Mountains and Rivers 4 -- Reflections on Rohatsu and the Waters (Updated with a Tassajara Story of Mountains and Waters Sutra)

I haven't participated in rohatsu in the past so this sesshin was part of my education in Zen forms and rituals that I missed back in the early days of my practice, when, if I recall correctly, Richard Baker or whomever I was in communication with at the San Francisco Zen Center made clear that Zen practice did not require shutting oneself away in a monastery or even following any particular form or rituals or necessarily even knowing what they were. 

I've seen some documentaries on Zen in Japan -- where it has never been popular -- and among laypeople that's the essence of the practice. You sit. That's really all you have to do to practice Zen. None of the rest of it is essential, and there is a lot of "the rest of it."

Sitting is the key.

Rohatsu is the commemoration and celebration of Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago in Bodh Gaya, northern India. In the practice I participate with, rohatsu lasts 8 days, and during that time, there is much sitting. Oh my yes! There is chanting (which I don't do aloud) and liturgy and study. Whether we, the lay practitioners, are to achieve Enlightenment thereby, I don't know. I would say, given what I witnessed, that some certainly thought they'd be Enlightened and were Enlightened by the conclusion of rohatsu, but... well, I'll say no more about that.

I would go back to the mantra I was given when time was: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path."

(Buddha, Dharma, Sangha = The Three Jewels of Buddhism)

This mantra actually gives the practitioner lots of leeway and freedom. It's not necessarily an easy or straight path to Enlightenment (ha!) but one way among many to become enlightened. Buddha says basically, "You're already Enlightened. You just have to discover and recognize it."

The World of Illusion obscures your Enlightenment. Let go.

Many years ago, I had the physical experience of what may have been Enlightenment but probably wasn't. It's not a physical thing. Or... well, no, I don't want to get into the mystical/physical conundrum in this essay. Let that go, too!

But I would say that once there -- wherever -- I never left. I never went back there because I am there all the time, and I've mentioned to some of my teachers in the last year or so that my life is practice. 

In other words, sitting zazen is a minor part of my practice, as it forms a few moments of my daily life that is in its entirety practice.

Imperfect as it is. 

And that's a key to understanding. Our material lives are totally imperfect. It's OK. It's the nature of Being/NotBeing. 

In the midst of our imperfections, however, we adopt vows and set goals -- not necessarily material goals, not at all. To become what we really are. 

That's the hard part, the struggle that Buddha and all Buddhists go through. Who are we? What are we? 

What should we do about it?

Buddha taught, and that was the full expression of his Being/NotBeing. 

Zen, I think I mentioned in an earlier post, grew out of Japanese Samurai culture, as an expression of and adaptation of Chinese Chan Buddhism, for the needs of the medieval Japanese higher warrior aristocracy. It wasn't for the common people at all. 

It was also adopted by the Imperial and some Shogunate households. 

The Zen practice I was introduced to came from Japan in the late 1950s, through the agency of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest from the time of his youth early in the 20th Century, descended from a line of Zen priests. He was deemed roshi by his US followers, and it made him laugh. But then, many things made him laugh. Especially American things.

There isn't a lot about today's Zen practice in America that I identify with the more or less "pure" Zen Suzuki Roshi brought to America. There are forms and rituals that trace back to Japan, certain costumes and physical properties of zendos and such, but not much else. Very little understanding of where this practice came from and why it was important in the context of a particular culture at a particular time and how it has had a profound influence beyond that culture and time. 

I see in the context of every US Zen center I've looked into a deep seated urge to change it, change the practice to more Americanize it, decouple it from Japanese practice, especially from the rigors of Japanese monasteries. Or rather practicing some of those rigors as forms and rituals only.

Make it more like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. In other words, familiarize it to American notions of Religion...

When participating in the various practice periods and sesshins I have this year, I've noticed strong -- sometimes overwhelming -- resemblances between the Americanized Zen practice and say Catholic and/or orthodox Jewish observances. Why is that? Is it in part because so many influential American Zen priests and roshis and such come from those backgrounds? I would think so. Is it because so few have had an elemental experience of Japanese Zen Buddhism -- which is of course the origin of American Zen practice -- though they may have gone on pilgrimage to the sites in Japan where the practice was formulated.

And I think about these origins in the context of Gary Snyder and his epic "Mountains and Rivers Without End," a kind of Zen-ish gloss on his life and practice and relationship to mountains and rivers.

As I've said, I didn't get along with Gary Snyder, though our meetings were social and very brief. I think there was an immediate repulsion. I'm trying to get over it. I should have gotten over it decades ago, but instead, I held it in me all this time, though I obviously didn't think about it or him until returning to Zen practice, picking up Kerouac again and observing his near-worship of Gary in "The Dharma Bums." 

A worship which, by the way, was not and is not reciprocated. If anything, Gary shows little regard for Kerouac at all. Borderline contempt. The barest of acknowledgement that they ever knew each other. 

Why is that I wonder? There may have been more of a repulsion -- on Gary's part -- toward Kerouac than might have been the case if Kerouac had not been an alcoholic/drug addict, and not shown Gary such puppy-dog admiration and followership/worship for the few months/years they palled around.

A key passage in "The Dharma Bums" is their climb of the Matterhorn of the Sierras, something ordinarily objectively impossible, but they do it, survive it, revel in it.  Gary (Japhy) has magic powers. He practically flies up the mountain and then flies back down while Kerouac (Ray) must trudge and struggle. Kerouac is tied to the Earth; Gary is a free spirit in a jockstrap, so pure he can merge with and walk within the mountain.

In "Mountains and Rivers Without End," Snyder doesn't even acknowledge it happened, and to some critics, Kerouac's description of their climb, and perhaps the climb itself, was fiction. Who knows? Kerouac drank himself to death many years ago, and Snyder isn't saying -- well, not in any detail.

Kerouac is not a wizard. Snyder, apparently, is.

I recall -- barely -- a mountain-climbing adventure I went on years ago. I came "that close" to losing my life due to an allergic reaction to warm trail mix. Anaphylaxis is no fun, and that's primarily what I remember from the adventure. There was also the attempt to hike up to a peak but getting mired in a mysterious bog not on the hiking map. Wondering if it was possible to cross it -- no -- or find another trail -- no. It was barely possible to get out of the bog without sinking ever deeper and getting stuck. There was no surface sign the bog was even there...

Nude swim in a lake. Camping under the stars. Having no real fear despite the hazards encountered or imagined. In fact, from this distance of fifty years or more, that mountain climbing adventure seems more and more imaginary. Did it happen at all?

In going through some of the stuff we moved and brought back from California, that sense of an imaginary past, adventures that never happened, and very faulty memories of what did happen came up again and again. But in Zen, of course, everything is illusory. Delusory. 

There's not much "water" in this reflection. I was born a stone's throw from the Mississippi River, Father of Waters, so there's that. And I've pretty much always been or lived near the ocean or a river of some sort, except for where I live now. Plenty of mountains, but no surface water at all.

There's only what we call 'The Swamp' in the back of our place, a small wet-ish region where there must be water close to the surface, where plants grow lush in the spring and summer, and the ground is soft. There's no water on the surface, nor does it seem like any water is flowing. But it must be there.

Phantom water.

But then, isn't everything a phantom of one sort or another?

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Here is a podcast by David Chadwick about Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Much consideration of Gary Snyder's "Mountains and Rivers Without End." And very much in tune with my own thinking about the sutra...

Mountains and Rivers 3

I see that a lot of people are having real difficulties with Dogen's Mountains and Rivers/Waters Sutra, as I'm pretty sure the monks he delivered this sutra to in 1240 were bewildered and perplexed. 

There's no consistency to the sutra. It's formless, something like the Void I've mentioned in other Zen postings. Mountains are used as metaphors, but for what exactly? Mountains walking, mountains flying with the clouds, mountains flowing... what does this even mean?

I've tried to rationalize it with experience, but I realize that misses the point of Dogen's vision and message. It's not rational. Not meant to be. It's a knock upside the head, a call to Wake Up! at midnight, and recognize the nature of experience, things, people, mountains and rivers, and how transitory and ultimately false it all is. 

Mountains do walk and fly through the clouds and flow just so. They come and they go and they appear and disappear just as you do. For in the end, there is no difference between what we call "you" and the "mountain." It's all one thing/no thing.

Just so with the lakes and rivers and vast seas. It's all one, and you are part/no part of that one. 

You know, the monks in Zen monasteries become complacent too easily, and knocking them upside the head from time to time is routine. They become attached to routine, to practice on command, to the sounds of the bells and clackers, to the feelings of comfort at meals, washings up, robing and disrobing, to the sensations of tatamis and wooden floor boards and running from hither to yon.

Relieving them of attachments to any of that often takes the form of a shock, a kick in the butt, a push into the mud, an impossible challenge in a koan, a struggle engaged. And an understanding that no matter how close you are to Enlightenment, you're held back by attachment -- like the tail of the ox that won't go through the latticed window (thank you Kozan, 🙏.)

We are attached, all of us are attached to something, someone, all of the time. That is part of our being, and detaching is an elemental part of Buddhism. Which in a sense means self-destructing. Or deconstructing the self.

Dogen lets on that mountains and rivers do it -- so can you. The very green mountains we are so attached to... aren't really there at all. What we see and feel and respond to is an illusion. The mountains we climb aren't actually there. The rivers that flow -- and by the way, rivers that wear down the mountains till they're no longer there -- are as illusory as mist.

Revere the mountain and the river, but don't become attached to them. 

The struggle is not to climb the mountain but to let go of it.

I gave a khata scarf from Nepal to a friend in Santa Fe earlier this year, thinking that he knew what it was and knew what my giving it to him symbolized. He... did. And then he mentioned that his son had gone to Nepal the previous year and circumambulated Annapurna with some friends and how exhilarating it had been for him. 

I said, "Please feel free to pass on the scarf to someone else if you're so inclined."

I don't know whether he has or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gave it either to his wife or his son.

And I've just reached the point in Gary Snyder's epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End" where he is about to begin the circumambulation of Mt. Tamilpias in California. Because he learned the significance of going around mountains in Nepal and India. It's what you do.

You circumambulate as a form of reverence and honor. And when I was in California in October with a friend from Gallup, we had a discussion about what was a "hill" and what was a "mountain," noting that in California they were not the same thing, and what would be considered a mountain somewhere else would be considered little more than a hill in California.

And I considered where I lived a child -- a smallish valley near the coast surrounded by mountains (as I saw them when I was little, but maybe they're only hills now) and considered where I live now, a rather larger valley surrounded by mountains and mesas and ridges, enclosed (and once a glacial lake) on all sides. It's the same. 

And all of it is an illusion. 

Mountains and Rivers 2

I was at a celebration yesterday for a friend who just got her masters degree. One of the very few times this year I've been socializing. Part of the get together was ceremonial and included a Navajo elder who provided blessings and songs and a surprisingly detailed explanation of Navajo religious perspective -- which of course includes mountains and waters.

Mountains personified. Waters alive. Sometimes when I drive by Mt. Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains, I see upon it/as it a sleeping woman with long black hair. The mountain and the woman are the same, indivisible, and some of what the elder had to say yesterday was aligned with if not identical to the view I've long had about Mt. Taylor/Tsoodzil. Of the other three sacred mountains, I'm only familiar with San Francisco Peak/Dookʼoʼoosłííd outside of Flagstaff. It too has quite a personality, one that changes depending on the time of year, the angle of the sun and the distance you are from the mountain. 

On the way to and from this get-together, I was contemplating the mountains we passed by and the ones in the distance. Each mountain and mountain range has their own personality, their own beingness. 

In some of the study we've been doing, "mountains" are stand ins for ourselves sitting zazen. That seems to be the consensus for what Dogen is saying in his (to me) bewildering Mountains and Waters Sutra. We are mountains when we sit? Metaphorically, perhaps. But I see his metaphors in a somewhat different way, metaphors without a literal analogy. He uses the mountain metaphor as an approach to the ineffable. The vastness and the sameness of the non-duality realm, the ground state, as I call it, of all that is, was and will be.

The mountain flows. The mountain walks. Walks forward and backward. The mountain is never still.

In our usual perception, the mountain doesn't walk, the mountain doesn't flow, the mountain is among the stillest things in our environment.

And yet it does, it flows. It walks. We don't see it -- unless there is an eruption or massive earthquake. But in Dogen's metaphor, the mountain walking and flowing has no reality in our common perception. Not even in an eruption or earthquake. The mountain walks beyond our ability to "see" or "know."

No, his metaphor is about the inner-being-nothingness of the mountain (and thus, yes, of we ourselves sitting in zazen or not.) In that realm, the mountain (and we ourselves) don't actually "exist." Not as separate entities. We are one and the same, and we can walk and flow and dissolve into the mist and reconstitute at will. Or not.

When I see Mt. Taylor as a woman sleeping, it's real to me, but it's not. It's an illusion. A mirage. But then... so is the mountain. And so am I.

So are the waters. And so am I.

Mountains and Rivers

No. 

Well no. I've never much cared for Gary Snyder for a whole lot of unimportant reasons. Why? Because he's short and old and thinks he's the King of the World? I don't know. How very Zen.

But on a whim and suggestion from Roshi, I'm reading his "Mountains and Rivers Without End" one of his seeming many Epic Poems of being-not-being and wanderlust. And I rather like it. Well, insofar as I can relate. 

And that's the thing. I have had long years of wandering the landscape. Mountains and rivers yes. Many mountains, many rivers, many forests, many deserts. It's my bloodline. 

So I can in part relate to Gary and his own wanderings far afield, abroad and at home. Never settling, though he's been a fixture in Nevada City for generations. He still wanders.

Yet I've become rooted.

Partially anyway.

An ancient adobe home on the high plains of New Mexico -- llano alto -- keeps me rooted to the land that's harsh and cruel and yet... the mountains brood or smile in the distance now and then dusted with snow, mostly standing charcoal gray in the daytime, dark and monstrous at night. You can't see the mountains easily from our house, though they are there, through the thicket of trees, invasive Siberian elms that were planted so long ago no one remembers.

The trees protect us from the mountains. 

There are no rivers close at hand, but last spring Mary discovered what she called The Swamp, a portion of our land where water seems to collect and even flow though not on the surface. She was walking her circles and said to me, "You know the ground is soft there, up there near the fence, and you can see how the plants grow thick and tall. And look, the swampy place extends toward the house. We can see where there's some kind of water flow."

And I looked and it was there, a broad patch of wetlands in the midst of the dust-dry. 

Time to bathe now. My daily Tubzen. 

And then I'll read some more of Gary Snyder's Epic. 

And then for the Daily Dharma Talk. 

Then it's off to Santa Fe for socializing (rare, still) before returning home to feed the cats.

Rohatsu Sesshin

Ah well. Here we go again with the Buddhist retreat thing. Yah. This time a "silent retreat" -- right -- meant as a celebration/commemoration of the Buddha's Enlightenment. A week of meditation and consideration focused on Dogen's text of Mountains and Waters Sutra translated by Kaz Tanahashi.

Mountains and Rivers... Meditating yesterday with a rotten old text, wonders of the world as it is or was back in the '30s when the text was written ostensibly for young people, explaining the world and history while admitting vast ignorance about just about everything. Mountains and Rivers were brought into the picture with the acknowledgement that the mountains which seem so rooted and permanent -- because our lives are so short -- are worn away by the waters until in time they disappear as if they never were, and then are reborn by forces deep within the Earth that force and twist and uplift the very living rock into new mountains that are then worn away by the waters. Over and over in an endless repeating cycle.

And that is the theme of this Rohatsu sesshin.

Dogen says mountains walk, and they do.

The realization is a step toward Enlightenment. This realization is Enlightenment. But in Dogen-speak there is neither Enlightenment nor non-Enlightenment. The Koan of the Ox Through the Latticed Window, no?

And yet our ancestors knew for a fact that mountains walk and you could say they run, given the right perspective and time scale. Our perception is too limited to witness it in its entirety, but it happens just the same.

Now I could go on and on about the limits of perception compared to the vastness of reality, but now is not the time for that. Been down this road before, however. Trodding it one more time.