Donn Brennan (DB): Tell me about the project – The Botanical Mind… 

Gina Buenfeld (GB): I suppose one way of thinking about it is that it foregrounds the mind as a principle running through all aspects of the living world, to reappraise and reevaluate our relationship with plants. It builds from the understanding that non-human entities have an energetic life force. It really started for me when I first went out to the Amazon – about five years ago – and encountered the way that indigenous peoples there really understand plants and the forests that they live with. And to me, that felt so much more elemental than how we understand it here. The plant kingdom out there is so primary, immersive, it’s not a collection of isolated plant specimens, but it was really like this element that people and other animals live in and through like the air or the water, or fire, you know, it’s at the foundation of life. So I became really fascinated with that and their spiritual understanding of plants – the way they can communicate and work with plants for healing is really based in their spirituality, it's kind of at the core of their whole cosmology really. I felt motivated then to think about how we ended up where we are in Europe, having this very mechanistic and chemically-based understanding of plants, thinking in terms of what they can do to the physical body without understanding the energetic body, and how that heals. I started looking back at practices that existed before the scientific revolution, and before the Enlightenment, before spirit and matter were split apart in our forms of knowledge. And so a lot of the exhibition draws on medieval ideas, or earlier, from antiquity, and looks at more marginalised scientific ideas that have continued to exist but that are by no means in the mainstream here. So to me, Ayurveda is really important and fascinating.

DB: Ayurveda is profoundly underpinning everything that you're doing. The understanding in Ayurveda would be absolutely supportive. It's total wisdom, the perspective you're taking, in comparison to the reality of loss of memory of our culture. It's an awakening. It's a lovely concept that you actually use the exhibition to awaken people to their own innate wisdom and the consequent connection they have with life around them, which co-exists with the same laws of nature. 

GB: That’s our hope. One of the things that has interested me in terms of our European heritage is humoural theory and my understanding is that the Ayurvedic system is much older than the European model.

DB: The European model would have originated from the ancient Greeks, where they had phlegmatic and choleric. Alexander the Great conquered many lands and came to India where he was quite fascinated by the culture and actually had Ayurvedic physicians within his court. And so, those humours are absolutely the reflection of the Ayurvedic principals which are the five elements, bound to the five senses - a way of explaining how we create our reality through our senses and create varying qualities of relationships with everything around us - which is simplified to the three fundamental dynamics of Vata, Pitta and Kapha. These different humours are qualities that need to be balanced, within and with the universe around us, to awaken and integrate ourselves with life and live a fulfilled, happy and wise life. Ayurveda has been seeding for millennia. Even the pulse diagnosis and acupuncture points in traditional Chinese medicine derive from marma points in India that travelled East with the Buddhists. Ayurveda goes back beyond that - way, way, back.

How old is Ayurveda? Well, it is as old as life because when you create your own structure, there's an intelligence there and as long as there was life, there was that wisdom, that deep knowledge. That's Ayurveda, it’s the knowledge of life.

Linder (L): Do you still refer within your practice to the ancient texts of Ayurveda?

DB: The textbooks we use must be about 2500 years old, but they're just rewritten versions of even older texts, stretching back to the civilisations in the Himalayas during the Mohenja-dara era. Those cities were the most ancient, maybe 7000 years old – the greatest cities of their time. All of the training of any Ayurvedic practitioner will be in the principles that are described in the old texts. The old texts are considered the standard, in that in the same way we would use scientific researchers establishing truth and standards, Ayurveda would recognise that which has survived the test of time is the ultimate truth. Because even a medicine like aspirin, 100 years after its discovery, has been discovered to create Raye’s syndrome in a very small proportion of very tiny children. We keep making discoveries in time. So the most ancient principles and practices described in the oldest texts are the time-proven basis of the Ayurvedic practice, which is so profoundly flexible, that we can adjust those principles to the time we live in.

L: Can you describe the role of the plant within Ayurveda?

DB: The plant is so important! I was blessed with a mentor; he was absolutely famous in India for his knowledge of plants. He hadn't taken any traditional Ayurveda training, but had met an old sadhu, a wise old man, and spent 30 years walking the Himalayas with him telling him everything about the plants they met along the way. He had a working knowledge of some 6,000 plants and he could stand in a field and know a plant from its fragrance, from its taste, from its qualities. And then he would suddenly tell you everything about the plant including the Latin name and family and the properties and the uses of it. 

He was so sensitive to plants and he would say that the plant kingdom wants now to help us to regain our health. It’s a fascinating way of thinking about it, a plant is a living being and being a living being it is an aspect or expression of the same fundamental field of life which is consciousness and awareness. It has its intelligence and life structures, according to the same laws of nature that are in my physiology as well as in the plant. So, the plant actually comes to me when I imbibe it, as a reminder, that its intelligence is realigning and awakening and enhancing my memory of natural function, where I have distorted and disturbed myself through improper lifestyle and routine, throwing my system out of balance. The expression of my DNA becomes confused - the proteins and enzymes are distorted because the underlying intelligence within that DNA is turning on the wrong genes. But then the plant comes along and we imbibe it and suddenly the switches are tuned and turn on the right genes, the intelligence is restored, the body remembers. Now the healing, the recreating of the wholeness, which had been lost, starts to happen.

The plants are working by their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory chemicals on one level but that level is just the gross objective material that we are thinking about. In truth, that's based on a finer level – in the organising principles, which is the intelligence in Nature, which is the same intelligence in my nature, and the plant is awakening that. Fundamentally, that plant is life, it's alive and I'm life, I'm alive, so it gives me that quality of enlivenment as well, operating on all these different levels. We’re so caught up with and obsessed by the material form that we cannot deeply appreciate the far more refined and holistic and fundamental perspective that Ayurveda brings about.

L: Can you talk about a couple of the most popular plants in Ayurvedic medicine?

D: Ashwagandha is a wonderful herb, the best tonic for a man's body. It integrates the nervous system, it’s the best anti-stress tonic and it's also good for strengthening the body. Shatavari is a wonderful, beautiful, green luminescent plant with innumerable roots, like long carrots that are the best tonic for a woman's body at every point in her life, giving her nourishment. Again, not merely on the physical side, but as a tonic for the mind as well.

There’s a mineral pitch, ‘shilajit’, that emerges from cracks in the Himalayas that is the transformed substance of ancient forests that were crushed by the collapsing mountain. And they're just there, within the actual depth of the rocks giving out this mineral pitch, that's really good for clearing toxins and for diabetes. So, there's amazing use of minerals and all aspects of the herbs, the root, the flower, the seed in Ayurveda that has the richest knowledge of plants out of all the traditions. And it combines this with great strategies of cleansing – including the capacity for the body to cleanse itself and clear the debris it’s collected on the way. 

But I think the real essence of Ayurveda is its capacity to take us from this material level and to understand how, through the senses, we've created five ‘bundles’ of energies, called elements (space, air, fire, water and earth).  They create physical form.  The senses are those channels through which awareness or consciousness flows. Ayurveda then reconnects us through these five elements, through these five senses, back to their source.  The source is that one who hears the thought or feels the emotion. That’s Ayurveda’s uniqueness, to operate from that field, that source, through all its levels of feeling and intellect and thinking and how balancing – even when just in the material form - allows the feelings to be enhanced, the thinking to be clear.

DB: First, just recognise that the medical paradigm is defined in formulating a problem and then attacking that problem - whether that’s “killing” bacteria, the virus or cancer cells, it’s very, very awesomely fearsome, it’s about battle. None of us should take that perspective except the doctors, let the doctors be the experts in that and let the rest of us focus on health, healing and strength - now that’s what’s been missing in the media. That’s what’s disturbing too, our whole civilisation, particularly the vulnerable, naturally are fearful with all of that going on.

We should be focused on our health, our creative health, and that will be an antidote to the negative publicity and would also put our immune systems in a more resilient state to be able to deal with the virus. Actually, coronavirus is causing kapha problems for people whose kapha is out of balance, whether they’re overweight or diabetic or have heart conditions. The people who die unfortunately have a bad kapha imbalance and this coronavirus is a kapha problem. If we know how to balance kapha by adding a couple of spices to our diet and getting some exercise and other simple strategies, then we can improve our immunity and in that sense protect ourselves, as we also continue to wash hands and social distance as needed.

Going into autumn is a vata season - the sun is fading away and the nights are becoming darker. In ancient times people actually slept more because what else could they do in the dark? We should be taking more rest in the autumn, taking life easier, we should be more meditative and we should eat more nourishing foods to balance the qualities of vata that come up at this time. We should understand that our nature changes with the seasons, the seasons happen within us and we should make appropriate adjustments. In the summer, we intuitively and spontaneously know this - we want leafy green salads, fruits and juices, everything that balances the heat of pitta. But in the autumn, after the harvest festival, we should be going into a rest mode so that we don’t strain, rush or hurry in the autumn and then remain happy and healthy through the winter. But because people go back to school, struggle and take on new projects, they then hate the winter because they’re exhausted!

L: Listening to you talk about time, within Ayurveda does time become our laboratory? And when we take certain herbs do our bodies in turn become the laboratories in which we're assessing – within time – how the herbs affect us?

DB: Wonderful question Linder, because you've taken this now beyond time. Because the fundamental, most profound reality of Linder Sterling, and of everyone who might listen, is that you're not your physical structure existing in time. You are not your thoughts and feelings which come and go in time. You were two years old and you were 20 years old and you now still are Linder Sterling, and yet your body constantly renews - in every three years the last atom is replaced - and your mind has definitely changed over that time. You are not your mind, you are not your body, you are that Being, that Awareness, that Consciousness, that profound essence of life, which is just Pure Awareness. That's our fundamental reality and that is beyond time. That is a field of immense potentiality from which everything arises, our thoughts, our intelligence, our creativity, our art, our music - they actually are refined ways of re-integrating us. As we listen to music or look at art through the senses, we regain some coherent, integrated style of functioning to cognise a reality which is far deeper, which is our essence, which connects us. Every one of us has Consciousness and in truth in Ayurveda, that field of being of Consciousness is the same field which structures life, structures the whole universe. The whole universe is that field of Awareness or Consciousness manifesting manifold worlds, perhaps universes, certainly galaxies, certainly this planet, certainly the rain forest, certainly our physiology.

The very same intelligence - that innate being, those laws of nature or principles of organisation, whatever you want to call them - that is structuring your physiology,  Linder  Sterling, are the same dynamics and organising principles, that are structuring the entire universe around you, including all the plants, including myrrh.

All is product, the production of a vast field of Awareness or Consciousness, of which we are the culmination, which allows that field to appreciate itself through our awareness of the whole.

Unfortunately, in the process, we've lost our memory and we've projected ourselves out to a very materialistic perspective now, which we live in – a universe of material that has to be analysed in terms of its bits. In that process we lose the underlying wholeness in our awareness.  It is still there, but it is no longer in our awareness.  We got lost; we lost ourselves, the witness to the experience, as we projected into all our perceptions. Who's the one who’s perceiving? Who's the sublime? Who's the divine? Who's the one who knows? That we need to wake up to and that we do to some extent through art, music, beauty. Wordsworth wrote “that serene and blessed mood, in which the affections gently lead us on, until, the breath of this corporeal frame and even the motion of our human blood, almost suspended, we are laid asleep in body and become a living soul.” That’s an experience in poetry that reminds us who we are.  With awe we can awaken to our higher reality. 

L: Even as you're talking, I can feel my consciousness transcending.

DB: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, because you are awareness, Linder, and all of us have been trained in this mad world by educational systems that become obsessed with endless fact gathering. We have been trained to put our attention out there, so all we can attend to, is what becomes our life. And now, when we actually start to attend to a finer reality of subtler levels of mind, finer essences of feeling and begin through that attention to awaken that field within – yes, we feel ourselves waking up. And at this time, that’s so vital. Because if we don't wake up now, we will have destroyed the planet through global warming, we will have destroyed ourselves and future generations.

So it's no longer a choice, we have to wake up now, so that we find the wisdom to reintegrate with nature, and allow nature to flourish in us and in our surroundings, with joy, happiness, and fulfillment. That’s the necessity for us to go within.

Ayurveda is Veda – Consciousness – plus Ayus, meaning lifespan. You're talking about time? So, Ayurveda is the wisdom, knowledge and expression of our potential in this lifespan, in this time – to take the unbounded, immortal, eternal being into this material, mortal, minimum lifespan of a mere hundred years. So that we can use this hundred years to wake up to this immense potential available within us!

L: In the works that I’ve made for The Botanical Mind I refer to myrrh, which we know predominantly as one of the gifts given by the three wise men to the infant Jesus. Is myrrh used in Ayurveda and which properties is it seen to have?

D: Myrrh is very interesting. Of course gold was given as a symbol of kingship and an offering of wealth. Frankincense was given as a symbol of spirituality and myrrh was given because myrrh was considered in a sense a panacea, it was so good for so many different health conditions. Myrrh was like an offering of health – that would have been its position. Commiphora myrrh and there’s another tree commiphora mukal and they’re very close. Commiphora myrrh you find as a tree more commonly in the Middle East and in Africa, Commiphora mukal is more common in India. In India, both are used, it’s the gum from this tree that is the myrrh and it has a very important role to play in Ayurveda because it not only has its own properties but it’s often used in combinations, in many combinations you get commiphora. Its properties are to balance vata, which is very fundamental and moves everything in mind and body, plus commiphora balances kapha. Myrrh also removes obstructions, so it’s a very predominant preparation in the treatment of pain, arthritis, neuralgia, and aches and pains in the body. In fact there was myrrh in the wine offered to Jesus on the cross, which was traditional for crucifixion, as it had properties to ease the pain. In Ayurveda, myrrh is also useful for chest problems, for coughs and colds, and for women’s problems too. There would be very many different beneficial effects from the plant. Why medicine would have such difficulty coping with it is because in medicine you have one chemical for one purpose, whereas plants have innumerable chemicals that are synergised in our physiology and have an unbelievably complex effect that medicine could never fathom because there’s so much going on to create all these different effects in the body.

And then again, modern research comes along and says that myrrh is antiseptic, antioxidant, analgesic, antimicrobial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, it’s anti-carcinogenic, it’s anti-hyperglycaemic, it’s chemo-protective, it’s hepatic-protective. So, there were medicines coming along that would have had these effects, maybe we can now begin to comprehend how myrrh could be used as a panacea.

L: I’ve been having very intimate conversations with myrrh for a few years now and I feel very familiar with its various properties and its effects upon body and mind. I find that, just as sometimes I think that I must have some tea, that I now know when I must inhale myrrh or massage myself with a myrrh oil blend.

D: It’s interesting because that would have been the original science behind the discovery. The science would once have been that when the mind was stabilised at the base, from that silent unchanging basis, people could cognise the full effect on every level of feelings and thinking and physical being. There would have been an immense sensitivity that they could fathom how to combine 40 different plants and know that the synergy was going to be so effective to prevent ageing or some other effect.

And this is what you’re describing to the n-th degree, and that’s not anti-scientific. The whole basis of our science is mathematics which is a mental exercise. We recognise the laws of nature within and without through mathematical formulations which we project into the universe, that underlie the complexity of quantum field theories and the whole basis of science, and it’s the same way of knowing about myrrh. We’re moving out of the dualistic notion of mind or body and we’re recognising that our mind is our body, our body is our mind. We are consciousness.

L: That’s a very beautiful point at which to complete our conversation. Is there anything you’d like to add?

 D: Here’s wishing that through this wonderful display of beauty in The Botanical Mind that everybody is awakened to their sublime and joyful being and that they may all go in happiness and health and wellbeing.

“Marbling as a kind of cookery appeals and belongs to the whole ancient tradition of secrets, inherited and encapsulated in hermeticism, including glassmaking, colours, medicines, alchemy, perfumes, artificial gems, strange geology and botany, silk, hallucinogens and poisons—recipes of all sorts. Paracelsus collected such secrets from miners, old women, apothecaries, and the like.”

Peter Lamborn Wilson