just now?” and really listening after you ask that. Pay attention through all your senses. Any preconceived ideas or assumptions can drop away through the asking and you begin to really see and notice what’s going on clearly, without that added 75 percent.
Some people have the idea that practicing Zen or any religion is becoming God or Buddha, or even “becoming a good person.” But if you are grasping to become “enlightened,” it’s like putting icing over a mold of cow manure. Instead, we need to let our cow manure become compost. The only way to do that is to let everything in, let all our karma appear, let the air come in, the moisture, and then learn how to use it for other people. Then our karma is a wonderful thing: it becomes nourishment for everybody else. Jesus talked about the mustard seed in the Gospel of Thomas, verse 20: “The tiniest of all seeds. But when it falls on prepared soil, it grows into a large plant and shelters the birds of the sky.” Our mind is the same. Sometimes our Buddha-nature, our God-nature, our ability to see clearly, is very, very tiny. We have bad days. We have bad lives, some of us! So, start right now. Don’t think of yourself as being bad or good, proficient or clumsy. Simply regard yourself as having that seed.
My experience at this point in my practice is that there are some things I’m not clear about, that aren’t finished. Zen Master Seung Sahn called that “undigested karma.” It’s not bad or good. In the woods there are leaves that are totally mulched and others that aren’t yet. That is how things are. Nothing says the leaves on top are any less than the completely mulched leaves or the black soil underneath. That’s opposite thinking—discriminating consciousness. So, each one of us has this life, and each of us has a moment. Don’t ask for your karma to appear; it appears! If you’re not trusting “Don’t know,” if there’s still a question, then you have to go back and ask more deeply, that’s all. When you are composting, you know if something still smells. I’ve been composting for years, and it’s always clear when it’s been digested; there’s no more odor, and it’s homogenous and ready to be put in the garden. As you work with your compost, you know that. If it’s not quite composted enough, you will find out. It will stink. It will be clear. You learn and keep working the soil. Remember, you may need to prepare the soil, but you always have the mustard seed. Nobody is ever born without it.
In my work as a hospice nurse, I see what goes on with all of us. It doesn’t take much life experience to realize that we could all use a little saving, that there is discomfort, disease, sadness, selfishness around us and in us. As human beings, we’re just bathing in unfinished business all the time. We get despondent and feel like giving up. We can be self-destructive. Many of my patients had a history of severe drug abuse. Sometimes it’s very challenging to be present and supportive with someone who has been eroding the field the mustard seed needs to settle in. But I realize that there are also subtler forms of self-destruction that we all fall prey to. Perhaps even sleeping—not being truly present—when praying or meditating is just a subtler form of the heroin addict’s actions. We have this wonderful opportunity. It’s very interesting how we can get right to the edge of liberation and then not stay awake. Dying without ever knowing who we are can seem easier than finding out what we’re responsible for in this life.
Sometimes it’s easier for someone else to see your Buddha-nature than it is for you to see it. But the work begins with each of us, in our center. We have to find our guts, our ability to be in balance. We have to find the relationship with this world that will work for us. With some lifestyles it is difficult to attain your true self completely. But it’s also said, “In sterile water, fish cannot live.” If the water is too clean, there will be nothing to eat. Each of us has to find the “middle way” for ourselves. At what point do I begin to cling? At what point do my desires control me and take over? What do I have to let go of? It can’t be an idea. It’s an ongoing process of noticing and cutting through your personal likes and dislikes, reactions and strengths, and having patience to hang in there and ask, “What is this?” The most important thing is to notice what is happening and also notice your reaction. Always go back to “What is this? What am I?” You could also ask, “How can I help?” and “How can I take one more step forward with this?” Your queries allow natural feelings of wisdom and compassion to arise. Your compost will be free and available to all.
From Composting Our Karma: Turning Confusion into Lessons for Awakening Our Innate Wisdom by Barbara Rhodes, edited by Elizabeth S. R. Goldstein © 2024 by Barbara Rhodes. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.