Without realizing it, I’ve been living the lesson of a famous (in the right circles, ok?) Buddhist koan since I was a kid.
I recently wrote about my experiences as an undiagnosed Autistic, in pretty great detail if you wanna dive into that. Click into it below, for certain, but after re-reading about this Buddhist koan, this little story told to help drive home a bigger, more important truth, I realized that all that studying of all that Buddhism had indeed snuck in, and I’m thankful for it.
The story goes, and I am greatly simplifying here, that there were two farmers that were trying their best to grow their fields big and strong and productive. The first farmer spent hours ridding their field of the manure from their animals, carefully cleaning it off and trying their best to get everything perfect before planting. The second farmer left all the manure where it was, all the shit piled up in all the places, dealt with the horrible odors, the unclean work, then spread it around. Once done, they planted their seeds with the foul smelling mixture and walked away.
Fast forward a few months, and the first farmer had to go out and find another farmer with manure to buy, more shit to spread into their soil to make the conditions right for growth. The second farmer, did not.
The first farmer was unskilled, the second farmer was skilled. This is the way of things.
As all great Buddhist lessons, this one clearly applies to so much more than farming, to dealing with livestock and manure, and is aimed right at the human condition, whether or not you’re on the Buddhist path. We can choose to live our lives like the skilled farmer, or we can choose to live our lives like the unskilled. Sure, we’ll stay clean and not have to truly smell the putrescence for awhile, but eventually, we will. Eventually, we all do.
Look, we’ve all got shit.
All of us, a fact I think we’d unanimously agree upon. We’ve got pasts, we’ve got regrets, we’ve got things we’ve done that we’re not proud of, things that were done TO us that we wish undone. We all have mountains of manure that has built up over all these years we’ve been alive, and we all have fields we wish we could turn into productive, healthy, sustaining oases of growth.
So often we work and work and work to throw all that manure away, lest we have to deal with the smells and unclean hands. We want it as far as possible, we pay others to offload it with our words and confessions, we buy self-help books and are constantly seeking new experiences to “grow,” to distract, to try our damndest to erase the pasts we’ve lived through, the fertilizer living in all that filth.
What happens then? We repeat the same mistakes, we live as the unskilled farmer, every year trying so hard to clean our fields of the manure only to have to find a way to enrich our soil later. We feel self-doubt creep in, we feel stagnation when we look around and compare the growth of everyone else’s fields. We have no idea what they’ve done to accomplish this, but we swear there is something wrong with us, something right with them. Then, only then, do we go looking for something to fix our fields, unaware that all we needed was all we already had.
The “skilled” mindset is to embrace the shit, to truly embrace every single thing we’ve gone through, every mistake we’ve made, every decision we probably should have thought through a bit further. Embrace it, hold it tight, and see it as the key to growth we’ve spent all this time looking for.
Wisdom is born in this. Resilience is born in this. Transformation comes from this.
I’ve long spoken on this Signal Fire about the need in our lives for a more minimalistic mindset. I’ve preached on and on in the Kindlings, in the Matchbooks, even in my poetry, for the need to recognize the power of Less. Growth isn’t always about accumulating more, it’s never been. We convince ourselves we need more knowledge, more experiences, more help, more ears to listen to more words from our mouths. Sometimes, minimalism in self-improvement makes all the difference. Sometimes, it’s more about refining what is already there, than adding more to it. Sometimes we already have all the shit we need to grow better, wiser, stronger, happier. Sometimes, the fertilizer is in the filth.
I know it’s scary to believe something so counter-intuitive, that you’re gonna think I’m a liar somewhere deep within you when I say sometimes subtracting is the answer, not always adding. We’re always trying to add these days, always trying to find the quickest fix to the deepest problems.
Do me a favor, and commit yourself to it, even if it’s for 2 minutes here whilst reading it. Try this:
Reflect on a past mistake, reflect on a regret, some painful experience. Make it something that actually feels like the manure we’re talking about, not just some inconvenience that flitters away after long. Reflect on this thing, this thing that you might talk to a therapist about, might try to distract yourself from, medicate away. Write down that thing, whatever it is, and then next to it, make a list of all the different ways it might have just actually contributed to forming you into the self that you are right this very now. How did it shape you? How did it create this beautiful person that we here know and love and appreciate? How did the shit you went through actually give the soil of your soul the nutrients it needed to grow YOU into this stunning human being?
That’s what I’m asking for, and if you feel like sharing it here with us, we’d be honored, and we’d honor your courage with our grace and tenderness. Leave a comment, if you’re feeling so inclined, and let us all share the shit we’ve been trying so hard to clean off our fields, so we can remind each other that we should use it, that we should mix it in, that we’ll end up having to buy it again later if we don’t.
There is always wisdom here, waiting, more from the community we’re fostering than from my silly brain, and I am so thankful for that. I really do wish more of you could enjoy it, and so I’m going to offer another 20% off discount for a bit, so any of you on the fence about supporting this place can give it a try. Click the button below, and join us. It’s time, and I really do need your help keeping it alive.
I Love you, all of you, and all the shit you’ve been dealing with for so long. I love the growth I see in you, I love the fields you sow.
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We’re given a choice:
we can regret or use it,
all we have endured.
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