The Zen monk Dogen wrote: ‘You should know that the entire Earth is not our temporary appearance but our genuine human body.’ Earth, according to Dogen, is truth and speaks truth but not always or necessarily with a human tongue. It is our body. And its voice can be heard even in a desert silence. (The Fruitful Darkness, Joan Halifax, 1993, p. 202)
More than 35 years ago, Roshi Joan Halifax was invited to steward a small plot of land in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the site of the first public stupa in the continental United States (Cerro Gordo Temple/Khang Tsag). In the ensuing years, she founded Upaya Zen Center and Institute on this location, with initial support from Laurance Rockefeller and Richard Baker Roshi, which has blossomed into one of the world’s most vibrant Zen centers.
But Upaya was never intended to be an ethereal Buddhist center without connection to place. Halifax, bringing her perspective as an anthropologist who spent extensive time with Indigenous people, has always noticed and explored the relationship with the land in this fertile river valley.
During those first years in Santa Fe, she wrote an eloquent description of the nascent center (1997, The Mindfulness Bell, Parallax Press):
We are blessed with a beautiful setting for this Buddhist center. We find ourselves in the Valley of Holy Faith, a valley that runs east/west with the Santa Fe River flowing through it. Directly behind us is Cerro Gordo Mountain; to the east is Atalaya Peak. Our adobe buildings, wetlands, and Southwest gardens gather into the mandala of mountain, valley, and river. Through the strong change of seasons—the monsoons of summer, the cool of shade, the heat of sun—we open ourselves to a landscape within and without that is constantly unfolding and enclosing. The sky is big here: big mind, big heart. The valley is intimate: abiding in ultimate closeness.
Over these four decades, Halifax has woven a tapestry of Dharma study and practice, and respect for the nature, history, and culture of this place where Upaya is situated.
One thread in that tapestry is the rewilding work that Halifax and the Upaya sangha have engaged in—planting hundreds of trees and pollinator plants and transforming this high desert site into an oasis.
Another thread is an annual retreat called Planting Life, now in its 15th year. What started as a small, in-person gathering has grown into a hybrid event attended by more than 100 participants in May of 2026.
Planting Life weaves together Indigenous wisdom and science, Buddhist teachings, the physical practice of putting our hands in the earth, and doing all this together as a sangha. With Planting Life, Halifax invites the local and global community to learn about the Indigenous roots of this land and their connection to Dharma teachings. In her opening talk at this year’s retreat, she said, “Each one of us has deep history. We come here from different genetic lineages, and we braid our lives together for a period of time as we plant, pray, practice, and learn.”
The roots of the retreat go back to 2011, when Dharma teacher Wendy Johnson (author of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate) helped Upaya establish an organic garden next to the Circle of the Way zendo. Residents prepared the land and built a fence to enclose the garden—Upaya’s chaplaincy students joined in the process and one of them, Karen Shoren Strawn, created a beautiful sculpture that still lives in the center of the garden.
Named the Three Sisters garden—after the traditional crops in this area: corn, beans, and squash—it has become a gathering place every May, as the weather warms up for Northern New Mexico’s planting season. With each year the garden has grown lusher and more abundant—as Johnson calls it, a “small plot of paradise . . . offering a vibrant harvest of nutrient-rich bounty with every fresh growing season.”
In 2014, Halifax invited artist and seed saver Roxanne Swentzell (Kha’p’o Owingeh/Santa Clara Pueblo) to be part of Planting Life. Every year since then, Swentzell has shared her embodied experience of Tewa traditional ecological knowledge as well as Native foodways.
The Planting Life faculty has grown to include Roxanne’s son Porter, a teacher, scholar, and community leader; Keido Troy Fernandez, Upaya Zen Priest and 13th generation New Mexican; Alonso Mendez, Tzeltal Maya cultural astronomer; Melissa Nelson, professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University; and Beata Tsosie (Kha’p’o Owingeh/Santa Clara Pueblo), an educator, birthworker, and practitioner of Indigenous Sustainable Design (permaculture). Wendy Johnson continues to be an integral part of Planting Life every year.
On first glance, the high dry desert landscape of Northern New Mexico, the ancestral home of the Tewa peoples, may seem an inhospitable place for gardening. Summer heat is intense, there can be long periods of drought, and winter brings deep freezes. But over many generations, Tewa farmers have learned how to listen to and work with the land and waters. A body of wisdom has developed and been transmitted that makes it possible to plant and harvest an amazing abundance of crops even under harsh conditions. These are the teachings that Swentzell and Tsosie hold and carry into Planting Life.
At this year’s retreat, Halifax reflected on her relationship to the land and how important it is to “be a servant to a place.” Tsosie echoed this teaching as she shared the story of the Healing Foods Oasis, a community garden she envisioned and established ten years ago in the small town of Espanola, on the Tewa homelands to the north of Santa Fe. The EHFO, as it’s called, was originally a barren gravel slope where nothing was growing. When rain fell the water moved downhill but had nowhere to go, no plants to nourish. Empty beer bottles and used hypodermic needles littered the bottom of the slope. This was a neglected place in a town that has long struggled with the consequences of colonization: severe economic inequities, substance abuse, intergenerational trauma.
Ten years later, after intentional design work, thousands of hours of community volunteer labor, and native plants and seeds donated by local farmers and nurseries, the EHFO is a thriving garden. It’s also a community gathering space where plant workshops and poetry readings are held, and it serves as a demonstration site for the traditional dryland farming techniques that Pueblo people have developed over many generations to make the most of precious water.
Tsosie invited retreatants to consider what a difference it could make if each person focused on a small piece of land near them and gave it the full focus of their love, attention and energy. As both Upaya and the EHFO show, transformation is possible.
One of the phrases Halifax often quotes comes from Eihei Dogen: “giving life to life.” The Three Sisters Garden and this joyous annual gathering, Planting Life, embody this phrase. This practice of radical generosity, receiving from and giving to the Earth, offers us much-needed medicine for these extraordinary times and teaches us to “plant life wherever we are,” as Roshi says.
See more
Planting Life: Practice, Community, and Renewal (Upaya Zen Center)
History of Cerro Gordo Stupa and Temple (Upaya Zen Center)
Sangha Profile – Upaya Sangha, Santa Fe, New Mexico (The Mindfulness Bell)
Rewilding Upaya: From 1991 to 2025 (Upaya Zen Center)
Related features from BDG
In a Moment, in a Breath: 55 Zen Meditations from Roshi Joan Halifax
The Variety of Practice in Soto Zen Buddhism
Metta’s Gardening Leave
Not knowing, Bearing Witness, and Compassionate Action
Keep Planting Seeds
At the Heart of Buddhist Chaplaincy
Restoration and Justice: An Interview with Dr. Natalie Avalos on Indigenous Spirituality and Buddhist Allies
