Heaven and Earth give themselves. Air, water, plants, animals, and humans give themselves to each other. It is in this giving-themselves-to-each-other that we actually live. Whether you appreciate it or not, it is true… Samadhi is to work constantly for all beings at every moment, living as the whole universe.

Kodo Sawaki

I woke before dawn with a view of the stars, and the sound of the wind in the dark fir trees. Venturing my arm out of the warmth of my sleeping bag, I felt around for the antique cell phone that now served as a useful alarm clock. It read, as usual, a few minutes before the alarm at five. At this hour it was so quiet you’d never know you were in the city.  Only a moaning alley cat, or an occasional siren in the distance.  Nothing else disturbed the sound of wind breathing through the evergreen branches.

I pulled myself out of the bag and into the exuberance of the cold. After peeing at a nearby bush, I grabbed the Korean wooden block waiting beside the door and visited the several sleeping bodies with a gentle “tok-tok-tok” wake-up. Ten minutes later we were assembled up in the bare loft, each of us a bundle of woolen blankets and vaporous breath, ready for sitting.

So began a typical winter day at Flourishing Clouds Hermitage, a formerly abandoned, empty shell of a house tucked away in a quiet, dirt-road neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. It was one of a number of recent homes of a loosely knit band of rag-tag Zen practitioners called Touching Earth Sangha – a group devoted to re-awakening the art of renunciation, or simple living, that had characterized most earlier Buddhist communities.

Originally we were a group that just met on Sunday afternoons in a city park for zazen, a talk, and dinner.  Over the past few years we’ve occasionally had a base for full-time meditation practice at one location or another. The latest incarnation featured a large yard for growing food, an essential part of Touching Earth’s vision. There was a Cypress tree in the yard under whose shady branches we sat when the weather was warm. Across the street were fig, almond and black walnut trees.

Each morning we sat for two periods either outside, or, when raining, on the tin-can-patched wooden floor of the loft.  Then, after some Sanskrit chanting, we’d disperse over the grounds for individual yoga or taiji practice, or maybe a walk or run. Whoever was cooking would build a fire in our “rocket stove” made from discarded cans, and with a few twigs some hot oatmeal was ready, maybe served with homemade sunflower seed yogurt, or Asian-style rice congee with miso paste.

Touching Earth Sangha is an open community welcoming anyone to join our practice, and many curious folks have joined our events over the last few years. My friend Sara and myself, who’ve been organizing the activities, try to live a lifestyle devoted to the art of simplicity. We make no income and we use little money. We never charge for retreats, or even residency, but accept donations. We bike or walk for transportation, and prefer to live without heat, and mostly out-of-doors. Without washers, dryers, or daily showers, we use only a negligible amount of industrial energy. We mostly wash clothes by hand and dry in the sun. Using an insulating “hay-box” for general cooking and a homemade solar oven in the summer, we drastically cut down our fuel needs. We grow vegetables, help local farmers, and gather most of the rest of our food from various businesses that would otherwise throw it out.  Any food we can’t gather for free, or grow ourselves, we purchase unpackaged from local organic sources, maintaining a vegan diet for both ethical and ecological reasons. And we complete the nutrient cycle by composting our own “humanure.” We sometimes experiment with hand-sewing our own robes and dyeing with local plants.  And in all these endeavors we are joined by those who do retreat with us, or live with us in one of our longer-term sanctuaries.

To many people this life might appear austere.  In our experience it’s abundant and freeing. Spending our daily hours on activities that we’re directly and personally invested in, rather than for a paycheck, the joy of work becomes more easy to appreciate. Doing things by hand slows us down, and gives more room for mindfulness to arise. We find that doing without many of the usual conveniences of mechanized life doesn’t actually lead to any real physical deprivation – we eat delicious food that we feel personally connected with, and maintain good health. But by letting go of some habits and conditioning, we find ourselves free of the stress of money worries. We also find a way to address a more modern, and perhaps even deeper stress now growing in our culture – the emerging awareness that our society’s daily lifestyle is not in balance with the needs of a healthy planet and human community.

None of our group’s lifestyle choices are particularly new or innovative—they have all been traditional practices in spiritual communities for centuries, and still can be found in some temples in Asia. It’s a “perennial” way of life rising directly from an awareness of what is really called for in the present moment, and not seeking more.  Its history goes back to the Buddha, and even to the forest yogins before him. What’s new, perhaps, is to try to live this way in today’s world – to try to embody the spirit of the renunciant lifestyle as spiritual practice here in the modern West.

Without feeling the need to follow orthodox rules created in the context of an ancient world, and without getting too involved with the theoretical constructs of modern movements like permaculture, our sangha simply tries to step back from realms of activity that feel unwholesome or excessive. Letting go of the notions of pure and impure, we’re making our best effort to explore how we might return to a simple, ecologically based lifestyle right in the midst of our urban, industrialized, energy intensive society.

On observing the transmission of the Buddha Way to the West, there seems to me to be a crucial imbalance in the three traditional branches of a practice life—ethics, awareness practice, and wisdom (sila, samadhi, and prajña).  I’ve found that there’s abundant access to meditational instruction and practice, as well as sophisticated philosophical discussions about liberating wisdom.  But there seems much less appreciation of the simple, ethical lifestyle that was the foundation for these practices and understandings in their traditional contexts. This lifestyle of simplicity encouraged an intuitive compassionate worldview of frugality and balance that is rare in our culture.  The lay precepts familiar to many Buddhists are sufficiently general, and open enough to interpretation, that they rarely challenge the middle class consumerist mindset of our wider society. The vision of an ethically directed lifestyle of radical simplicity, such as that lived and taught by the Buddha, has yet to visibly take root in the West.  My feeling for this need to move toward less consumption in contemporary western spirituality is what led me to the work of Touching Earth Sangha.

When we look at the stories of the great saints of the various Buddhist traditions, we find a consistent veneration of simplicity, frugality, and a deep appreciation of the inherent gifts of nature. There’s Han Shan in his mountain wilderness and Milarepa in his cave;  Layman Pang sinking his possessions in a lake, and Zen Master Daito living homeless under a bridge.  Even in recent times we have verifiable accounts of numerous Tibetan yogins, Chinese hermits, and Theravadin forest masters carrying on this spirit.

But what is the role of the renunciant tradition in our modern practice? Is it only a scenic backdrop appropriate for a bygone time and now to be discarded, or is something more essential at stake?  We must seriously consider whether practice can fully blossom when we spend so many of our waking hours working in a system focused on the accumulation of money, or prestige, or increasing desires, and then spending one or two hours in meditation practice letting go of that. If our purchasing and traveling habits based on comfort and convenience go unquestioned, how can we expect to unravel the effects of this behavior in short bursts of retreat? If we examine the perennially instructive legend of the Buddha’s life, we learn that his “great renunciation” was the key turning point – it was the foundation that opened the way for his following practice of meditation, and for the fruition of his awakening to wisdom. The challenge of this legacy is clear – the surrendering of the daily-reinforced concerns of the ego is what releases the energy necessary for mediation to fill us more completely and deeply, and for wisdom to be revealed in its essential clarity.

At the same time, many meditation masters through the centuries in Asia have served as models of how little we need materially to be joyful and fully receptive to life’s natural richness. Their simplicity was understood, I believe, as an expression of harmlessness toward all beings—by not taking more than truly necessary, they left enough for all others.  And by not occupying themselves with a mind of acquisitiveness, they could be fully awake to compassion and beneficial action.

These contemplatives were honored by their communities as exemplars of the highest ideals of the culture—generosity, frugality, selflessness, non-harm, and compassion. This tradition, of course, goes far beyond the Buddhist world.  From Christian friars to wandering Sufis, from Indian sadhus to Taoist hermits, those who chose voluntary poverty, using just what they needed in harmony with nature, were held in the highest esteem, and served as reminders to the culture that there are more important values than material comfort and acquisitiveness.

Today, with the growing crisis of climate change and habitat destruction threatening the ability of our planet to sustain and nourish life, the need for exemplars of simple living is stronger than ever before in history. The cause of environmental degradation, and the weather disasters, drought, disease, warfare, and extinctions that are its growing expressions, is clearly greed, over-consumption, and wasteful habit. Where are the models of a fundamentally simpler lifestyle for us?

In modern industrialized cultures the only visible people living in radical simplicity are the urban homeless, who are not generally following a voluntary calling, but are suffering from alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, or personal tragedy. The usual response of the public is pity, or maybe disgust. But if a movement of contemplatives voluntarily choose to be homeless, to reawaken the spirit of renunciation and speak openly about it, this reception might be transformed. If expressed as a calling, and a joy, perhaps simplicity—living with just what’s needed—could become, again, an honored value, and recognized as the essential foundation to a life of freedom, contentment, and true wealth. This is the vision of Touching Earth Sangha.

Our particular focus of practice is to apply our meditation-awareness   to our usual daily habits, and meet the challenging perspectives that emerge.  Getting back in touch with the full weight of a car, and with its speed, in relation to our own bodies and natural movements, we can more fully appreciate the power of the fuel consumed, reflect on it’s cost to all beings, and question more deeply the assumption that we need to move so fast and so far.  When shopping, extending our awareness to the plastic package covering our desired food, we might remember the chemicals involved, and the distances our food has travelled to reach us.  Mindfulness applied in this way can guide us to new lifestyle possibilities, a new vinaya for our time, one that can help awaken us from the consumerist daze that dominates our society and is leading to environmental peril.  Reconnecting with the inherent richness and fullness of the present moment in its stillness and simplicity, our “needs” dissipate, and the path of renunciation becomes a celebration of all the gifts that are freely and naturally already here.

The potential of such a lifestyle change, if made visible and palpable to the larger society, is nothing less than a way out of the current crisis of the global environment.  Ignoring this revolutionary potential, our practice may only become a way to cope a little better with a collapsing world,
while continuing to participate in the mechanism of it’s collapse.  Facing the challenge of a turn toward simplicity need not be a moral burden, however, it can actually be a creative and joyful adventure, bringing relief, freedom, and a clearer awareness of the compassion and beauty at the core of our own hearts.

For my own work practice, I spend most afternoons engaged in urban foraging. In some seasons, especially late summer and early fall, this involves picking straight from the source: plums, figs, apples, walnuts, and chestnuts are abundant and easy to find here in Portland. In the spring there are nettles and cherries, and during the summer an endless variety of berries.  But mostly urban foraging means collecting food that would otherwise go to waste. Since up to 40 percent of all food marketed in the United States ends up in the garbage unused, the first job of any kind of modern mendicant is to tap into this over-looked wealth.

Riding around the city with my bike cart, I stop in at farmer’s markets, urban gardens, food co-ops, bakeries, and any friendly food business. In the last twenty years of my own homeless, income-free living, I’ve never had difficulty finding adequate food, even when limiting myself to vegan, organic fare.  Sometimes I’ve relied on the abundant resources of the surprisingly unblemished and still fresh food overflowing from dumpsters around the country, but recently I don’t even need to check them.

There is much more to be had, of course, than what is needed by our small meditation community.  And so I collect as part of a worldwide endeavor called Food-Not-Bombs. This movement is made up of volunteers in hundreds of independent chapters who collect free food, prepare it in whatever spaces are offered, and serve the meals to any and all in public places like city parks. The communities that spring up at these meal offerings are often rich sources of social connection—most of the members of Touching Earth Sangha met at the Portland servings.

Although food has proven easy to come by, finding land space on which to live without money is more of a challenge  (since public lands in this country are general far from population centers and food sources). After six months at Flourishing Clouds Hermitage, our sangha’s latest sanctuary, an anonymous neighbor reported to the city that she believed we were living without electricity (this is apparently illegal) and the owners, who had generously allowed us to stay, became concerned about fines and asked us to leave. And so we returned to our familiar houseless mode.

I imagine these waves of fortune have always been part of the spiritual renunciant lifestyle, even in cultures that recognize and respect this way of life.  And the lessons of flexibility and equanimity are essential.  But most important is the experience that we still have what we need, that abundance continues, that we are all, in essence, taken care of.  As we trust in community, community reaches out to us, and proves that a gift economy can really work.  Our sangha found places to stay, and our Sunday gatherings and longer retreats and wilderness trips continue – always free, and still with abundant food, shelter, and friendship.

The modern Zen master Kodo Sawaki taught that “Heavan and Earth give themselves.”  Touching Earth Sangha is one effort of a small group of folks to explore this vision of the world as gift, and how we might live to truly express this understanding. Spiritual practice communities have a particular opportunity, maybe responsibility, to inspire and encourage this movement – a movement to celebrate inherent abundance, and the letting go of the striving for more. Hopefully many other groups will discover their own forms and lifestyles that express the vision of voluntary simplicity so urgently needed in today’s world.  Together, our diverse communities can help create a healthy and joyous new society amidst the struggles of the old.