Maverick Life

Zen and the Art of Karoo Living

Practising on the double-bass in the music room at Poplar Grove. (Photo: Chris Marais)

11 Sep 2024

At Poplar Grove in Colesberg, Antony and Margie Osler welcome guests to experience stoep zen and meditation in the stillness of the Karoo.

It was so hot, that summer of 2012, and at every place we stayed along our work journeys it simply cooked throughout the night.

Now we were going to a cottage on a faraway farm with Buddhists, no electricity and thus no fan. My husband Chris was trying to weasel his way out of it long before we got there.

“It’s going to be lentils and chanting all weekend,” he lamented, having once been trapped in a Los Angeles ashram while chasing a girl who had a guru there.

We drove to the farmstead and rang the bell. Seven seconds later, he said firmly: “There’s no one here. Let’s go.”

I was just wondering which bush I could safely pee behind when the delightful Margie Osler opened the door with a wide, welcoming smile and a hug for each of us. Chris and I melted on the spot.

Zen Antony’s workshop, packed with farm tools and memories. (Photo: Chris Marais)

The cottage of contemplation

The reason we were there was because years before, we had heard about a man who had turned a shearing shed on a Colesberg farm into a place of meditation.

That same man had written a sleeper hit of a book in 2008 – Stoep Zen.

That was all we knew. When we arrived at Poplar Grove Farm, his wife Margie told us he wasn’t yet back from his other job, working on labour mediation up in Kimberley.

Margie showed us our little cottage, made of stone, cool with thick walls, two rooms with a long stoep facing willow trees, a koppie and wide open spaces. After unpacking, we collapsed on the stoep, staring out at the veld beyond in a state of boneless relaxation we seldom experience outside of home.

A bokmakierie called out and blue cranes flew over the ridge. A nearby Aermotor wind pump whirred quietly, casting a spinning shadow on a cow and her calf.

Antony and Margie Osler, the faces of Poplar Grove Farm. (Photo: Chris Marais)

Zen The Zendo on Poplar Grove was once a shed for shearing sheep. (Photo: Chris Marais)

The Oslers of Poplar Grove

At sundown, we returned to the Osler front stoep. Antony had arrived in a cloud of dust from Kimberley, still dressed in his smart legal attire, soon exchanged for comfortable farm clothes.

Antony Osler is a Zen Buddhist teacher whose learnings mainly come from time spent at the Mount Baldy Monastery in California – and now, from the Great Karoo itself.

He is a writer. He is a builder and a carpenter. Son of Springbok centre Stanley Osler and nephew to legendary Springbok flyhalf Bennie Osler, he was also once a very promising rugby player who chose the rambling life of a folk singer on the high seas instead.

Later on, as a qualified advocate, Antony ran a law clinic in nearby Colesberg during the apartheid era, helping the helpless and standing up, in his quietly defiant but non-aggressive way, to right-wingers who wanted him gone.

He and Margie, who runs the farming, hospitality and outreach side of Poplar Grove, are both self-confessed stoep-sitters.

Over Irish whiskey and popcorn that night, we discussed writing, music and spirituality. Chris and Antony produced their guitars, and some tentative singing began.

Every day is Zen Sky Day at Poplar Grove Farm. (Photo: Chris Marais)

Zen Stopping for scenic gates on the Oorlogskloof road on the way to Poplar Grove Farm. (Photo: Chris Marais)

A monk for dinner

On a trip to Scotland during his years as a young musician, Antony Osler met a group of young Tibetan monks who impressed him deeply.

“One minute, they were carefree young men playing catch with frisbees, and then, once in a ceremonial environment, they were able to just sit still, like mountains. I found that fascinating.”

Antony became increasingly involved in Tibetan Buddhism and, when he returned to South Africa in 1979, helped build and teach at the country’s first Buddhist Retreat Centre at Ixopo in KwaZulu-Natal.

Osler then went to the Mount Baldy Zen Centre in southern California for a three-year residency, training to be a monk.

Returning in 1985, Antony met Margie Gardner, a remedial teacher, at a yoga class in Cape Town. Margie recounted the story of their meeting to journalist Wanda Hennig in 1994.

“He had no hair. I thought he must either have come out of the army or prison.”

Two weeks later, when he reappeared and asked Margie to movies, Antony explained about the bald head.

“As you can imagine, this caused great consternation. I mean, what do you give a monk for dinner? I was sure he wouldn’t drink. Or smoke. Or swear. In fact, he did all three.”

They married two years later, then moved to Grahamstown (now Makhanda), where Antony began the legal career he had studied for.

The Veld Zen of Antony Osler. (Photo: Chris Marais)

The Karoo Law Clinic

In time, the Oslers took over Poplar Grove, a family farm, and lived in what was then a crumbling old house with no running water, and a grapevine that was planted in the 1830s. The house had stood empty for 40 years, and parts had to be completely rebuilt. It was here that they raised and home-schooled their daughters Emma and Sarah, and began to hold Zen Buddhist retreats – with a special Karoo flavour.

Antony opened the Karoo Law Clinic in Colesberg in 1989. When the local conservative white community discovered that he was going to be providing free legal services to more than 200,000 mainly black and coloured people within a 50km radius of the town, he could not rent office premises for love or money.

“So we bought a house in the main street for R30,000 and set up shop,” he said. Funded by the internationally backed Lawyers for Human Rights group, Antony and two paralegals took on cases of labour abuse and assaults by police, among others, some of them as far away as Carnarvon.

“So there was Antony, running the law clinic, his brother Maeder a member of the ANC and former president of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and Maeder’s wife Les, a member of the Black Sash. The Oslers stood out like a sore thumb in Colesberg,” said Margie. “In the meantime, I was on a steep learning curve to becoming a Karoo farmer and mother at the same time.”

After the 1994 democratic elections, funding for the law clinic dried up and Antony began to specialise in labour mediation and arbitration.

Practising on the double bass in the music room at Poplar Grove. (Photo: Chris Marais)

The Zen books

Antony Osler’s first book was Stoep Zen: A Zen Life in South Africa; it was followed by Zen Dust: A journey home through the back roads of South Africa, and Mzansi Zen. He described his writing process thus:

“So I ask myself what kind of book I want to write. If I listen carefully enough I already know. It is the book where I can feel my heart opening. Something that allows me to sigh or stand a little straighter. Aah Yes!... little surprises, gifts, somersaults. Even a tear or two. Not dramatic epiphanies, not finding ourselves on our knees between the bookshelves, but small bells of aliveness that ring as we turn the pages.”

Veld Zen

These days there are two Zen retreats each month at Poplar Grove; a formal one that is more traditionally monastic in style, and a less formal one called Veld Zen.

“We’re just a little Zendo in the veld in the middle of the bottom end of Africa, trying to find our way. It’s compelling us to be authentic about this, about what we do. It is a privilege to be here. How do we honour that privilege?

“Our Zen Practice is defined by the kind of attention we pay to the world we live in, which in this case is the Karoo. In a way, our teachings come out of the Karoo and feed back into it. I am not aware of other Zen teachers who teach this way. So our practice is essentially learning to be part of this blue sky, and this brown veld, and the poplars and the birds and the scorpions and whatever is in front of us.” DM

This is a short chapter excerpt from Karoo Roads IV – In Faraway Places (360 pages, black and white photography, R350 including taxes and courier in South Africa) available from September 2024. Anyone interested in pre-ordering a first edition, author-signed copy should please contact Julie at [email protected] for more details.

The Karoo Quartet (Karoo Roads 1 – 4) consists of more than 60 Karoo stories and hundreds of black and white photographs. Priced at R960 (including taxes and courier in South Africa), this Heritage Collection can also be ordered from [email protected]

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