Pride has taught me how to fall gracefully. This summer we surrendered to our ineptitude and bought a compost drum. It’s a neat creature, a black, coiled dragon that guards the back entrance from the laundry room to the north gardens. It has a little lid that flips back and the first thing we put into it were the crazy-wild marjoram that now infest all the beds. And because it’s right by the door there are no longer any excuses about taking out the day’s cooking scraps. Every couple of days, we give the drum a twirl and listen to the ka-thunk, ka-thunk that suggests maybe we shouldn’t have put all that mud in with the marjoram.
Sometimes I need a little extra help and it’s no great sin to get the right equipment while I’m in the learning stage. Of course, my ego resents this black dragon-drum. The competency police have been out in full force reading me the riot act about taking the easy way into transformation. The Poor-me Pixies have been hanging around too with their night-time serenades about giving up and never really amounting to anything.
To all of them I have this to say:
COMPOST!
Well.. almost. But hey, it’s a heck of a lot closer than I’ve ever been to real live compost!
Now I’m wondering if there’s a zazen technique that involves getting spun and tumbled every couple of days to speed up the process…
Thank you for composting,
Genju
108zenbooks 
Hi Genju,
What a great analogy. “…getting spun and tumbled every couple of days to speed up the process…” hmmmm…this is akin to the heart being cracked open?
XOXO
-Leslie
Leslie, this is what happens with the stuff we think is useless. 😉 The heart cracking open is more like taking a darned rototiller to hard ground. OUCH! 😦
But hey! When my heart has cracked open, I see it as a good time to spread the compost and fertilize the ground. Makes for more nutritious goodies!
Take care of that heart!
This gives a slightly more tangible twist to the saying, “you get back what you put in.” ^^
Thank you~
I am loving these compost posts. I have seen these tumblers and thought what a great idea. I even saw one that was round and had the image of the world on it! Yes a zen technique that would transform us into something rich and fertile??
My friend the Zen monk talks of her years in the monastery as “people rubbing up against each other and taking the rough edges off” although daily life can do that too! I think we always get what we need. It may not please us and we may not know what to do with it but I do feel sometime like I’ve been thrown into a drum and am being rolled around!
I was appalled to see that they now sell tumblers to make sea glass… missing the point much?
Roshi Joan talks about being in a karmic accelerator… I’m going to suggest we get compost globes! 😆
Zen Master Seung Sahn was pretty amazed when he came to the West and saw people washing potatoes one-by-one. In Korea, apparently, the put all the potatoes in a basin, fill it with water, and swish ’em around.
That’s sort of how life feels to me, most of the time (the swishing part).
haha, I just asked my wife if she thought the way I was potatoes is strange. She said, “Yeah, you don’t even need to wash them, just cut off the skin.”
oops… “wash potatoes”, not “was”…
can that be edited?? (and this deleted??)
*^^*
I like it the way it is… 😉
The Ox as a potato… Oooooo… now I’m in trouble!!!
Oh wait… I was reading the comments on my other screen and thought it came from Barry!
Joseph… if you “was potato”, I ‘m glad you is Joseph now…! 😉
fair enough! 🙂
The Ox would be better off if he was a potato. Mr. Potato Head!
This reminds me of a Newfie joke my mom emailed me. Do Newfie jokes break precepts???
I just had a moment of non-duality imagining my past life as a potato, and how I grew into a potato plant and sprouted into other potatoes. All potatoes are just one potato! 😉
You and Barry are making me laugh so hard, I’m crying! I want to see Mr. Potato Head posts next week!!!
(I’m not even going near the issue of Newfie jokes! Some of the toughest friends I have a from the Rock and they would do horrible things to me – like make me eat cod tongues soaked in Screech!)
… or for me… the tsunami part…
OH! I GET SO EXCITED WHEN MY POSTS GET TWITTED!!!
Sorry… I’ll crawl back into my composter now… 😈
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“karmic accelerator’…I think I know a few of these…
there is (obviously) no hiding. :O
XOXO
-Leslie
Greetings! I’ve been reading your site for a while now and finally got the courage to go ahead and give you a shout out from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to say keep up the good job!