In a recent piece I discussed how being in nature can suture us, heal our sense of separation and alienation from each other and the world around us if we fully immerse ourselves in it. This piece will continue Dogen’s discussion of mountains in “Mountains and Waters Sutra.” I will follow this by a final piece on his discussion of Waters.
In order to benefit from this healing we have to completely “enter the mountain.” As a boy I went into the Sierra Nevada Mountains every summer with my parents starting when I was six or seven years old. Looking back on this, I remember vividly an experience in my fifth or sixth trip in which I finally fully entered the mountains. One July day we began our hike up to the top of 14, 000 foot Mt. Langley just at dawn and traveled for several hours up its pine-forested side. Although the trail was steep, reading the trail signs which occurred at least every quarter of a mile helped me stay focused and gave me a sense of security. I can remember saying to myself when I saw a sign, “8.8 miles left,” “8.6 miles left,” etc. But when we got to timberline, the trees vanished, the trail turned into nothing more than an animal track, and there were no more trail signs. Suddenly, I felt disoriented, exhausted, and I wanted to quit. But my mother was up ahead of me, urging me on. As I followed her slow, steady footsteps I began to let go of thinking about how far we had come or how long we had been on the trail or how far it was to the top, and I settled spontaneously into a “one step, one breath” focus. All my concerns about how difficult it was or whether I could ever get to the top vanished, and I was fully able to be present. When we finally got to the top (and I say “finally” even though I was no longer measuring my progress, but just immersed in walking) my mother excitedly encouraged me to look at the summit register which went back several years to see if there were any other children who had made it to the top. But once I had completely “entered the mountain,” I had absolutely no interest in comparing myself to others. Instead, I was immersed in enjoying the endless sky and the deep quiet as I peered down on the many valleys. Dogen suggests that the mountain’s true expression is flow. This reminds me of sitting in meditation every morning in San Francisco many years ago with my first teacher. He seemed to sit like a mountain, imperturbable as the traffic rushed by on the busy street outside (a very small mountain, since he was only 4’11”!). And yet when he was not sitting, it seemed that tenderness, generosity, and compassion flowed right out of him. Continuing with Dogen: There are mountains hidden in treasures. There are treasures hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in swamps. There are mountains hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. Investigate mountains fully. Let’s talk about this line by line: There are mountains hidden in treasures, there are treasures hidden in mountains. Once after a morning sitting my teacher said to me, “You have a great treasure within you. Do not let anyone take it from you.” One of my own students recently exclaimed, “When I entered the room and saw you I felt your great calmness.” And I replied, “If you felt a great calmness, that calmness is within you at least as much as it is within me.” There are mountains hidden in swamps. This is a good reminder that if we can maintain our meditation even when our minds are going over and over and over everything that has happened to us and might happen to us, at some point all of the pollution settles and we experience a deep and joyful clarity. There are mountains hidden in the sky. What my teacher used to call Big Mind, accepts and embraces everything that happens, clouds, storms, sleet, hail. Sometimes we may be so overcome by a storm that we forget that it is merely an expression of the sky as the sun is. When we realize this, we can really enjoy our life. Can you find this great stillness right in the middle of a storm? There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. Your still nature (i.e., Buddha Nature) is hidden from so called “you.” Your conscious mind may never be aware of this deep reservoir of peace. But that’s perfectly okay, because your Big Mind (which is everyone’s big mind) is itself this reservoir. This reminds me of Basho’s poem: “Mt. Fuji veiled in misty rain… How wonderful!” Investigate mountains fully. At the end of this stanza Dogen is saying, “Don’t take my word for it when I refer to your mountain stillness. Look into it! Ask yourself what it is. If it’s beyond consciousness, how can you know it? How can you not know it if its your deepest nature? Is it possible to continually live from it? If you ask these questions wholeheartedly, how long will it be before you tap into this reservoir? Another two years of meditation practice, another year, or another moment?” In my new book Zen in the Age of Anxiety, I talk a little about both post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic growth. I refer to research that suggests that some people not only bounce back from tragedy but actually bounce back to a higher level of functioning than before. I explain that this is not a technique or avoidance strategy but a natural phenomenon, which grows out of a consistent meditation practice. We have the ability to cross the threshold of our painful emotions again and again, and allow a natural healing to take place. But this can only happen through patience, persistence, and self-compassion. And self-compassion is difficult for many practitioners.
As we grow up, we develop an internal parent who reminds us not give into our impulses and lead responsible, self-regulated lives. That’s healthy. What’s not so healthy is that this internal parent often morphs into an internal critic and this internal critic may morph into a judgmental tyrant, who continually puts us down, orders us around, and undercuts any feelings of self-compassion we may have through messages like, “I don’t deserve it” or “I’m not good enough” or some other statement about our fundamental unworthiness. The reason it is hard for so many people to grow from and through their traumatic memories is this self-compassion block. If we experience difficulty sending positive vibes to ourselves we can try an experiment in our meditation: sending them to a person or animal who we have deep affection, imagining that person/animal in our lap and when the time feels right bringing that loved one all the way into the center of our being. Then our compassion for them is no longer separate from our feeling toward ourselves. The self-compassion we develop by doing this patiently and persistently, can, in and of itself, change PTSD into Post Traumatic Growth. It’s that simple. Ernest Hemingway seems to have understood this when he wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” Post traumatic growth points to those places that may become strong through both practicing bare awareness in our meditation combined with the support from a spiritual mentor and/or close friend. It may not be a painless process, but if we stick with it, we create a deeper sense of love and connection with the world around us… and all life. This is my fourth and last piece on nature. My reference for this piece is the last section of Mountains and Waters Sutra by Dogen. Here’s my first excerpt.
Some beings see water as a jeweled ornament, some beings see water as wondrous blossoms, Hungry ghosts see water as raging fire or pus and blood. Dragons see water as a palace or a pavilion. Some beings see water as the seven treasures or a wish-granting jewel. Some beings see water as a forest or a wall. In my new book Zen in the Age of Anxiety, I touch on surfing with my high school buddy, Jerry, but I only tell a fraction of the story. From the time I first went to the ocean with Jerry, I noticed how comfortable he was in it regardless of the wave configuration or the weather. For him as for the dragons in Dogen’s quote, the ocean was a palace, (whereas for me it was a wall or a forest). When he was looking out on the ocean or surfing on his long balsam board he could see when certain patterns were emerging and where the undercurrent was whereas all I saw was a mass of chaotic water. It was thrilling to watch him ride waves, how he seemed to anticipate their speed and arcs, and released his body to go with them over and over. I couldn’t tell if he was riding the waves or they were carrying him. Sometimes he would disappear into a trough, but he always emerged (with or without his board) and waited pursued the next wave with great abandon. When I think of Jerry’s surfing I am reminded of what the Zen teacher John Daido Loori said about Michelangelo’s approach to sculpting: “Michelangelo said that he didn’t actually create images; he just released them from the stone. He would patiently chip away until the perfect figure that had always been within the stone was revealed.” I think that’s what Zen practice is all about, seeing below the waves of our chattering mind, so we can return to and live from our uncarved or oceanic nature. Dogen tells us that the only way we can do this is to fully enter the mountains and fully enter the water. When we do this we realize that the mountains and waters are not something out there, but are our own body and mind and that our own body and mind are the mountains and waters themselves. As Dogen says in another piece: “To hear sounds with the whole body and mind, to see forms with the whole body and mind, one understands them intimately.” When we do this we fall into our original uncarved nature. And when we act out of this uncarved nature, our camaraderie with both people and the world around us knows no bounds. We realize that the only limits that exist are the ones we have set for ourselves. Quoting Dogen again: “Learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self.” When you’ve taken that step backward then you can take a step forward, let it go, and take another step. Zen practice is that simple. This is what I call turtle practice. I am trying to bring my teacher’s way alive, just as he brought his teacher’s way and his teacher brought his teacher’s way alive, just as in the expression “turtles all the way down.” One turtle resting on the back of another turtle, resting on the back of another turtle all the way down to the bottom of the bottomless ocean. It’s what one famous teacher called “the ocean of great repose.” One more story about the ocean from my childhood: My grandmother lived on a cliff above the ocean in San Francisco. When I was a boy, my parents left me with her when they went on vacation. Her house was very, very quiet except for the waves, which twisted and thrashed, loud, uncaring, unbounded—wild. I could hear them from any room in her house, but especially her bedroom. I was intrigued by them, but also a little scared. My grandmother knew I was scared and let me sleep with her in her big double bed. I had not yet learned that they seemed wild an out of control because there only laws are those of wind and gravity, the pull of other planets. She had a large picture window in her dining room facing the ocean. In the daytime, when the ocean seemed less scary, I would stand and look out at it until I got dizzy—It wanted to take the path down to the ocean, go through her yard, but she wouldn’t let me. When I first went to ocean a few years later to accompany my surfing friend, Jerry, I got over my dizziness little by little as I immersed myself in it. In a way meditation practice is like this. There is something huge just beyond our sight, which makes us dizzy. We can’t measure it and thinking can’t reach it, but if we gently go into it, it can become quite wonderful and we come to experience as our true home. And we realize that there is no distinction between the turbulent surface of the ocean and its quiet depth. I learned this little by little, first in a very small private pool then in a much larger public one and then in the ocean, itself. When people ask me to discuss stages in meditation, I sometimes use this metaphor. We have the ability to “just be with” regardless of what’s flowing around and within us, regardless of whether it’s a pool or the ocean. It’s a gradual process. We begin in a relatively safe space and only gradually learn to bask in the entire ocean. Finally, Dogen tells us that water is the true dragon’s palace. The Dragon had been an important symbol in China for centuries before Buddhism entered the country in the first and second centuries of the contemporary era. With its horns of a stag, forehead of a camel, eyes of a demon, neck of a snake, belly of a sea-monster, scales of a carp, claws of an eagle, pads of a tiger, and ears of an ox, it became a wonderful symbol for the shape shifting which happens when we let go of our fixed identities and rigid thinking. This appropriation of an indigenous symbol helped Buddhism catch on in China just as the appropriation of the Hindu naga, half human and half cobra, helped Buddhism become legitimized in India. Dogen is suggesting that with the steadiness of your mountain sitting you can be a shape shifting dragon/serpent in water, on land, in the sky. When we do this, we are acting from our uncarved nature just as the Taoist Chuang Tzu suggested 2,500 years ago: The sages of old were fluid as melting ice. Whole as an uncarved block of wood. Receptive as a valley. Turbid as muddied water. Who can be still until their mud settles and the water is cleared by itself? Can you remain tranquil until right action occurs by itself? The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment. Only those who are not full are able to be used. This brings the feeling of completeness. In my last piece I talked about nature. In my next two, I want to continue this discussion using the Mountains and Waters Sutra by Dogen as my reference point. This is Dogen’s only piece which he calls a sutra. His choice of words is audacious because the term “sutra” is generally limited to sacred teachings which come out of ancient Indian Buddhism. I think it reflects how deeply connected Dogen felt to the natural world, as well as what an impact it had on his own meditation practice and life.
“Sutra” etymologically is related to the Latin “suture.” Buddhist scriptures, called sutras, help us sew together our sense of dividedness, isolation, and alienation from the world around us. And study after study shows that the best way to do this is to immerse ourselves in nature. Here’s one of Dogen’s passages toward the beginning of this sutra: These mountains and waters of the present are expressions of the ancient Buddhas. All phenomena realize completeness. Because they exist before the eon of emptiness, they are living in the present. Because they are the self before the appearance of any sign, they are liberated. These mountains and waters of the present are expressions of the ancient Buddhas. All phenomena realize completeness. Many of us get exhausted from clinging to things we love and pushing away things we hate, and nature shows us that at a deeper level we are continually joined with all life. Because they exist before the eon of emptiness, they are living in the present. Mountains, water, clouds, rocks exist before the appearance of any thought that divides us from them. They can help us be present here and now. Because they are the self before the appearance of any sign, they are free and unhindered in their activities. Mountains and water can only appear because of us. We can only appear because there is earth, water, and mountains. Before we have any thought about them, they are alive! Because mountains are big and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached from the mountains; the power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains. Like big and broad mountains, we can go beyond the limitations of our small regretting, reviewing, rehearsing self. We can embrace life in all of its confusion and contradictions. When we do this, we are like the ancient Taoist sages, who also wrote about riding the clouds and soaring in the wind. The green mountains are always walking; a stone woman gives birth to a child at night. Mountains’ walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking. Dogen is reminding us that all life is alive and in flux. The place I go to in the Caribbean every year has a mountain right behind it. If my mind is clear and open, every time I look at the mountain it has changed. The shadows, the amount of green, the reflection of the sun, the sky surrounding it—all features that are delightful signs of its life and movement. But if I am in my head I miss all of this. What about “The stone woman bears a child by night?” Stone seems dense, colorless and even dead, but next time you are outside look at the first rock you see carefully. Stop and pick it up and notice how it bubbles with possibility, how it teems with life. Many spiritual practitioners struggle with depression. Dogen is saying that even with stone-like inertia you can bear a child. The ancient Egyptians show in their hieroglyphics that the best antidote to depression is traveling and dancing. Three thousand years later, western psychologists also believe that one of the best ways to deal with depression is engaging in activity regardless of how you feel. Dogen continues: If you doubt mountains walking, you do not know or understand your own walking. If you know your own walking, you know the mountains walking. Also examine walking backward and backward walking and investigate that walking forward and backward never stopped since before form arose. Instead of thinking of yourself as a “stubborn person”, “anxious person” or “depressed person” just walk, just travel, just dance. Nothing can be healthier than that. Also examine walking backward and backward walking and investigate that walking forward and backward never stopped since before form arose. Here he is alluding to meditation as in his well known “Take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward.” Whatever you are concerned about, in meditation trace it to the root where there is no inside or outside. Consciousness says, “I am here, you’re all out there.” Trace this thought to a place closer and nearer than this division until you have completely sutured; then you are no longer separating yourself from the world around you. Little by little the stitches vanish and you return to your original wholeness. A few years ago I was guiding someone who I will call Nancy to deal with the sadness that came up each time she did a meditation retreat. Through practice she was able to get closer to it until it was no longer just her sadness. She realized both that it was molecular, belonging to everyone and that it was continually changing, continually walking. And lo and behold, while it was still there, it became no longer problematic. Whatever you are concerned about, trace it to the root and as Jane Hirshfield suggested in my last blog, “the unwanted becomes wanted.” As Dogen says, “If you follow the river all the way back to its source, there are clouds. If you follow the clouds all the way back to their source, there is the river.” This is the place where observer and observed meet. Here’s one final passage from Mountains and Waters Sutra: Clearly examine the green mountains’ walking and your own walking. This is called the mountains’ flow and the flowing mountain. The mountain always practices in every place. Mountains belong to people who love them. Everything about mountains is also about you. Mountains and you are moving together, dancing together. Mountains don’t exist without us and we don’t exist without mountains. Pretty wonderful! This is called the mountains’ flow and the flowing mountain An endless springing forth and endless giving ourselves away moment after moment, forever. The mountain always practices in every place Everything in the world is alive and is expressing itself, expressing its life just by being. Mountains belong to people who love them I learned to love mountains at a young age because I enjoyed hiking with my parents every summer in the Sierras. But we shouldn’t romanticize mountains or nature. They are completely beyond the control of humans. Once I did a solo overnight meditation retreat in the Wind Rivers. A huge storm came up. I got soaked to the bone and I wanted to run back to camp. But I stayed with it. If you stay with something you may learn that if you can merge with one thing, you can merge with everything. Furthermore, when we are deeply in love with something whether it be mountains or a friend or a child, there’s the stillness of the mountain emanating from us, so we do not love them any less when they “misbehave.” Nature is wild. Not “crazed,” but simply “what is,” beyond any sense of wanted or unwanted. As Lao Tzu says, “The world is sacred. / It can’t be improved. / If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it. / If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.” Recently, I broke a tendon in my foot playing soccer with my grandson. If I want to avoid re-injuring myself, I am going to have to be very discriminating in what activities I engage in for some time. Luckily, each of us has the capacity to filter our experience, sort it into likes and dislikes, things we want to repeat and things we want to avoid. This is the key to successful functioning.
It’s wonderful and very important, from an evolutionary point of view, that we have this discriminating sense. However, our tendency to reject those activities that don’t support our well-being means that we also have a tendency to accept only the perfect, unblemished fruit. Zen practice teaches us to say yes to everything that happens to us, including the difficult, whether it’s loss, boredom, anger, confusion, or discomfort. Here’s a poem by Jane Hirshfield, commenting on her memory of time spent at Tassajara Zen Monastery in California: Even now, decades after, I wash my face with cold water not for discipline, nor memory, nor the icy, awakening slap, but to practice choosing to make the unwanted wanted. One of the features of MZMC Zen practice periods is the assignment of practice partners. Often practitioners do not get assigned the practice partner they want. So, I have been referring to my injured foot as my practice partner. Right now I am post-surgery—on crutches for a few weeks and wearing a boot, which goes almost up to my knee for some time after that. I certainly did not ask for this practice partner. Nevertheless, he’s been assigned to me and if I am kind to him, pay attention to his needs and take care of him, he and I will heal together. This is referred as “self-power” in Zen, planting our “selves” deeply in the nature of what surrounds us. We can be intimate with each difficulty and fully embrace our life beyond the discriminating mind. To do this, our thinking needs to be flexible, moving beyond our calculating minds which warn us to be wary of things that are different or out of the ordinary. But what does all this have to do with nature? Nature is, in a sense, wild. Often we become afraid of anything that appears wild or out of control even though our body and our world is full of areas that are “wild.” They regulate themselves quite well and give us life. They cooperate. My foot will heal itself. All I need to do is plant myself deeply into listening to, paying attention, and caring for my practice partner. When we spend time in nature we see that wild does not mean, “crazed,” but simply “what is,” uncalculated and undiluted. As Zen practitioners, let’s take refuge not from wildness, but in wildness. In my next piece or two I will elaborate on this referring to Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. As Terry Tempest Williams says, “To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
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