Like a Mountain

Greetings Friends,

I am returning from 10 days of monastic practice at my former home, Great Vow Zen Monastery. While I was there I had the opportunity to celebrate my teacher Chozen Bays Roshi’s 80th birthday, to practice and lead the annual outdoor sesshin that we call Grasses, Trees and the Great Earth Sesshin and to facilitate a precepts ceremony.

I love monastic practice. I love merging with the great activity of awakening. I love the depth of practice that opens up when we sustain the gaze on our true nature and allow the bodhisattva vow to flow through us. I love being in this process of liberation and love with others.

Many of us are asking:

* How to live in a world on fire?

* What is an appropriate response?

* What should I do with my life?

The heart of practice awakening seems to turn these questions on their head, and ask instead what do you call the world?

And, who are you?

And what is your life?

Many great thinkers have posited that we can’t solve problems with the same mind that created them. What happens when we dare to step out of the problem-solving mind all together? What happens when we look directly into the assumptions we make about ourselves and the world? What happens when we gaze into the nature of life/death?

When we are willing to even begin to entertain these questions, and know ourselves beyond thought and label—another world opens up. Someone said recently “it’s like I’m inhabiting a different body.”

The body of this world, is our body. The body of mountain, space, silence is also our body.

The Zen Buddhist tradition is alive with teachings from practitioners, contemplatives, and mystics who were engaged in this kind of inquiry. Who sustained the gaze on the great matter, and invited us to realize this great body of awakening.

During sesshin we were chanting and practicing with Dogen Zenji’s Mountains and Waters Sutra. In this sutra, Dogen Zenji invokes Mountains as a metaphor for the nature of our mind. Mountain presence points us to the ever-abiding presence, spaciousness and silence of our own awake awareness.

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the Mountains and Waters Sutra.

Mountains and rivers right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha way. Both mountains and rivers abide in their true form and actualize true virtue. Mountains and rivers transcend time and are alive in the eternal present. They are the original self and they are emancipation-realization. Mountains are high and wide. The movement of clouds and the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains.

We can re-write this paragraph replacing Mountains with “we” or “our true nature”. Below is an example.

We–right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha Way. We abide in our true form and actualize true virtue. We transcend time and are alive in the eternal present. This is our original self—emancipation-realization. Our awareness is high and wide, the movement of thought and the inconceivable power of awakened activity comes freely from Mind’s nature.

Really this is an invitation to embody Mountain. To give over your body and life to the body and life of Mountain. Once when we were practicing with this sutra during a summer practice period my teacher said:

If you practice with Mountain everyday for the next 60 days, it will change you.

Let yourself be a Mountain, and in that realize how you already are still, silent, spacious, safely rooted—lacking nothing.

The video above is a guided meditation on Being a Mountain. In my experience Mountain practice opens up an essential aspect of zazen. I invite you to try it out. And don’t be shy, let your wild Mountain body-mind rest in its fundamental space.

You have always belonged to this great body of awakening.

You have never been separate.

I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.

I currently have a few openings in my Spiritual Counseling practice for the Fall. I offer a four-session intro package for $250.

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