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Mt. Washington--Revisited Zen is always concerned with particulars, based on a belief that individual things have their own specialness and that this specialness is to be honored. We know and appreciate a mountain when massiveness, angularity, changing hues are before our eyes. A mountain has its “suchness”—the wonder is that it is. This particularity is often called Buddhahood—something so unique and recognizable and so enjoyed. In Randolph we live in the valley, looking up at Mt. Madison and Mt. Adams. We do not see Mt. Washington and, in many ways, are glad that we do not—with its crowds, its cog railway, its busy summit. (I make a reluctant peace, however, with the auto road for skiing and for the Mt. Washington bicycle hill climb race.) Staying away from and disappointed with Mt. Washington, I often wondered how well I really knew Mt. Washington. Had I made over the years a judgment too quickly? A Zen saying haunted me: “At first I thought I knew what mountain was and what a river was. Then I felt I did not know what a mountain was and a river was. Now I know what a mountain is and what a river is.” I was in stage two: I did not know what Mt. Washington was. What, in my rejection, did I know about its specific Buddhahood? It seemed to have lost its spirit and soul, through no fault of its own. But what did I really know about its spirit and soul? What could I do to understand Mt. Washington in a new way? My brother David and I began to discuss a way of rediscovering the mountain. We decided to spend a long day on Washington, beginning before dawn and ending after nightfall, ascending and descending, going up and down and across the mountain using different routes. Our hope was that we could come to know the mountain sono mama “just as it is,” leaving behind our judgments and opinions. Perhaps we would be able to climb Mt. Washington several times, although, in Zen spirit, we had no goal. We would just be there for a long mountain day—continually moving while observing, discussing, discovering, doing kensho, “seeing into the nature of things,” eating and drinking while walking, stopping to look for a few minutes.
David and I had gone back and forth between a “people phase” and a “no-people phase” of the mountain. In the dim light of the dawn, the mountain seemed alone, awe-inspiring, and very much itself. But we were surprised that these qualities continued even in midday. The people who came to Washington were, in fact, on it for a very short part of the day. The mountain seemed to welcome those who were there for those brief few hours, and then seemed to return happily to its lonely self for the long hours of dusk and night. We came to have an appreciation for both phases—when the mountain was with people and the greater time when it belonged to itself. Something of its goodness, spirit, and character were there all the time. We became aware of the mountain’s massiveness and variety. As we went up and down and across during the day, we appreciated anew the extent of the ridges connecting adjoining mountains and the broadness of the high plateau land. The ruggedness of Mount Washington came through to us in a new way. We discussed a sign we saw: “Respect the mountain; some day she will demand it.” We understood that warning as we descended the Ammonoosuc Ravine in the sunlight without shirts, but on a later descent elsewhere we put on all the clothing in our packs as wind and rain caught us. We found that on this day we were on both a midsummer mountain and an autumn mountain. We commented on how different the same ravine, trail, and rock field looked now in sunshine and now in clouds and rain. Lastly, as we gave ourselves to the mountain that day, we discovered new things about familiar places: large clumps of Labrador tea in a boulder field above tree line; smooth, straight places on a well-known trail; a miniature spruce flattened against the lee side of a big rock at a resting place. On the way down, we noted the open beauty of a particular alpine plant at midday; later, on the way up for the last time, we saw it closing as it made ready for a night of growling wind and driving rain. A pair of white butterflies flitted about the summit at 1:00 P. M., but later at the top the temperature had dropped and the butterflies were gone. The meaning of the mountain came through in those fifteen plus hours. The specialness of Mt. Washington was beginning to be understood by simply observing it, being on it, and letting it declare its own Buddhahood. There were other things connected with Zen on that day. In order to understand the tathata, “suchness,” and particularity of the mountain while moving on it continuously through its day, we drained ourselves physically, emotionally, and mentally. The wisdom of taking something “as it is” only came through an emptying of ourselves as the day wore on. When the afternoon became early evening and we wondered if our legs and lungs would carry us farther, we ceased to think of our ourselves and concentrated on the mountain. Early in the day we gave up discussing objectives or trying to think about them; we didn’t now whether we would be able to climb the mountain three times or not. The meaning of the experience was not to concentrate on a goal or an end, but to grasp the significance of what was unfolding at each hour and minute as the mountain went through its day. Only when we thought about one moment simply following another were we able to enter into the mountain’s Buddhahood. In this spirit, we continued and made the day not a contest with the mountain but a time of its self-revelation to us. Mt. Washington was going through its daily hours from dawn to nightfall and displayed its summer and autumn phases to us. Slowly and majestically, without going anywhere, the mountain went through time on that August day. Slowly and unmajestically, we kept moving on and through its space, up and down, over and around.. Our spatial movement matched the chronological movement of the mountain. One of the abiding memories of the experience is that “mountain-time” and “we-space” went on together and each was a part of the other. We came to affirm that “A mountain is a mountain” and that Mt. Washington did have its own uniqueness and its special Buddhahood. David and I became aware of the mountain’s aloneness and its character. But we also saw the erosion on trails from hundreds of hikers, litter at summit, black smoke from the cog railway on the ridge. We saw what people were doing to the mountain. We talked about how to preserve the beauty of this great mountain—to let its uniqueness shine through. The Buddhahood of all things means that no one form of existence may heedlessly and destructively impose its desires and habits on another. We are a part of nature, not above it, not dominating it. Human beings have their own uniqueness, but they are to live in the midst of other forms of vividness. The Buddhahood of all things calls us to search for ways which will allow things to be as they are supposed to be. The “suchness” of rivers, mountains, trees, plains should inspire us to look for, cherish, and nurture the life force and spirit of these natural things. Our “great work” is to make the connection between them and our lives, as Thomas Berry has written in the Dream of the Earth. What can we do for Mt. Washington—no immediate answers, but a commitment to not let the question vanish. The wife of Kobori-roshi, master of Ryoko-in, a subtemple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, was once seen pouring ichi ban no sake, “choice rice wine,” on the roots of a pine tree in the garden. Asked why she was doing this at the foot of the tree, she smiled and said, “To keep it happy.” John Eusden is
a religion and environmental studies professor and a Congregational
minister who has spent, with his family, many teaching/research
times in Japan where he is member of two Zen Mahayana Buddhist
temples in Kyoto. Much of this account comes from his book, Zen
and Christian: The Journey Between.
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As
it turned out we climbed the mountain three times. (Could I do
that now, even with my Himalayan walking sticks, well ...) We
began on a mid-August day just before 5:00 A. M. under a setting
full moon, and we finished around 8:00 P. M. in the wind and
the rain. As we started in the cold under the moon, occasionally
using flashlights in the woods, we might have been the only people
moving on the mountain. It seemed to be our mountain as we climbed
in the early morning through Tuckerman’s and came to the
top, watching the valleys fill with light. But, as we began our
first descent, the glories of a sun-filled August way called
people to the mountain by the hundreds—on the trails, the
cog railway, the auto road. Suddenly we were two among many.
At the end of the day, however, in the dusk, we again felt very
alone on the mountain.