Mountains

[deci belle]

Dogen, Daokai and Yunmen proclaimed the moving, floating, walking, obstructing mountains by “Saying mountains are mountains isn’t saying mountains are mountains”. What then is the force of wayfarers who audaciously initiate creative reversal and use temporal circumstances to refine the integral? Flowing unknowing like mountains.

Mountains are mountains. …are not mountains …return to mountains …are hidden in mountains. Who said the words? When? Whose habituation to word constructs and scholastic precedence would be limiting true study by pedantic foot-noting?

So the way of etymology is not consistent with wisdom, as it consists of positing names as intellectual forms and valuing concurrence— if etymologists knew as we live in Power and act in eternity, that true study is transcendence of form …only then talking about it—

 

Talk amongst those habituated to intellectualism about what they have never seen personally themselves and calling that philosophy in concurrence has never amounted to anything but confusion for those who come afterwards by obscuring and obstructing evidences of the rare. How can real and false be perceived by the blind?

There is seeing through rote clinging to academic and popular constructs.Wrighting words without cutting (words) up, leaving words whole to shore the words’ meaning and leaving meanings to conjure images: as images are passed through, who arrives at noumenon? And, suddenly, what of the causeless? The ancients were so different?

In a tale of inner meaning, a seeker is instructed to toss a book acquired from an old immortal into a cave after reading it, i.e.: words are to be abandoned at key intervals, to allow digestion of experience’s intrinsic content. Mental and emotional reifications stultify complete reality. “Empty the mind ; fill the belly” is really alchemic terminology.

 

Rationalists have never known this. Why would they want to infringe on their petty pastime? The only reason I harp on these people is to warn those who have not yet developed the habit of intellectualism. It is a dead-end for dabblers.

The studied ageless classics of the taoist and buddhist canon are all the direct result of immortal activity in the world. Entry into the real is dropping off feelings and opinions. The thinking self is indicative of unruly mind; but just this dropped off is not yet virtuous.

 

Alchemical jargon is an imbedded device, created not for understanding, but for breaking through rote habit establishing the façade of rational ego-identity without weakening its valid functioning in ordinary affairs.

 

Developing an intimate familiarity within the alchemic device naturally dissolves the concretions of false identity by exercising an unused capacity of mind to bypass the tyranny of self-reifying thought. It’s not nonsense; it’s non-sense in terms of specific types of non-doing designed to refine the self called the Sciences of Essence and Life.

 

Water produces metal (potential/real knowledge/true lead). Not speculating in this, metal’s function becomes absorbed primal energy (this is also what is known as “stealing potential”). Mountain symbolizes the ever-ready potential not sensing any compulsion to act: and this is precisely the working definition of true practice— not to mention true attainment.

 

What is water? What is metal’s function? What is primal energy? What is potential?

 

True practice is sincere, dedicated research proven in actual affairs and is also the process of discovering this for oneself alone. No one else can do it for you. Alchemical terms are clues left behind to enter mysteries only you can discover for yourself. This is not history or philosophy, neither is it existent. Immortalism is a way of wonder to arrive at the fundamental transformation and realization of the totality of your true self.

 

Do not undertake this with a sense of something to accomplish. This affair is the inconceivable, with no beginning or end. One’s arrival at the realization of the nonorigination of your own selfless living uncreated awareness is seeing your own nature for the first time that you yourself do not recognize as your own mind right now.

 

Sensing without compulsion is identical to activating the mind without dwelling on its contents. This is the entire buddhist canon in one sentence. This is not the result of enlightenment. Mind is already one. What makes practice real is the fact that realization has no power unless one can act on its power. If you can dismiss the false effortlessly, why wait for enlightenment? It is your own awakened mind right now.

 

Real practice is a force passing through stillness and movement without accruing any distinctions between self, other, time(s) and location(s), in order to spontaneously maneuver through delusion while functioning naturally in its phenomena by adapting to evolving situations.

 

Not accruing distinctions is the same as functioning in the world without being subject to it’s influence. It is not that you don’t see distinctions. Reality is not some other reality. Seeing reality is just seeing through its distinctions that influence people to follow it. Enlightening beings do not go along with creation; they go in reverse. They turn the light around to shine on its source. It’s the same light; unless you are turning the light around, it’s not the practice of the completely real human with no status.

 

Alchemically speaking: Heaven fills Lake, quickening “Sensing” (hex 31) instilled on Mountain. This is selfless evolutionary transformation of polluted energy resulting in “Withdrawl” (hex 33). When the energy of Heaven instills spontaneous reversion, the way is lofty; there is no choosing in terms of Suchness as is, the scene being utterly ordinary. This happens over and over and is called the firing process of alchemical reversion in endless transformations planting lotuses in fire, but it looks like an adaptive worldling functioning naturally in everyday situations.

 

Here, Dogen’s term “mountains are not mountains”, is equivalent to glinting traces of enlightenment. So even complete perfect enlightenment is a stage that must be passed through completely. Sudden enlightenment is just a major cycle resonating the countless reversions one accomplishes in past, present and future lifetimes all at once outside of time.

 

Nevertheless, it is still just another causeless cycle and must be transcended no different than any other cycle. It is enlightening being itself which activates the subtle operation of adepts, immortals and buddhas. So it is not a matter of doing, but rather transcendent nonresistance expressing the Virtue of the Receptive.

 

So it goes without saying that ordinary applications of subtleties of the alchemic sciences should not be clung to~ and not simply because this is not attributed to the person. It is the knowledge itself accomplishing neither movement nor stillness of Mountains; actually seeing reality as reality is the accomplishment.

 

Knowledge is being itself. Its movement or stillness is transcendence already, so reliance on one’s own power to act has no place in terms of real practice. Self-reifying accounts of even selfless vision must be emptied, otherwise this is no different than delusive clinging to delusion. Nonresistant selfless freedom does not admit clinging, not to anything at all, including detachment.

The taoist classics on alchemy all say “after using lead, you then get rid of it”. The way to get rid of lead once you have “used” it is to plunge a mountain of transcendence into a mountain of practice without any trace. Now, when mountains are not mountains, who steps forward with open hands; who hears? This is then the further development of realization where “attaining enlightenment comes before awakening” and “sentient beings become buddhas and buddhas become sentient beings”.

Mountains returning to mountains only explains there has never been a thing to attain because miraculous awareness is our living mind by which the light in your eyes sees these words. “Practice and verification are non-existent” is a famous phrase attributed to the sixth patriarch which Dogen uses to refer to the mystery of enlightened spiritual practice. There is an open secret in our midst, our life and our love, our heart and mind— how ordinary this knowing the traces seeking validation— and not going along…

Mountains hidden in mountains is freely expressing neither knowing nor not knowing, for mountains are truly beyond our ken. There really is no understanding understanding. The beginningless is a mystery within a mystery. The living complete reality flowing unknowing like mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

ed note: fixed paragraph spacing all over the place

Edited October 26, 2013 by deci belle

[dawei]

Dogen, Daokai and Yunmen proclaimed the moving, floating, walking, obstructing mountains by “Saying mountains are mountains isn’t saying mountains are mountains”. What then is the force of wayfarers who audaciously initiate creative reversal and use temporal circumstances to refine the integral? Flowing unknowing like mountains.

 

Mountains are mountains. …are not mountains …return to mountains …are hidden in mountains. Who said the words? When? Whose habituation to word constructs and scholastic precedence would be limiting true study by pedantic foot-noting?

....

 

This reminds me of why, in my 'Zen days' I kept a book on Dogen... There is a seeing of consolidation. I think Yunmen talked of a mountain as a barrier, yet a pass... it depended on one's actualization?

 

Real practice is a force passing through stillness and movement without accruing any distinctions between self, other, time(s) and location(s), in order to spontaneously maneuver through delusion while functioning naturally in its phenomena by adapting to evolving situations

 

This seems the essence of 'seeing'... is it mountains (physically or not) or mountains walking (actually or not).... it is about what we are seeing (or not); and that is not eyes but all our associations via actualizations.

 

If I'm off track, bring me back to the mountain to find the pass... but I think I may of passed it once...

[Isimsiz Biri]

Mountains are gifts of God Almighty to humanity. Without their energies, it is not possible to live on earth.

[deci belle]

Yes, the multifarious aspects are active in terms of relative and transcendent applications. That is the way it has to be expressed …it's an all at once dynamic of interpenetration and mutual arising.

 

It's East Mountain walks on water, to be sure.

 

 

 

 

 

ed note: typo

Edited October 26, 2013 by deci belle