Composting Our Karma: Turning Confusion into Lessons for Awakening Our Innate Wisdom
Barbara Rhodes
Edited By Elizabeth S.R. Goldstein
Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 2024. 163 pp., paper, $19.95.
Barbara Rhodes (Zen master Soeng Hyang, fondly known as Bobby) offers the Korean Zen teaching of “Don’t-Know mind” as a medicine for what her teacher, Zen master Seung Sahn, used to call “thinking sickness.”
Seung Sahn was Bobby’s first and only Zen teacher, and Bobby’s book illuminates his teachings throughout. When I first met Seung Sahn (also known as Soen-Sa-Nim), Bobby was sitting next to him, so we go back more than forty years. This book is my wish coming true: capturing Dharma as taught by Bobby.
Bobby urges her students to ask the great question: What am I? Is there an answer to that? It is not a question one needs to answer but rather one that dissolves the questioner, who then merges into a state of not knowing or “don’t know.” Bobby calls this process as hitting the “reset button” to truly look at what appears moment to moment (also called the “primary point”). It is like a weighing scale that must return to zero when we step off. If it doesn’t, it means we must practice harder. We have work to do.
I love the title’s metaphor of composting. Different Zen masters have used it in their own unique way. Suzuki Roshi talked about cutting weeds and using them as mulch. Bobby gives a wonderful explanation of composting: “Composting your karma means to take the residual, undigested events and habits and digest them. Just as a compost pile needs tending, so does our karma. Rather than feeling hindered by our karma, we can attend to it. The product in our healthy garden compost is humus, the living part of the soil. The product of our composted, digested karma is learned lessons.” If we truly understand this, we will develop a new relationship with our karma rather than holding it or even adding new layers to it.
There is a Zen saying: “Why do you go around pulling that corpse?” Bobby explains: “The corpse we are carrying around in that Zen saying is the unfinished process of the compost pile. It is lumpy, multicolored, smelly, and not yet so helpful. Our [Zen] practice can help us to let go of the egoistic corpse.”
What starts this composting? Don’t-Know mind. We wipe the dust of the mirror before we look to find our true selves. There are three parts in the book: “What Is Don’t-Know Mind?” “Cultivating the Use of Don’t-Know Mind” and “Applying Don’t-Know [AU: Should this be “Don’t-Know Mind” to Life’s Vital Challenges.”
Bobby teaches a practice that uses kong-ans (aka koans), which are questions that make us confront the logical mind. One is “What am I?” Another is “What is this?” In Buddhist teachings, these are called “great questions.” We ask them with an open mind and receive with open arms.
In part 2, “Cultivating the Use of Don’t-Know Mind,” Bobby shares her experiences in her various solitary retreats and the importance of giving 100 percent effort. Those of us who have done solitary retreats can relate to this part.
Bobby is candid with her failings and struggles. She says, “I’ve often felt frustrated with my own practice, questioning how much I’m able to affect others’ lives or the quality of my own. It’s easy to start looking at what’s happening with practice and its relationship with our friends, family, and the world. Just as tuning a guitar string too tight and it will snap, too loose and it will be off tune. We need to inspire ourselves and support each other.”
In part 3, Bobby talks about applying Don’t-Know mind in day-to-day life. In her work as a nurse, she worked with many sick and dying people. What greater teacher is there than death? Bobby’s book is filled with her own personal experiences, which she generously shares. Her compassion in her life as a hospice nurse shines throughout the book.
Buddha said, “Life is suffering.” Our practice not only makes us understand that but also invokes Great Love, Great Sadness, and Great Compassion. A Zen master who was about to take his last breath suddenly smiled and asked, “What was all the fuss?” When we are grounded in understanding, there is no fuss.
Bobby ends with her favorite poem, written by Zen Master Wu Men:
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
I have read that a litmus test for a great work is that the person who takes up reading it and the person who finishes reading it are two different people. Why? Because reading the work has changed him! Bobby’s book aces that test.
Dhananjay Joshi
Dhananjay Joshi is a professor of statistics and has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for forty years. His book No Effort Required; No! Effort Required contains anecdotes from his years of spiritual study.