Until Only the Mountain Remains
Leland Shields, September 16, 2022
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.Translated by Sam Hamill, Poetry Foundation article 178390
I’ve brought this 8th century poem by Li Po to several talks recently. Apparently I can’t get enough of it. It carries a patient persistence that is essential for a retreat. Over the hours, zazen can be dynamic, motivated, boring, dozey…all are zazen. All support the quiet attention without theory or strategy.
No strategy is needed to get clouds to drain. Just sit together, quietly, still, naked as prey, surrendering concepts of draining, and of meditation. We wait, ready to live and die on this seat. Here. This is not martyrdom; we are prey only as being no more and no less than here. I am naked when without pretense, and without the misleading and incomplete idea of who I am, and without the mistaken belief that I know who you are.
Just here, once again releasing the conclusion, together with sound until only sound remains.
As I’m writing, there is a fog obscuring the mountains such that soon only cloud will remain – one cloud indistinct from north to south, east to west. Now the last mountain fades away. We sit together, the cloud and me. Until only the cloud remains.
Sitting unprotected can bring fear of dissolution of self. With fear, protectiveness arises, and mountains and clouds are secondary. Wait, sitting together, remaining are fear and me, without rush to describe or understand. Boredom arises, mind wanders. With boredom, our impulse is to find meaning. Turn that on its head, and everything needed is right here as it is. Still we sit, motionless, no need to know the words we would use to communicate this experience.
The words that come to mind can be very helpful at times to give us context and to better understand what we sense, feel, and think. We know that world of words for most waking hours of most days. For today and tomorrow, release the words and wait. There will be a time for context and concepts, for explanations and comparisons. I invite you to hold stillness of mind as you can for now, risking confusion and chaos, hold quiet and see what happens.
When I say hold quiet, I’m under no illusion that means any of us will have minds like a pond without ripples for any length of time. I’m suggesting you put down the stone you might otherwise throw in the pond, and breathe…ooooonnnne…muuuuu….
We all know the stones that can be irresistible. “Hey, I think I’m getting quiet,” for example. Or, “Here’s a way I can tell my friend how my meditation is helpful to me.” Instead, sit together, breath and you . . . not two.
In the quiet of mountain, we can find something undeniably true. Can you also find something true in what I say and see, and what you say and see? Mountain obscured by clouds – hold, hold. Mountain revealed by clouds – hold, hold. Until only clouds remain – hold, hold.
Gateless Barrier Case 19 goes like this:
Ordinary Mind Is the Tao
Chao-chou asked Nan-ch’üan, “What is the Tao?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “Ordinary mind is the Tao.
Chao-chou asked, “Should I try to direct myself toward it?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “If you try to direct yourself you betray your own practice.”
Chao-chou said, “How can I know the Tao if I don’t direct myself?”
Nan-ch’üan said, “The Tao is not subject to knowing and not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How than this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
At these words, Chao-chou had sudden realization.Verse:
Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,
summer with breeze, winter with snow.
When idle concerns don’t hang in your mind,
That is your best season.Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier, p. 126
(Shibayama – rather than “genuine Tao,” “the Tao of all doubt.” And rather than “best season,” “For you, it is a good season.”)
Chao-chou asks for us – what is the world as it is? What is Buddhadharma? What is this practice all about? Nan-ch’üan’s response redirects Chao-chou to the seat on which he sits. Ordinary mind is not code for a special perspective or experience. We can take Nan-ch’üan at face value. Another way he could have responded would be to have said, “I have a craving for French fries, the really salty and greasy kind.”
Undeterred by his confusion, Chao-chou asks another question on our behalf. “OK, ordinary mind, but what does that mean for me when sitting here after the 3 bells that start the period? I’ve got nothing actionable to use here.” Nan-ch’üan’s response does not help – in our translation Chao-chao is told that in directing himself, he is betraying practice. In other translations Chao-chou is told by directing himself “toward it,” he goes away from it (Shibayama), or that he becomes separated from it (Sekida).
Wu-men’s verse is helpful here:
Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,
summer with breeze, winter with snow.
When idle concerns don’t hang in your mind,
That is your best season.Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier, p. 127
Summer in Seattle comes with flowers and road construction, jack hammers and lane closure. The flowers and delays are facts, inarguable. Without idle concerns, this is the best season. Retreat days come with early mornings, and life-tasks set aside to the extent we are able in a given moment, and our eyes glance up when thoughts drift to concerns for the truly important and necessary tasks on our list.
The Tao includes idle concerns; and while lost in idle concerns we are not aware of the Tao. To differentiate aware and not aware of the Tao is another idle concern.
What is it that helps you take in this, as it is? For many, it can be the natural world that operated for long before our species, and will continue long after. It is no wonder these stories and poems so frequently use images of moon, mountains, and clouds. In one day, a hurricane can release 200 times the energy of the daily electrical generating capacity of the world. The scale of stars and mountains, oceans and wind quiet the concerns of the mind that can otherwise seem so cogent and impressive. But our stories also include Buddha twirling a single flower.
In Nan-ch’üan’s final words in this story, he said, “If you truly reach the genuine Tao, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can this be discussed at the level of affirmation and negation?”
The Tao beyond doubt is free, without constraint, and yet all I say about it can be mired in right and wrong, constraint or free. Fortunately, I have great trust in each of us being able to take the story to the Tao beyond the words, beyond parsing, to that which you know without doubt.
In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Law That Marries All Things,” he wrote:
1.
The cloud is free only
to go with the wind.The rain is free
only in falling.The water is free only
in its gathering together,in its downward courses,
in its raising into air.2.
In law is rest
if you love the law,
if you enter, singing into it
as water in its descent.3.
Or song is truest law,
and you must enter singing;
it has no other entrance.It is the great chorus
of parts. The only outlawry
is in division.Wendell Berry, The Wheel, p. 24-25
Nan-ch’üan recognizes inescapable, unavoidable Tao even as Chao-chou asked for direction to it. In Berry’s metaphor, the law of the cloud and the courses of water are unambiguously determined by physics. As part of the law of human experience, you, me, and Chao-chou all have minds that question the physics that govern our likes and dislikes, and govern my song and yours; all our parts in this one song we might refer to as Tao.
So we sit today, together with Li Po, Chao-Chou, and clouds freely crossing the vast and boundless sky. With the sound of the clapper, we adjust our posture, free to breathe this one breath. The law of breath operates independently, like the law of wind and clouds. There is no towards or away from breath; there is no idea of breath; there is this one inhale, and this one exhale.
Freely join with breath, cloud, mountain, and boundless sky. No need to know who is joining, nor what may occur next. Chao-chou asked how he should freely join, just as we sometimes ask ourselves, “What am I doing here on this black cushion?” At least in this story, Chao-chou isn’t questioning the law that brought him to be sitting on the cushion, but still when it seems our zazen is stuck, we ask, “what can I do better?”
Here is the irony of zazen, Nan-ch’üan respectfully receives this excellent question and responds that Chao-chou can go to the place beyond better and not better, and beyond stuck and productive. When fully abandoning ourselves to just sit, breathe, hear sound, there is no one left to hear,
But don’t worry about all these descriptions, they are of no use but for the encouragement to sit and trust in abandoning all but breath, hearing this sound, or mu. With all your questions and doubts you are Chao-chou, in all earnestness sitting with Nan-ch’üan. And you are Nan-ch’üan, looking at the same image but seeing something more. Like those drawings of an animal that could be either a duck facing left, or rabbit facing right – with the duck bill and rabbit ears portrayed with the same lines. It can be hard to see the other image when we’ve locked on one interpretation, then once freeing eyes and mind we see there is still one image, but not confined to one conclusion.
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.Translated by Sam Hamill, Poetry Foundation article 178390