🏔️ The Yamabushi Met the Cheeseburger Buddha

 

                                I love the Japanese; I might have been one in my previous life.

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🏔️ The Yamabushi Met the Cheeseburger Buddha

Tsuyoshi Miyoshi came to Green Gulch Farm on his way back to Japan, fresh from summiting the Grand Tetons. A seasoned mountaineering guide—a kind of modern Yamabushi, one of those mountain ascetics of old Japan—he was calm, tough, and completely at home in silence.

He didn’t speak much English, and I only knew a few words of Japanese. Still, we worked side by side like two Asian brothers, bonded by the rhythm of weeding spinach, breathing, and watching clouds drift across the sky.

Sometimes we were invited to the Tea House of Nakamura Sensei, a seventy-something Japanese Tea Master who called me “Shampoo” instead of Shamsul. She’d feed us simple meals, pour some sake, and laugh freely. Those evenings were pure gift—no talk of enlightenment, just presence in good company.

One morning after three hours of non-stop weeding, I collapsed on my back in the spinach field, using the handle of my Japanese hoe as a neck rest. Gazing up at the sky, I saw clouds moving across endless blue. Then, to the side, I noticed baby weeds sprouting from the ground—as if in slow motion. Time slowed. Breath stilled. The world stopped just long enough for a tiny satori to slip in.

                                               I used to live in Sendai, Japan, for three years.

“BUTA!”
I was jolted back by Tsuyoshi's sudden shout.

There he was, looking down at me, his face perched over the top of his hoe, wearing the silliest grin I’d ever seen.

We didn’t say a word. We simply got up, walked straight to the Zendo, and sat. Breath. Stillness. Silence. Another wave of presence washed through us.

When he left Green Gulch, Tsuyoshi gifted me his mountaineering gear:

• A Gore-Tex two-man tent

• A red goose down jacket

• A waterproof shell
  All high-end gear, all given without ceremony.

• 
                                                        I Miss my Japanese Buddy.
  

  
  

For a man who arrived at the Green Dragon Temple empty-handed, I suddenly owned a few things worth bragging about.

But what Tsuyoshi really left behind was more than gear. It was the kind of friendship born without words, sealed in shared labor, laughter, and tea.
A Yamabushi met the Cheeseburger Buddha—and for a while, they weeded spinach together under the same sky.

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Sometimes the mountain appears in the field. And sometimes, the most precious gift is a grin over a hoe handle and a bottle of sake.

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