Nutriment for the Soul

Sarah Manion, True Light of Courage (pronouns she/
her), believes in joy as a spiritual pursuit. She lived in
Africa for many years, working with artisan cooperatives and textile producers who showed her how making things with our hands embodies our innate sense
of being interwoven with the world. She is a student of
countless teachers, including Thích Nhất Hạnh, Robin
Wall Kimmerer, David Abram, Mary Oliver, the Brewster
flats, adrienne maree brown, Kate Fletcher, Dr. Larry
Ward, her grandmother and aunt (both master knitters),
her dog Lari, and all alpacas everywhere. Sarah lives
on the ancestral lands of the Wampanoag (Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, US) with her partner and all her yarn.

At the back of Deer Park Monastery’s dusty soccer
field, next to the trailhead that leads down into
the valley, sits a big pile of straw, fenced into a
square shape by walls of wooden pallets. Nikolay,
Deer Park’s facility manager of three years, wears
an apron over his flannel shirt as he busily arranges rows of empty white buckets beside the pile. A
friend approaches him.
“I noticed these buckets over here,” he says,
pointing to the rows. “They say ‘HUMANURE.’
What’s that all about?”
Nikolay replies with a smile, “That’s the recycling of human refuse!”
“Yeah? How does that work?”
“Well, just like composting,” he explains, “You
collect it, put it in a pile, and the pile heats up. You
can see right now, even though I’ve just added new
material, steam is still coming out. Before I opened
it, the pile was at 145 degrees Fahrenheit.”
When Nikolay first started working at Deer
Park, he had no experience or particular interest in
compost. Asked about his relationship to climate
change, he reflects, “Climate change was always a
concern of mine, but I couldn’t deal with the depth
of it. It resulted in an ignorant approach, you know,
sometimes it’s just better not to think about [it].”
For many years, Nikolay chose not to pay much attention to climate change and environmental concerns. But when his Deer Park workshop started
producing excess sawdust, an excellent layering
material for compost, he saw a new opportunity
for action.
Nutriment
for the Soul
Brother Minh Lượng tells us about the humanure composting efforts at
Deer Park Monastery, helmed by facility manager Nikolay Amirov.

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Initially, Nikolay’s composting efforts didn’t
work so well. He took a trip to the library, looking
for guidance, and found The Humanure Handbook
by Joseph Jenkins. Nikolay was taken by the book’s
down-to-Earth language and the impressive scientific evidence backing up the humanure system.
“Twenty-five percent of my way into the book, I
said to myself, ‘I am going to do this. I just need to
get the details of how to do it,’” he explains.
How to compost human waste, it turns out, is
rather simple. First, Nikolay built a handful of composting toilets at Deer Park. These toilets consist of
two receptacles: one for deposits and one containing sawdust to scoop out and layer on top of each
deposit. Sawdust is an excellent biofilter, removing odors from the deposits beneath it while providing carbon needed for the compost to “cook”
later on. Humanure relies on four main ingredients
to break down organic matter: carbon, water, air,
and nitrogen (found in urine). Without enough air,
the composting toilet sits waiting for the final condition to begin its transformation.1
Once a week, Nikolay collects the buckets (or
“receptacles,” as he likes to call them) and empties
them into his pile behind the soccer field. He uses
a pitchfork to pull the straw to the edges and make
space in the middle to dump the new material. Afterwards, he cleans the receptacles with a toilet
brush and soapy water, which in turn gets emptied
into the pile. Finally, he covers it all again with a
new layer of straw. Blanketed by straw above, below, and around, the pile is penetrated by air from

outside, and begins to heat up. Once the temperature reaches 115 degrees Fahrenheit, a special
kind of bacteria, called “thermophilic bacteria,”
are activated. These powerful bacteria are the
main driver of the organic matter’s transformation.
As he implemented the humanure system,
Nikolay enjoyed learning about its benefits. The
composting process eliminates the greenhouse
gasses emitted by standard sewage systems that
use energy-intensive treatment techniques. The
thermophilic bacteria in the pile break down toxic
chemicals, pathogens, and even pharmaceutical
drugs, all of which would otherwise create pollution, as they are not broken down by the traditional septic system.
There are also benefits on the local level
at Deer Park. Transforming excrement through
humanuring diverts it from the monastery’s
existing septic system, which expels excess liquid
via underground leach fields and can thereby
pollute the groundwater. Humanure, on the
other hand, produces organic fertilizer, which
adds nutrients to the soil and improves water
retention, protecting and nourishing plants and,
by extension, the whole web of natural life at
Deer Park. Recognizing composting as a means to
protect life, Nikolay sees in it a concrete expression
of the First Mindfulness Training. “At the beginning
of The Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are invited to
look for ways to protect the lives of animals, plants,
and minerals, and that invitation was always very
serious to me,” he explains. Thanks to the practice
of humanure, Nikolay has a concrete way to act on
that invitation.
Humanure is a new development at Deer
Park, but the monastery is no stranger to green
initiatives. In the late 2000s, there was a wave of
enthusiasm among the monks for new projects to
support the environment. Thầy had long wished
for the brothers to install solar panels, and at that
time the conditions came together to do so. “Thầy
was very happy,” remembers Thầy Pháp Dung. “AfClosing the human nutrient cycle. 1

terwards, he kept mentioning it. He would say how
the brothers in Solidity Hamlet are on 100 percent
solar energy, even though we were not completely
off-grid.”
Aware of droughts afflicting the state of California, the monastics also looked for ways to
conserve water. Waterless urinals were installed,
native plants began to replace thirsty, tropical varieties, and the cooking teams tried reusing the
water for rinsing vegetables to do the dishes afterwards. Thầy Pháp Dung points out that a lot of
water goes into our clothes and other possessions
as well. He tries to use things as long as he can.
“Everything has water in it. So when you throw
something away, you’re not just making trash, but
you’re throwing away a lot of water.”
Nikolay sees another reason to save water:
“Did you know,” he asks me, “30 percent of the
electricity California consumes is used to move
water for us? Thirty percent of our electricity, just
to pump water from one place to another; we’re
pumping a lot over very long distances. So our Californian water is very carbon heavy.”
Humanure composting fits well into Deer
Park’s long-standing effort to conserve water. The
practice saves water that would otherwise be used
to flush the toilet. Nikolay calculated that the humanure pile processed 547 gallons of matter in a
recent three-month period—an approximate water savings of 15,300 gallons! That’s equivalent to
an average American’s water use for six months.2
And this is only the beginning. So far, humanure
has been adopted to a limited extent at the monastery. Only residents curious and eager to try the
new system are using it. With greater adoption in
the future, water savings could multiply.
Recently, Nikolay started learning more about
climate change. He recounts, “About a month
ago, all of a sudden my curiosity awakened,
and I felt I have the capacity now to really fill
my consciousness with information.” It’s no
coincidence that Nikolay’s new enthusiasm to
Nikolay Amirov;
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