"Goings and Comings Are the Self of Mountains"
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Professor Steven Heine has graciously offered this excerpt from his latest book Wisdom within Words, which will be published in the fall by Oxford University Press. The book is a bilingual translation of a 150 of Dōgen’s approximately 450 Chinese-style verses also titled Wisdom within Words, which was compiled in 1759 by the Soto Zen scholar and reformer Menzan Zuihō (1683-1789). Thank you Professor Heine!
Mountains and the Self
The person in the mountains is the one who admires the mountains,
Goings and comings are the self of mountains.
The mountains’ self is not my own self,
Where should we look for a single root of sensations?
Dōgen wrote this poem in 1236 and it was originally included in the ninth volume of Dōgen’s Extensive Record (Eihei koroku), which contains his poetic comments on 90 koan cases. It is also contained as verse 117 in a collection of 150 of Dōgen’s approximately 450 Chinese-style verses called Wisdom within Words (Kuchugen). Compiled in 1759 by the Soto scholar Menzan, the great caretaker and interpreter of so many of Dōgen’s writings, this poetry collection was used for recitations by Soto Zen monastics during the early modern period as a way of remembering key aspects of the master’s teachings.
Why are images of mountains invoked so frequently in early Chan and Zen literature? And what do mountains have to do with understanding the Buddhist teaching of “no self”? There are two main reasons. First, most Chan/Zen temples were located in mountainous landscapes far from the beaten path and even those situated in cities or flat areas were referred to as “mountains” to signify a sacred space purified of ordinary defilements. Chan teachers who were said to “open a mountain” went to areas previously associated with impure spirits and transformed them into Buddhist temples. Second, mountains were the ideal place for meditators to commune with nature, understood as a mirror and model for human behavior, where they gain lofty experiences of impermanence and insubstantiality, that is, the inner being beyond selfhood.
In Dōgen’s “Mountains and the Self” poem, the koan he refers to is not that of a typical encounter dialogue. Dōgen makes reference to a verse composed by the eminent Chinese Soto teacher Hongzhi nearly a century before Dōgen traveled to mainland China in the 1220s. Hongzhi was held in high regard for his significant contributions to the Zen literary tradition during the Song dynasty. The influence of earlier Buddhist poets such as Hongzhi on Dōgen’s thinking and his creative innovation are both evident in Dōgen’s “Mountains and the Self” poem. Dōgen responds to the koan of Hongzhi’s poem by altering the phrasing and meaning of the source quatrain that reads:
Whoever lives amid the comings and goings of mountains,
Knows the green mountains as their self.
The self of green mountains is one’s own self,
So, how can we find the roots of sensations?
Both verses, which use the technique of reduplicatives (来来去去), although Dōgen reverses his predecessor’s order (去去來來), also echo a famous composition by the eleventh-century Buddhist poet and meditator Su Shi titled, “Written on the Wall of West Woods [Temple]” (題西林壁). This verse is about Mount Lu, a magnificent site in Anhui province traditionally frequented by poets, priests, and intellectuals who took part in temple activities:
When viewed horizontally it is a range, but from the side it is a cliff,
Whether far or near, high or low, it is never the same.
The true face of Mount Lu can never be known,
Because one is standing amid the peaks.
Su’s poem is much more than a simple description of a mountain, as it addresses the difficulty of understanding all sensations since the object can be defined in various ways depending on the perspective or angle of perception by which it is viewed. Su shows the limitations of a person’s conceptual horizons and suggests that different assessments are valid from various outlooks in trying to reach a closer approximation of that which is being observed. True understanding is neither objective nor subjective but a unique combination of factors.
For Hongzhi and Dōgen, the elements of perception and self-identity are, on one level, considered coterminous with the expanse of the mountains and one’s degree of intimacy with their intricate appearance. Unlike his predecessor Hongzhi, who fully identifies the person as well as their body and senses (literally, “dust,” 塵) with the environment, Dōgen reflects Su’s more open-ended standpoint by clearly distinguishing bodily sensations from self.
Although the concluding lines seem quite similar in commenting on the traditional Buddhist category of sensory perception, each poet suggests a different rationale. For Hongzhi, the reason for not finding sensations is the merging of humans and environment, but for Dōgen, the lack of a root for sensations is because of a subtle separation in that mountains are understood as mountains and humans are humans. There is no need to try to discern a single meeting point that fully merges subjectivity and objectivity. One must, instead, appreciate reality manifested before one’s eyes without regard to either elaboration or categorization.
Look forward to the book!