In “Mountains and River Sutra”, 13th century Zen master Eihei Dogen said, “Because mountains and rivers have been active since before the empty eon they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose, they are emancipation and realization.”
These two sentences are parallel expressions. The first one is about time; the second one is about space and matter that exists in space. Dogen is saying that mountains and rivers have always existed. They transcend time, and when they do appear in time, they are all inclusive.
And this is true for us humans as well. We are much bigger than the self that we think we are. The essence of what we actually are existed before any entity ever existed, and because of that, our selfness, our selfhood, like the selfness and selfhood of mountains and waters is its own liberation, our own unique expression of absolute reality. In other words, we, like mountains and rivers, are not as limited as we appear to be. This is exactly the heart of Zen teaching. Like time and space, we have no boundaries. Our only boundaries are falsely created by beliefs and self-centred thinking that result from societal and cultural conditioning.
So often we make the mistake of thinking that this moment isn’t really all that important. But for Dogen, all of time is here, right now. Everything is complete in this moment: this little life, this little person that comes and goes so quickly and is able to accomplish so little between birth and death contains everything in the entire universe. All of space and time is right here in the destiny of this one life. That is Dogen’s astounding statement.
It’s hard to feel this in the nitty gritty of the daily grind, but when we go into the mountains we feel it. This is why most of us love to go into the mountains. If we lace up our hiking boots, strap on a backpack with food and tent, and walk for two or three days on a mountain trail, we will eventually feel this union with all of time and space.
The Chinese people knew this. The monks in China would walk many hundreds of miles and travel from one monastery to another. They never had, like in the Christian monastic tradition, the practice of staying cloistered in one monastery. Chinese Chan (Zen) monks believed that religious practice is a life of wandering in the mountains. They would enroll in one monastery, stay for a few years for basic training and then go walking in the mountains for months at a time. Some lived in isolated mountain hermitages for decades.
Suggested practice: Take some time to walk in the mountains. Learn about the hiking groups in Creston and join them on a mountain hike. While there, separate from the chatter and bring your awareness to the feeling of boundlessness of the mountains, the rivers and of your own life.
Kuya Minogue is the resident teacher at Sakura-ji, Creston’s zendo. This column is part of a long essay on an essay by 13th century Zen master Eihei Dogen and is inspired by the teaching of Norman Fishcher. For more information, Minogue can be reached at 250-428-6500, and previous columns are available at www.zenwords.net.