![]() ![]() The textures of tree bark, the varying heights of plants, the placement of stones, the way a path wends through a landscape: they all work to produce an experience that goes beyond these particulars they create more than the sum of parts. ![]() I used it to take photos of my gardens and of nature, and from behind the camera lens I learned to see more carefully, to explore what makes our environment look and feel a certain way. I have always created art, and the step into photography came when I treated myself to a good camera after a particularly financially successful year in garden design. Now I could say that either I’m a monk who makes gardens, or a gardener who happens to be a monk, and both are true.Īs adding new colors of yarn enhances a woven cloth, my other interests have brought more insight to both my gardens and my spiritual practice. ![]() I take lessons from the gardens that lead me onward to different spiritual directions. This has been the way of my life: my spiritual explorations lead me to certain places to study, and in those places I’ve built gardens. From that small beginning grew my career in making gardens. I incorporated my company, Marpa Landscaping, named for a great adept and farmer in 11th Century Tibet, bought an elderly truck and a wheelbarrow, and opened shop. with my family to pursue my spiritual understanding, I eventually came back to gardening when we settled in Boulder, Colorado. Though I cycled through a number of jobs as I moved around the U.S. There we lived in a little house near the home of the bishop, and I trained with the gardener for the cathedral, extending my understanding of design and maintenance. Later, after finishing my degree at Yale, my partner (later wife) Sabine and I went to Martinique, to await the birth of our first child. ![]() After speaking to most people in my small village, about the only thing they all agreed on was that they could use a park, which led me to design and build my first garden there. Part of my Peace Corps training was to find a project that the entire community I was in could support. When I returned to finish my degree from Yale, I changed my major to the study of language so that I could read the Vedas in the original Sanskrit. In India, I was immersed in a different culture and a different spiritual understanding, and became interested in Buddhism. When I took a break from Yale University to join the Peace Corps in 1965, I wouldn’t have called myself a member of any particular religion. But I had other interests and influences: I began meditating and doing yoga at about the same time, exploring ideas of Eastern religions about which there was very little written in English at the time. I joined a study group with our rabbi and aspired to become a cantor (the one who chants the rituals). I grew up in a nominally Jewish family and became interested in the religion as I prepared for my Bar Mitzvah. I felt free to explore spiritually and artistically, which has informed all aspects of my life. I was born in Denver, Colorado, no longer a frontier in the traditional sense, but certainly one in the sense that there was no particularly dominant culture or aesthetic. It has often given me pause to see how all these seemingly different parts of my life meld together and inform one another, each improving each. I’ve had many interests and pursuits in my life. ![]()
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