Zen Master of the Karoo

By Julienne du Toit

Photographs by Chris Marais

Antony Osler is a Zen Buddhist teacher. He is a writer. He is a builder and a carpenter. With his wife Margie, he is a farmer and a self-confessed stoep-sitter.

It’s very seldom that he calls himself a lawyer.

“I usually deny it,” he jokes. But it is his job arbitrating labour disputes that puts him on the road between small Karoo towns. And it is these dirt road journeys that have resulted in his latest book, Zen Dust.

His first book, Stoep Zen, was an unexpected success. Published by Jacana in 2008, it is now in its fourth reprint, which  constitutes best-seller status in South African publishing.

Zen Dust, published in 2012, is similar in that clarity, humour, wisdom and a kind heart shine through every beautifully written page. But this book ranges wider and in many ways, goes deeper than Stoep Zen.

It threads together encounters and even haikus as Antony travels from Kimberley to Koffiefontein, Fauresmith, past Luckhoff and Jagersfontein, to Philippolis, Colesberg and home to Poplar Grove farm on the Oorlogspoort road.

His third book, Mzansi Zen, is also a bestseller, blending affectionate anecdotes and commentaries on South African life, along with heart-opening insights.

“I just love writing,” says Antony. “I love the long hours of focused solitude and am so grateful to live with someone who understands this. I love the relief of cutting and throwing away words, I love the shaping and meticulous care of it all.

“I do keep with me a little notebook in which I write (only in pencil) memories, thoughts, phrases, things seen in passing and overheard. I browse through these books when I write but mostly things seem to well up spontaneously. I plan my work in great detail beforehand so that much of what ends up on paper is already present inside me by the time it comes to putting it down.”

Poplar Grove is one of the smaller farms in the district, bought by Antony’s grandfather decades ago, and named for the long thicket of trees between ironstone hills.

The farmhouse, built in 1850, is low-slung and has two splendid stoeps. One overlooks the distant poplars that gave the farm its name, and the other one has a view over the sheep-dotted plains, all the way to the far horizon.

At the bookends of the day, this is generally where Antony and Margie can be found, with coffee or tea in the morning, wine or whiskey at sunset.

Their nearby self-cater guest cottage, which was a pump house in a previous incarnation, also has a broad stoep. There is no better place for slow conversation and companionable silence.

The Aermotor windpump nearby spins and sighs, pulling fresh cold water from the earth, a cupful at a time.

From here you can contemplate the dassies scampering up and down the koppie, the bright weaver birds in the willows and a scrub hare that may appear in the early morning.

When Margie and Antony met nearly thirty years, he was already a Buddhist.

As Antony explains it in Stoep Zen, “Buddhism is a way of experience, a way of living our lives as profoundly and as simply as we can…. it is marked by a depth of life rather than by adherence to a creed. So, wherever people care deeply about things, this way of life is open to them.”

He spent three years at a Zen Buddhist monastery, shaving his head and donning robes at Mount Baldy in California. Singer Leonard Cohen was also a monk at this same monastery – one of the many reasons Antony loves his music.

Their home is graceful and full of books.

On the Karoo’s natural spirituality, Antony notes “There’s a nice balance of vastness and detail here. The space and the silence allow for contemplation, for people to feel still and connected.”

Margie adds that the Karoo gently insists on surrender. “You know you cannot dominate your surroundings. It humbles you and makes you generous. And for the children there is a sense of freedom and safety in this space.”

• Email margie@stoepzen.co.za for more information or contact the Oslers at www.stoepzen.co.za