Virtue
The paragraph is quoted from a Buddhist text, Sansui kyō (Japanese: 山水經), rendered in English as Mountains and Waters Sutra. The poetic phrasing was composed by the 13th century Sōtō Zen monk Eihei Dōgen.
Priest Daokai of Mount Furong said to the assembly, “The green mountains are always
moving. A stone woman gives birth to a child at night.” Mountains possess complete
virtue with nothing lacking. They are always safely rooted yet constantly moving. You
should study the meaning of “always moving.” You should study the green mountains.
Just because the movement of mountains is not like the movement of human beings,
do not doubt that it exists. You should study the green mountains’ walking and your own walking. You should study walking backwards. If walking stops, buddha ancestors do not appear. Walking forward does not obstruct walking backwards. Walking backwards does not obstruct walking forward. This is called the mountains’ flow and the flowing mountains.Enlightened vision is actualized in the mountains, grasses, trees, earth, rocks, or walls.
Do not doubt this.
The Buddhist essay, Mountains and Waters is just a page and a half in length. The text suggests a homily, or in Buddhist terminology, a Dharma talk, a few words that bear a point. Here the point conveyed by the shuttle-like back and forth meditation suggests that a distant green mountain, at a glance, though appearing a paradigm of stability, of a fixed place, is nonetheless moving, giving birth. We ought not to think that when we compare a time scale of human experience with geological time, that we have “discovered” what grounds and lends a durable, defining frame to what we mean by “change.” That green mountain at a distance, seeming so settled, fixed, is moving, a mother giving birth to a child.
Time lapse photography suggests that appearance is by no means as one dimensional as I assumed. The entire cosmos, from the emerging and collapsing energy fields comprising matter, (which even a scanning electron microscope cannot “see”) to rotating galaxies are – giving birth. The mountains flow…
Subject and predicate, noun and verb condition the other.
“…the mountains’ flow and the flowing mountains.”
You can’t stop the walking,…
What do you think?
