The Zen Practitioner’s Journal Patience • Fall 2014 $9.00 / $10.00 Canadian MOUNTAIN RECORD (ISSN #0896-8942) is published quarterly by Dharma Communications. Periodicals Postage Paid at Mt. Tremper, NY, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to MOUNTAIN RECORD, P.O. Box 156, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457-0156. Yearly subscription of four issues: $32.00. To subscribe, call us at (845) 688-7993 or send a check payable to Dharma Communications at the address below. Postage outside terri to ri al U.S.: add $15.00 per year (pay in U.S. curren cy). Back issues are avail able for $9.00. All material Copyright © 2014 by Dharma Com mu ni ca tions, Inc., unless otherwise specified. All pho tog ra phy and art are Mountain and Rivers Order’s National Buddhist Archive prints unless oth er wise credited. Printed in the U.S.A. CDs of the dharma discourses that appear in the Mountain Record are avail- able free of charge to the visually impaired. The articles included and the opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors, who are solely re spon si ble for their contents. They do not necessarily reflect th opinions, positions or teachings of Zen Mountain Mon as tery or the Mountains and Rivers Order. © Cover image by Mathijs Delva Even though empty space May be named or conventionally defined, It is impossible to point it out as “this.” It is the same for the clarity of mind itself: Although its characteristics may be expressed, It cannot be pointed out as “this.” —Machig Labdron Vol. 32 No. 4 • Summer 2014 Wildness 4 The Unexpected Rears its Head, Konrad Ryushin Marchaj Sensei The nature of all things is intrinsically unknowable. 12 Touched by Raw Truth, Danica Shoan Ankele Editorial 13 The Holy Spirit as Wild Spirit, Matthew Fox To live fully means to surrender to the wild, free wonder of being. 17 A Collaborative Intelligence, Susan Griffin The roots of the hierarchical mindset and the very different lessons of ecology. 26 Sacred Wildness, John Daido Loori Roshi The most profound teachings of reality are offered by the natural world. 33 Porcupine, Linda Hogan Observing the cycle of life, death, decay and life again. 35 Elegy for the Giant Tortoise, Margaret Atwood poem photo ©Scott Sturgeon 36 Natural, Vivid, Alive, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei Intimacy with our raw, undomesticated experience. 44 Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Wendell Berry poem 46 Mirror in the Street, Rebecca Solnit The shadow side of urban wildernss. 50 The Time for the Singing of Birds, Kathleen Dean Moore The voice of the divine speaks through creation. 55 Joyous Body: The Wild Flesh, Clarissa Pinkola Estés Subverting the dominant culture’s notions of a “good body.” 63 Meeting Machig Labdron, Jody Hojin Kimmel Osho A brief introduction to a lesser-known Buddhist sage. 66 Machig’s Last Instructions, Machig Labdron Teachings on the primordial nature of mind. 73 To Know Living Things, Thomas Merton A reflection on nature and God from Merton’s journals. 74 Plum Blossoms, Eihei Dogen The old plum tree arouses wild wind and stormy rain. 80 The Veil of the Beloved, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan Abandoning ourselves to union with the divine, the raw joy of life moves through us. 86 Mountains and Rivers Order News & Training, MRO News, Sangha Reflections, Book Reviews, Affiliate Directory 111 Listing of Resources and Services 4 photo: Art Terry Natural, Vivid, Alive Dharma Discourse by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei Master Dogen’s Fukanzazengi “The way is originally perfect and all pervading; how could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient; what need is there for special effort? Indeed the whole body is free from dust; who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It’s never apart from this very place; what’s the use of travelling around to practice? And yet, if there’s a hair’s breadth deviation, it’s like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in con- fusion.” 5 RAW TALK tion, the difference between heaven and I don’t remember when we first started call- earth. And yet even then, the way is origi- ing the September sesshin the Mountain and nally perfect and all pervading. So the sense Rivers Sesshin, it was a long time ago, and of deviation, of wandering, differing from, originally it was a sesshin where we just had going against, drifting away, it’s this deep, formal students attend, but it never quite deep sense that we experience and in which worked out because there were always a lot practice occurs. Practice occurs in just that of residents every year who weren’t formal moment, the moment we have the sense of students, but it gave us the opportunity to drifting away from this pervading perfection. have all the students together. But over the It’s like being in the middle of the ocean and years, that stopped happening as an inten- believing that there’s a drought. But in that tional thing and it just became another state, when you look around, you don’t see sesshin open to everyone. It has this theme— any water; all you see is dryness. And that’s the Mountains and Rivers—which is very the bitch of it, that’s the struggle. It’s that important to us and speaks of many things. the ocean is there and we’re wet all the way It invokes Daido Roshi, it invokes the very through. And yet when we open our eyes mountain that we’re sitting on, it invokes and look, we don’t see it, we see dry. It’s like the Eight Gates, the Sansui Quo (2:11), the walking on a path, the path that we imagine Mountains and Rivers Sutra of Dogen, all of this to be is like a razor’s edge, so the slightest our years here, and so I thought to devote this deviation and you’re off the path—that’s our talk to the first of those gates, zazen, using perception. But what if the path was 100,000 Dogen’s seminal teaching Fukan Zazengi. It’s miles wide? And all the same stuff, everything also a way of clearing up my karma because that could be on it was on it. The highs and when I first came here, my first Sunday, the lows, the floods and the droughts, the the call was made for newcomers to go do boulders and the open spaces, the storms and beginning instructions. I didn’t go and the the sunny, bright days, and there’s this sense head monk came out and tapped me on the of movement forward walking this path, but shoulder and said, “Don’t you need beginning when you looked to the one side and looked instruction?” And I said, “No.” [laughter] to the other, there’s nothing but path. It’s Shows you where my cup was at, so I never more like that. actually received formal instruction. Take all that follows with a grain of salt. And so Dogen speaks of this way, which is originally perfect and all pervading, and So when Dogen says, “The way is origi- then asks this question: How could it then nally perfect and all pervading . and yet, if be contingent upon practice and realization? there’s a hair’s breadth deviation, it’s like the And he asks that question from the seat of gap between heaven and earth,” in a sense practice and realization. Remember, this is a we could say that this holds the whole of the person who had a great love affair with zazen, Buddha Darma right here. Enlightenment was very devoted. He said that zazen is the and delusion, nirvana and duka, perfection one true practice. And he spent his whole and imperfection: with the slightest devia- life teaching what zazen was, which was much 6 more than sitting on the cushion. And so sit- urgently clear) is how to apply effort. What ting on that seat, a practice and realization he do we do about this dust that we see? How says, “How could it be that way, this Buddha do we travel to this place? So the self is kind Dharma, contingent upon practice and real- of like a package that we carry with us but ization?” [6:38] And because of that he says, not everything is in it. That’s the problem. “What need is there for any special effort, for Everything that we’ve gotten so far is in that brushing the dust away, for travelling to the package, so we bring it everywhere we go, we place where the dharma is?” Because it’s self- open it up, and we put it to use. But because sufficient, the true vehicle is self-sufficient, it’s not complete—it doesn’t answer every which means there’s nothing outside of it. question, address every issue, satisfy every desire, quiet every distress—we’re always on It’s like being on a desert island and it’s the the lookout to put more into that package. Of only place; you can’t leave, so everything you course, it’s more like we’re the package. And need, if you’re going to make this work, has when we come to practice, we bring it with got to be on that island. No one’s coming us. It’s what practice is, using the same stuff to rescue you.