As both an avid land worker, working in the field as a professional Landscaper for over 20 years, and also as a Buddhist Meditator, engaging in many retreats over the last 12 years, I have been compelled to write about my experiences in working with external weeds in the landscape and the internal weeds of the mind.
 
As a Landscaper from Australia, a land in its primary stages of experiencing newly introduced species, most of my life has been in defence of keeping native flora pure and eradicating introduced species. Much of my professional work has involved eradicating weeds using hand work, machinery, fire and heavy use of herbicides. Afterwards revegetating these landscapes with native species. 
I avidly fought off the introduced changes humans brought from Europe to Australia. 
However, I began questioning the mainstream methods and approaches undertaken when I could see the fight was never going to bring about the static native sanctuary I believed the land once was. 

 

What has unfolded alongside this journey of dealing with the external weeds has been my journey as a Buddhist and its views on disturbing emotions ('kleshas' in sanskrit), which we could label as our internal weeds. In my early years as a Buddhist I engaged predominately in the sutra system, viewing my disturbing emotions as something unwholesome and to be eradicated from my mind and experience altogether. Over the years I saw how solely focusing on the sutra system alone caused a split of my psychological being; the pure and the impure. This led to a strengthening of feeling either fundamentally impure and guilty or impressively pure, holy and elevated from others. 

 

In dealing with both the external and internal 'weeds', we could see there are two differing approaches; eradicate or incorporate. 
I find it useful to look further at the implications of each path and ways I have found the path of incorporation beneficial and very necessary in our modern world.

 

Eradication: External weeds
As humans we can see a history prior to industrialisation and commodification where our ancestors’ held traditions and spiritualities that understood nature in a different way than our scientific rigour does. They without a doubt were interconnected to the natural flows of the world that supported their existence. That is how they survived for many thousands of years. 
We have now turned that page and skipped to another chapter in the last 200 or so years. The change has been unbelievably swift and ruthless. We are now left grieving what we have lost; abundant forests, clean vibrant oceans, clear skies, and many animal and plant species. Excruciatingly, many of us on the planet also grieve our loss of the felt connection to the Earth itself. 

 

As a knee jerk reaction to this grief we are advancing our knowledge and sciences to 'combat' this recent and devastating destruction. 
We often receive the message; 'It is not all lost, we must quickly act to save our planet!'. With that message we often look at our world and what it once was and begin a process of re-creating that again. But that time has come and gone. Just as we can't expect to implement natural indigenous systems into our present modern world in a way that copies all they did, we can't expect to purely and perfectly re-create a natural eco-system that once was.  Those systems have been altered and changed. They don't exist in that way anymore and never will. 

 

Our war on so called 'invasive' and non-native species, plant and animal, is based on keeping things the way they were in the past. However, nature and its rhythms don't exist in that way, it evolves how it needs to. It is a system favouring life, healing and continuation. Therefore, these non-native species are playing an integral role in the continuation of nature’s system, given the radical changes we humans have inflicted over the previous two centuries.

 

In our process of rapid growth and a fixation on economisation, so much has changed on our planet and much of it is at risk of not being able to support any kind of life at all. Should we, at this point in time, wage war on the non-native or choose to become a vessel for life to continue and support the natural system in an open minded yet engaged way.

 

Using my home country, Australia, as an example, this might mean that the areas we fight so hard to keep native become 'invaded' by change. It might mean we start to look at the already introduced foreign species of plants in a way that is nonbiased and admit their qualities for enhancing and supporting life. Start recognising nature's dynamic, evolving, life promoting and nourishing systems. 
To do this, it may help to contemplate and imagine nature on the planet in another few thousand years; nature that looks completely different to what it does now. A world where we may not recognise many of the plants and animals, but a world that emanates a feeling of abundant life flourishing in an interconnected and collective system. 

 

What if we stop and experience the natural rhythms of life now? It is a constantly flowing and changing cycle of birth and death. What dies sustains life and continuation, and what is born is only due to death. This is sometimes a harsh reality when we can only see existence from the limited point of view of how things are now and how we are now. In the future we will say goodbye to some species, and we will welcome new ones. We humans will change, perhaps even disappear. Either way lets respond to the calls of the natural world that we are a part of, without biases or personal agendas. To live promoting life as one family.

 

I first recognised in myself the inability to be able to accept change when pests would eat our vegetables and fruit, or when I was in a national park and see a non-native plant. I would become fixated and try so hard to eradicate those perpetrators. They became my enemy. Slowly I couldn't help but see how much suffering arose in me when weeds kept growing and I had to work ever so hard to keep things a way I saw as 'correct'. 

 

Incorporation: External weeds
Thanks to my European wife, who would always comment on the beauty of the weeds and insects that I actively despised, uncomfortably I started to open to their beauty and the role they played in re-establishing life in degraded landscapes. As a practise, I began just sitting in nature for hours and observing these 'pests' and 'weeds' in the environments and projects I was involved in, to see how they work. 
I began to open to the energies within the natural world and established my role within it as just a part, not controller or owner. As a good friend puts it, 'We are not here to play God!'. 

 

I saw how the more disturbed and degraded an environment was, the quicker and more abundant the weeds response was, this made me question the most viewed predominant issue at play. Was it an issue with weeds, or was it that due to our inability to see the intricate functioning of a healthy natural environment and our incessant valuing of growth and extraction of natural resources that is the real issue? The real cause of the issue could have been mitigated if we had chosen to work with the natural environment to meet our necessary (and only necessary) needs.  
Could it be that weeds are our allies in a systematic restoration of natural systems? Maybe what we call unhealthy, ugly, or non-pure is a mere step toward an evolving state of abundant health and diversity.   

 

Over the past years, my relationship with the outer environment has transitioned from trying to change and manipulate it, to opening to it and feeling it. My hands are still in the Earth every day, and they still pull 'weeds' regularly, however I now communicate deeply with landscapes. I feel my place within it and can say confidently I appreciate those weeds the same I do native plants. I don't really know how that paradoxically happens, but that it's the way I experience it and I feel much more content doing this. These growing felt connections to the Landscape, native and non-native continues to be expressed in the projects, farms and gardens I work with in my professional life. 

 

I walk in industrial wastelands covered in naturally occurring 'invasive weeds', I sit in fields of introduced flowers and grasses buzzing with introduced bees and insects and my heart naturally warms seeing the role these 'nasty ferals' play in re-establishing life. They are the pioneers in the transition we are now seeing. 
Let's not be fooled, we are not the saviours with our fancy tools, poisons and sharp intellects. Nature itself is the saviour, the nature we can never remove ourselves from. We now have a choice on how we integrate into this inevitable transition that nature has never stopped engaging in. Humans can play a very important role in stewarding a change from extractivism to regeneration and continuation.

 

Eradication: Internal weeds
Now what about those internal weeds, surely they aren't good in any way? 
I reached a point in my life where I could not continue to stay oblivious to the effects of my uncontrollable attachment and desire, not to mention my anger and rage. In my early 20's I was completely overcome by feelings of worthlessness around not being able to control these 'disturbing emotions' and had no inner-trust, confidence or contentment. 
These perceived traits of mine were my enemy, they were ruining my life and I needed a method to combat them. I began psychotherapy and engaged heavily in Buddhist study and meditation. Both these methods presented very sophisticated methods in combatting my enemy, and I began to feel ok about myself... most of the time.

 

I practised complete celibacy for a long period, retired from my marijuana career and was on an ecstatic journey of pureness. I engaged in long personal meditation retreats in India and Nepal and even started teaching meditation for 10 day silent retreats. I was sitting in front of, and leading meditation to, hundreds of people at a time.
However deep down, I didn't believe my forced state of purity and as my relationship with my wife started, my purity facade started to crumble. This was something I was fortunate enough to be able navigate without a complete collapse and relapse. I began to realise my forced spirituality helped me push away and bury my internal weeds. They were not eradicated at all. 
Rob Preece once explained this process to me as, 'Our spiritual practise placing a veneer of purity over our underlying psychological issues', rather than integrating them. This shiny beautiful veneer started to flake at the edges and reveal those parts I had buried in the process of my spiritual work.

 

I realised the next part of my journey had abruptly arrived.

 

Incorporation: Internal weeds
The feeling grew that I needed to allow my inner weeds to surface slowly and accept them genuinely and openly and somehow incorporate them into my reality, without allowing them free reign to control and govern my life. Accepting responsibility helped, I wasn't only responsible for my own wellbeing, but, to some degree, I was responsible for the people I was guiding in meditation retreats, to my relationship and wife, and to the other roles I played in my work and personal life. 
So, I pulled my socks up and uncomfortably started allowing the shadowy realities within my psyche to surface. I held them a little more openly and began to share with others the process I was going through. Whilst allowing my inner weeds to be exposed, the shimmering light edges of those hidden shadowy aspects revealed themselves. To the point now, that I can admit that these are the jewels I have found in my life. They make me human, and thanks to them I have many close and genuine friends, I can connect with other humans on a deep level when I allow inner honesty to accompany my relationships. I am motivated each day to continue a life of inner discovery and growth. 

Continuing with weeds
I recall, on a pee break during a retreat at Kopan Monastery, while looking at the flaking paint on the wall, a strong wave of realisation coming over me. I realised that in my life I had continuously held myself with either guilt, due to my inherent 'badness', or on the other spectrum, proud, due to being somehow special and important. It was a constant striving to get away from my faults and be something 'worthy'. I jumped from one extreme way of viewing myself to the other and it was psychologically confusing and an inner torment every day. Due to this I viewed myself as unlovable and damaged and so the cycle continued, constantly trying to prove my pureness to myself and the world, distancing myself from the ability to feel any kind of real love.

 

The solution I realised, while looking at that wall peeing, was accepting I was realistically somewhere in the middle of inherently bad or perfect and pure... normal! A being with both qualities and inner weeds. I smiled at this middle way, realistic way of existing and in that moment, I felt a wave of acceptance. Something I can still feel now.

 

Depending on how I deal with my inevitable inner weeds, they either have power to destroy me, or germinate acceptance and growth in me. In dealing with others, especially in my relationships, when I accept my own weeds I become humbler and allow the other persons' weeds to surface, holding them with love and acceptance. My weeds are less likely to get entangled with others when I accept my own beautiful grove of flowering, seeding and thriving weeds. My experience of this is of connection and lovability. 
 
Now let's look at the outer weeds in the landscape. Treating them with openness, softness and curiosity, like our inner weeds, can only lead us to better understanding them and the degraded environments in which they are invited to grow in. 
After we sit back, observe them, and see them for what they really are, not what we are told they are (obnoxious, nasty, invasive - inherently bad), we see with reality which weeds may require a little controlling and surveillance and which can be left to do their thing, or in fact be encouraged, to regenerate degraded landscapes at risk of losing all life. 

 

Only when we hold a dual view of inherently bad (non-native) and inherently good (native) do we act with haste and fear, leading to the next problem to combat and defend against. In reality this strong line of division doesn't exist and our inner wisdom can recognise that.
We are a part of this living system, so we have a responsibility. That responsibility certainly requires us to be able to put aside our prejudices when it comes to regenerating degraded and at-risk landscapes. 

 

In conclusion, I feel that through adding the ingredients of our internal and external weeds to the alchemical vessel and applying the radiant pressure of checking up and realistic reflection without prejudice and fear, we can transform these raw ingredients into the most potent and vital elixir for life promoting energy. Energy of connection, love, joy, and life; the essential ingredient all living beings have at their core.