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.”

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.”

A few weeks ago I gave a talk on the Wizard of Oz. I think it is quite amazing how much is in the original book by Frank Baum that relates to Zen meditation practice. Here are a few points that stand out for me about the piece, which my dad first read to me when I was sick in bed at four years old. I remember not wanting to get better until he finished the whole book. For me it has stood the test of time. Here’s what stands out for me….

It starts out with Dorothy experiencing colorless (black and white) Kansas bleakness. Her parents have died and a mean old neighbor tries to take her dog, Toto, away from her. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything.

Most of us who have come to Buddhist practice were propelled by some deep satisfaction in our lives. I can remember this was the case for me and for many of my friends. We weren’t particularly interested in Buddhism as a religion, but rather saw meditation as a possible vehicle for transformation from an internal bleakness and the bleakness of a culture that we experienced as somewhat stultifying.

And then, before she knows it, she, Toto, and her house are whooshed a way in a tornado and plunked down into a beautiful, Technicolor land. Her house lands on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. A good witch, Glenda, appears to her and tells Dorothy that if she wants to return home all she has to do is put on the ruby slippers on the feet of the evil witch. “Never let them off your feet for a moment and you will be able to return home.”

As with Dorothy, many of us who meet our spiritual teachers (mine were Suzuki Roshi and Katagiri Roshi), engage with them because we want to access a deep stillness within ourselves, which they and other Buddhist teachers referred to as “our true home.”   However, instead of telling us to put on ruby slippers they show us how to sit still on black cushions and as Suzuki said to me, “Just get up and come sit with me every morning.”

Dorothy then asked Glenda if she could take her home, and Glenda replied, “No, l cannot do that. But l will give you my kiss, and no one will dare injure a person who has been kissed by the Witch of the North.” Then, “she came close to Dorothy and kissed her gently on the forehead. Where her lips touched the girl, they left a round, shining mark, as Dorothy found out soon after.” From that point on, although Dorothy doesn’t know, she is protected by the power of good. In my own case, although Suzuki never touched me literally, I felt kissed at the deepest level and protected in some fundamental way by the power of good which seemed to emanate from him.

Then Glenda the Good sends Dorothy down the Yellow Brick Road to find the wizard of Oz who will help her get home.   When I coach people to walk on the path, I talk about not worrying about or judging progress, but just take one small turtle-type step at a time. And I counsel them just as the Good Witch counseled Dorothy that, “It is a long journey, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible.”

This means that sometimes you will feel like you are on the wrong road. As Garcia Lorca says, “To take the wrong road is to come to the snow, to come to the snow is to get down on your hands and knees for 20 centuries and eat the snow of the cemeteries.”

When we give ourselves away like this, surrendering to all of life and even death, there’s a great opportunity to let go of our small chattering self and open up the vastness of the universe. To do this we need to move beyond our ideas about good and bad, up and down, to a land like Oz which as Frank Baum says is, “beyond rules and uncivilized.”

As Dorothy moves along the yellow brick road, she accompanied by three companions. We can see each of these of aspects of ourselves. We need the courage of the Lion to continually practice; the discriminating intelligence of the Scarecrow to sat on the path; the heart of the Tin Woodsman to stay open and available to whatever emotions we experience. And like each of these friends of Dorothy’s, we continue on the path even though we are plagued by self-doubt and feel incompetent and incomplete.

Even though threatened by the Wicked Witch, Dorothy and her companions often feel happy and hopeful. Sometimes they feel alone and afraid, but the dark moments always pass.

Like Dorothy, all each of us needs to do is stay true to ourselves and stay on our path, even if it seems rough or difficult. We can view Dorothy’s little group as a Sangha, who support each other regardless of what happens.

If we walk far enough,” says Dorothy, “we shall some time come to some place.”

Along the way Dorothy and her companions get waylaid in a poppy field. These flowers together their odor is so powerful that anyone who breathes it falls asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the scent of the flowers, he sleeps on and on forever.

How easy it is for us to get seduced spiritual beliefs, practice, or ritual that makes us high or to think we have discovered, “the one true way.” This makes me wonder whether Frank Baum had been exposed to Karl Marx who died less than 20 years before The Wizard of Oz was first published. Here is Marx:

Religion is the opiate of the people—referring to “functions in society that were similar to the function of opium in a sick or injured person: religion reduced people’s immediate suffering and provided them with pleasant illusions, but it also reduced their energy and their willingness to confront the oppressive, heartless, and soulless.

In the poppy field Dorothy, as the smallest, falls victim to these opium-like flowers. “If we leave her here she will die,” said the Lion. “The smell of the flowers is killing us all. I myself can scarcely keep my eyes open, and the dog is asleep already.” “Run fast,” said the Scarecrow to the Lion, “and get out of this deadly flower bed as soon as you can. We will bring the little girl with us, but if you should fall asleep you are too big to be carried.”

The allegiance that the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion have toward Dorothy creates a supportive bond that enables her to keep moving along the path regardless of what happens. She only has a Sangha of four, but that’s plenty to sustain her even in the darkest time. Maybe Sangha is the most important component of a spiritual journey. But Sangha only needs to be 2 or 3 people who are willing to give and receive heartfelt support from each other through thick and thin.

Dorothy is able to awaken from the intoxication of the poppy field with the help of her friends and they finally enter the Emerald City. Each then meets the Wizard of Oz. To Dorothy, the Wizard appears as a giant head, to the Scarecrow, a beautiful woman, to the Tin Woodsman a ravenous beast, and to the Cowardly Lion, a ball of fire.

On your own spiritual quest each of us may see different deities, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Brahma, Buddha, or some other form of a higher power that seems outside of us.

The Wizard tells Dorothy and her friends must first defeat the Wicked Witch of the West before he can help them. And in the process of defeating the Witch, both she and her fellow travelers have to face themselves. The journey was beset by danger because the powerful Witch knew that they were coming. She tried to destroy them in a number of different ways. First she sent forty wolves to terrorize them; then a flock of crows to peck their eyes out, and finally swarms of black bees – but each of these were defeated.

To me this is reminiscent of Buddha’s sitting determinedly under the Bodhi Tree even as Mara sent army after army of threatening beings to get him to stop his meditation. But Buddha sat unflinchingly through it all.

Finally, the Witch sent the Winged Monkeys after the travelers. The sky was darkened, and a low rumbling sound was heard in the air. There was a rushing of many wings, a great chattering and laughing; and the sun came out of the dark sky to show the Wicked Witch surrounded by a crowd of monkeys, each with a pair or immense and powerful wings on his shoulders. The leader of the Winged Monkeys flew up to her, his long hairy arms stretched out, and his ugly face grinning terribly; but he saw the mark of the Good Witch’s kiss upon her forehead and stopped short, motioning to the others not to touch her.

“We dare not harm this little girl,” he said to them, “for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil.” If you develop a deep relationship with a teacher, you may be protected by your teacher’s power of good in the same way, although it does not actually belong to him or to anyone.

During this part of the journey, Dorothy’s three friends manifest those qualities, which they believe they don’t have: the Lion behaves courageously, the Tin Woodsman extends his heart to Dorothy’s pain, and the Scarecrow call on his discriminating intelligence. Dorothy, herself, faces death.

Like Dorothy and her friends, if we continue on the path gradually we let go of self-doubt, let go of second-guessing ourselves, let go of running away from our inadequacies. Our minds begin to function spontaneously in harmony with the cosmos, so that our brains, heart, and courage flow easily and effortlessly and even death is no big deal.

At this point in the story Dorothy confronts the Witch and causes her to melt away. The monkey army that has been terrorizing her becomes her friend. In the same way, as our rigid mind set melts away in our spiritual practice, our wandering monkey-like thoughts no longer bother us and we can even enjoy them.

Having succeeded at killing the Wicked Witch, Dorothy and others return to see the Wizard only to discover that he is not beautiful woman, ravenous beast, ball of fire, giant head, but only a frightened human hiding behind an image of power and omnipotence.

The spiritual teaching here is that the perfect deity outside of you, whether it be Jesus, Moses, Buddha, a Bodhisattva, or guru is our own creation. The more anxious we are the more we turn toward an authority figure to save us, a phenomena which is happening on a secular level throughout the world in countries like Poland, China, Hungary, Egypt, Russia, and Turkey.

This reminds me of the comment my second teacher Katagiri Roshi, made after several trips to San Francisco after the death of Suzuki Roshi. “Every time I go there to help them, he is getting bigger and bigger.” We all want a Wizard to take care of us, forgetting that the only real wizard is within.

At this point in the journey, Glenda the Good reappears and tells Dorothy, “Your ruby slippers will carry you over the desert to your home,” “If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country.”

She returns to Kansas and discovers that Kansas/Oz (i.e. the phenomenal and the enlightened world) are not two. Waking up in her bed, she sees her uncle’s three farm hands are simultaneously the three friends that she has left behind.

She could have returned home from the moment she landed in Oz! Whether Frank Baum knew it or not, he was elucidating an ancient Zen truth, since your home is always right here. As the 17th century Zen master Bankei said, instead of trying to accomplish something in your meditation or transform yourself, “Abide as the Unborn.” “Don’t get born!” Your home is right here within you. Instead of falling into identification as a “me,” a “Buddhist,” “enlightened,” “unenlightened,” “young,” “old,” etc., simply realize that, “You are unborn.”

Finally, I would like to suggest that that there are four key Zen teachings in this American fairy tale:

First, Accept Your Friends for Who They Are
A true friend will help you on your life’s journey, quirks and all, and recognize when they need a little help too. You never know when you’ll need them around to rescue you from flying monkeys or when they will need you!

Second, Find a Teacher Who Will Kiss You
As Dorothy had Glenda, find a spiritual friend who will have your back and help you find your deepest courage, most discriminating intelligence, and heartfelt connection with the world around you.

Third, Follow Your Own Yellow Brick Road
Follow your own path, even if your sense of direction is not that clear stay on a path that deeply resonates with what’s most important to you, how, in your heart of hearts you want to be and where you want to go. And sing and skip through the journey!

Fourth, Look Within for Your Power.
As my own teacher said to me, “You have a great treasure within you, do not let anyone take it from you.”

Fifth, Remind Yourself to Practice
Remind yourself that, regardless of how confused or upset you are, if you stay with your meditation in non-judgmental awareness, at some point you will see that what you are seeking, you already are. Everything is as it is.

Let’s give Dorothy the final word on this:

“Toto, we’re home – home! And this is my room – and you’re all here – and I’m not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home!”