Mountain stage -  

wind sings 

bamboo dances 

WINGS OF BEAUTY

Scattered over the mountains - the green parts and the stony parts, with little caps of snow at the top - here and there the eye finds puffs of pinkish-white where a cherry tree has somehow managed to be. How did each of them come to brighten there, pastel notes amidst the darker tones of cedar, hinoki, oak, beech, all the other stolid, right-at-home trees?

Cherry tree seeds reached each of those places way up there, in those difficult locations, likely dropped by birds or washed down by rainstreams from a parent tree above, now long gone. Perhaps that's why there are rarely two cherry trees together; they are scattered singly across these mountainsides, in little bursts of pink confetti for this moment at the edge of Spring - roundish wisps of brightness up there, shimmering now in the wind, small celebrations amid the overall somberness of the forest. 

Up there on one mountainside, though, is a single tree that is white, not pink, and not roundish or windshimmery like a cherry-- it is tall and pointed. My handy binoculars tell me it is a tulip tree up there at full bloom, limbs arrayed in natural majesty of the kind that finds its way into royal coats of arms.

The road below us is lined with cherry trees, that at this time of day are lit from behind us by the setting sun, the lake far below darkening blue in the background, sailboats sailing in the shadowed air above the flowering trees. All that beauty, like all the finest beauty - like those blossoms themselves - abides but a moment; then the sun is gone behind the mountains, and all that splendor now is nowhere but in ourselves.

ALONE ON THE MOUNTAIN

I spend great stretches of time alone up on the mountain with the sky on my hands, tending soil, seeds and plants, rearranging rocks the better to suit their natures vis-a-vis my need for stone walls, gazing out at the Lake and its majesty, getting as involved as I humanly can in thunderstorms and hurricanes, learning from them the many small things about myself, my past, my path, and the vortex of truth and illusion.

There is no greater teacher than solitude, as anyone who makes it back from the desert knows. Not solitude in the negative standard 'loneliness' sense, but in the aboriginal magnificent spirit-quest uplift sense. In the city, when you are alone it is a societal matter; when you are alone in the country you are alone, you realize, with everything. In persisting, you learn to listen at last to the symphony of all. You learn the geography of silence, find your way at last to the gate at its heart, and pass beyond into the secret garden. You learn there are places where the soul does not grow.

The need for such knowledge is the reason children leave home and go hungrily into the solitude of their own lives, to learn what is to be learned there. Too often, though, this quest is stifled at the start, even before the start, by societal and parental agendas, derivative teachings diluted to local purpose and contemporary assumptions of morality.

And so in the same nature of things are parents given a second chance when the children leave home, leaving the parents alone at last to learn (or not) what is now there for them to learn. Too often, though, because they have always followed a prescribed path, they do not know what to do with newness, and now is as opaque to them as tomorrow. It will take time, and changes, for them to truly grow from here. But to those who have never stopped growing, there is no change involved; one simply continues becoming.

 

LIVING HIGH

The few folks who live up here on the mountainside necessarily get more exercise than do the flatlanders, not only because they live up high in rarefied air and so get more naturally strenuous exercise, often as not preferring to walk up to their homes from the roads and rails below, but also because they walk a lot in general around the path ways in their various wonderfilled amblings, since they are by dint of their personal natures assertively outdoor folk, who hike, climb, garden etc. in a large way and in winter get a lot of extra snow to shovel. They are folks who enjoy productive physical labor, full-living folks who chose to live where it would be more physically challenging and naturally rewarding to live.

There are further compensations however, if such metrosweeteners be needed for living hereabouts. To a name just a few (as one does with the stars in heaven, rather than use up a lifetime being specific), each season you get an honorary PhD equivalent in biology, hydrology, geology and meteorology, and in addition to lotsofology there are all the splendificent views of year-round diversity involving big samplings of pretty much everything there is, from planets and stars to creatures, water, clouds, earth, plant and spirit, the welcome summer air upflows and downflows of  morning and evening, the crossmountain breezes of mid-day, not to mention all the swards of green in summer, the total immersion each autumn in the finest of natural forest art, the snow sculptures of winter, the rainbowed choruses of spring. And what can be sweeter than mountain water, all the flowers, tree perfume, the heights of air, the wild pantry?
 

And there's more. Unlike the present urban jaganath, this will go on for what we call forever. My advice to you is, if you're living low and feel unfulfilled, live high.

 

IT'S NOT EXACTLY A TRAFFIC JAM YET, BUT

Even the plants are escaping into the mountains...

MOUNTAINS OF THE MIND

Everyone knows that the mind becomes extremely mountainous only a few steps in from the coast. The creatures that reside in this uncharted area on our mental maps are seldom seen by others, yet are common to us all; still, they can be a hazard to the solitary explorer who is not prepared to confront the unbelievable in his hinterland as he wends his way into the nether regions, from which few return unchanged.

Hermits, poets and other explorers of these fastnesses are well acquainted with the species of the inward realms, and are even known on occasion to have them eating out of their hands. But these nether fauna can never be completely tamed; and what would the outer reaches be, without their inner complement of native wildlife?

Between ourselves, however, we can only use metaphoric nomenclature to speak of these denizens we harbor in common, the names we call them imparting no description of their morphology, coloring or way of life. These are not crude and dispensable beings, but highly developed and specialized life forms essential to our spiritual ecology (psychological and religious taxonomy notwithstanding).

And there are many more such beings that have no names; yet we all know very well in ourselves of at least the presence of these creatures, who have at times poked their heads out of the thick undergrowth that adorns the verge of each of us; they are all part of the vastness of the experience when, in the world outside, we see a mountain and its wilds, that call to us as like to like; to climb such a peak and view the world from its summit is to do so as well within ourselves, to view at one remove the panoramas that we are.

And in so ascending we metaphorically surmount the wilderness within, survive vicarious passage to the summits of ourselves, to a clearer light, a cleaner wind. And we take this knowledge with us on our return to the narrow lowlands where we spend our daily lives as habitants of seeming mountainous islands, surrounded by seas of intercourse teeming with creatures that thrive in the depths of the apparent distance between us, those sometimes stormy, sometimes tranquil seas of relation that are as much illusion as the real world; for as each mountain is aware, at the foundation we are all connected.

[From the archives, July 2003.
First published in Kyoto Journal
The Sacred Mountains of Asia issue, 1993;
issue republished as a book of the same title
by Shambala Press, 1995, ed. John Einarsen.]

WATERY FLAMES

And this morning too, after the nights’ rain I watched in the cooling dawn the vapor rise in great white gouts like reaching hands, a dance of cloudy spirals and watery flames above the deeper mist veiling the backdrop of the darker mountains, plunging into abrupt and sinuous relief the formerly two-dimensional dawnscape, scribing ridges, defiles, groves and the taller, ancient trees with the stroke of a mist-brush plied with the grace of a dancer, the dancer that turns in all water, leaps in all sky.

Mountain sunset -
birds move down the wire
remain in light

FAR BEYOND MAJESTY

Late afternoon is the time of sky when the light is entering its golden phase, when the trees and grasses shine undaunted into the face of the sun, as if to say, in strong green words: I am a masterpiece. There is a great and unsung pride manifest in what we are pleased to think of as mere vegetation.

Then as sunset nears, all the air itself realizes the transition and rises over the sun-warmed lake, as the cooler mountain air floods down in replacement; the whole mountain, lit aslant by the hovering sun, becomes the bed of a vast river of cool air, rushing down in cosmic obligation. To sit in that river, feel that flood, after splitting firewood in the hot sun for two hours, is like whitewatering the grand canyon while sitting still, all in the country of the soul...

Those same dark leaves lift into paleness at the first touch of the downmountain winds and gleam white in the setting sun - clearly they have an old local relationship - they carry their vastness in their seeds...

The repose of the mountains in such settings as this, shaded green, gray and black in the summer evening sun and breeze, is often described as 'majestic,' but there is more in those ancient faces than aristocracy can ever aspire to; it's a matter of interaction with eternity, not immediate lineage or ambition.

Then when all the air is balanced at last, from out of the overmountain light come galleons of windblown pink clouds, sailing over the mountains as slowly and stately as on a tropical lagoon, wending across the calm of the sky toward unknown shores...

And when all up there is yet light, as the earth below grows dark and cool, the dragonflies enjoy the same calm air, their dashing silhouettes clearly visible -- way up in that silence they zig and zag in the way of their kind on glassine wings, like thoughts in a blue mind, with no aim but to be...

Then comes the full moon, laying her tapestry of light over the darkling land, revealing lineaments we are blind to in the day... who has not stood out in that vapor of silver, lain over all with the touch of a goddess, and not grown thereby?

We can do no better in our dreams...

In their little pink-cloud hats
they act like stone-faced clowns
those mountains

DEEP MOVES

I was standing at the kitchen sink at 6:20 this morning doing the usual - having my tea, looking out the big window into the garden, letting the veil of sleep fade and slowly recovering in greater detail who I was – when I heard a way deep and growing sound , seemed to be coming from the north, then it felt increasingly like I was standing on some kind of foot vibrator as the rumble and vibe intensity increased at high frequency-- then it peaked and faded, the upper timbers of the house gave one big 'crack' as though the house had just uncricked its neck, and all was dawn silent once more.

It had been an earthquake. The force - in a mass, not as distinct waves – passed through the house in less than ten seconds, as a strong vibration deep in the earth; there was none of the usual vibration associated with earthquakes, like when I experienced my first quake not long after arriving in Tokyo back in the early seventies, ran out of the swaying, rattling house and heard the earth grinding like huge cobblestones, saw trees swaying strongly in no wind.

The soil beneath Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya - and most major cities of the world - being alluvial, is in fact just a stage above liquefaction, like a vast tract of pudding. The temblor forces travel through it in large waves: first one side of a building is upward, then the other side, the building on alternating sides of the wave thus flipping back and forth until the oscillation wanes. But mountains, being fairly solid rock, don't transmit the force in waves; instead, it seems to pass through deep down, in a 'solid' mass like a shock wave, that can generate avalanches and landslides.

This had been smaller than the boom of force that had passed instantly though our solid concrete house in Kyoto, early on that morning in 1995, after having devastated Kobe. As I'd done back then, I turned on the tv immediately (as one always does here after earthquakes) to see where the epicenter had been: Otsu, so close, right at the southern end of the lake, the tremor ranking only 1 on the scale. At that point Echo got up, said she hadn't heard or felt a thing.

Sometimes deep in the silence of the night I hear the rumbling way down in the earth as our planet makes its deep moves, yet without a tremor up here at the surface; it sounds like giant subway trains traveling across the landscape far below daily life. At such times, lying there in the calm darkness atop what is in fact a mass of seething volcanic tectonic turbulence, I can sense how small and fragile we are in the face of all that lies beneath us, feel a touch of reality that makes our waking moments all the more precious, our struggles for power and hegemony like friction among microbes…

BEING MIRACLES

Climbing up the mountain road these Spring evenings at the hour of not quite dark, when all the sky is like a throw of velvet reflecting a distant light, almost as if you could reach up there and trail your hand among the tiny, brightening stars...

At about this time the sun-warmed earth, still damp from recent rains and now blanketed with the cooling air of day, sends out from all its secret palaces the richest of its fragrances, that ride on the air I rise through as I climb... All the perfumes are there, if you have the time...

Who knows how they come to be, these spices of life for each inhalation - cinnamon, oregano, thyme, it is a long list - it holds a hint of chocolate, of tea, there is apple, gardenia, mushroom, living earth, coffee, musk... The moments I pass through are rich... The night is an ancient acquaintance...

For whom does the night send out its secret perfumes, but those who can sense them? And why is it so? In the night, as in the day, it is to say in fragrance that all is interwoven, that none are apart. In each of these nights we are given to sense the miracles around us, all the more finely to perceive and enjoy the miracles of ourselves.

SOMETHING AKIN TO SPRING

Freewheeling down the mountain these early mornings through the old dun landscape of winter - and in the old dun mindscape of winter - I suddenly sense a change ahead, something there... new... around the curve... the light on the leaves is different... I slow--

I round the bend, to behold a startling brightness laid out right on the ground where there was no such thing yesterday; "it's the same color as the sky," says my old dun mind, "with some sunlight and clouds in it..." it's a flooded rice paddy, the first of the year! And there's another patch of sky over there, shining on the dark earth... and one more there in the distance...

Each morning I go through the same new startle to the old winter mindscape as more and more patches of light are added to the quilt of sky piecing down the mountainside, day by day transforming the mountain into a creature of Spring-- and greenleaf summer to follow, nature willing.

There at the bottom of it all shines the Lake, aquamarine set among brown winter mountains and faceted with light in the same way as the paddies - dappled with clouds, now and then stippling in the morning breeze - and I feel in myself something akin to Spring, new life rising from a winter mind. In my day-to-day awakening, I too mirror the season and its sky.

MOUNTAINS OF THE MIND

Everyone knows that the mind becomes extremely mountainous only a few steps in from the coast. The creatures that reside in this uncharted area on our mental maps are seldom seen by others, yet are common to us all; still, they can be a hazard to the solitary explorer who is not prepared to confront the unbelievable in his hinterland as he wends his way into the nether regions, from which few return unchanged.

Hermits, poets and other explorers of these fastnesses are well acquainted with the species of the inward realms, and are even known on occasion to have them eating out of their hands. But these nether fauna can never be completely tamed; and what would the outer reaches be, without their inner complement of native wildlife?

Between ourselves, however, we can only use metaphoric nomenclature to speak of these denizens we harbor in common, the names we call them imparting no description of their morphology, coloring or way of life. These are not crude and dispensable beings, but highly developed and specialized life forms essential to our spiritual ecology (psychological and religious taxonomy notwithstanding).

And there are many more such beings that have no names; yet we all know very well in ourselves of at least the presence of these creatures, who have at times poked their heads out of the thick undergrowth that adorns the verge of each of us; they are all part of the vastness of the experience when, in the world outside, we see a mountain and its wilds, that call to us as like to like; to climb such a peak and view the world from its summit is to do so as well within ourselves, to view at one remove the panoramas that we are.

And in so ascending we metaphorically surmount the wilderness within, survive vicarious passage to the summits of ourselves, to a clearer light, a cleaner wind. And we take this knowledge with us on our return to the narrow lowlands where we spend our daily lives as habitants of seeming mountainous islands, surrounded by seas of intercourse teeming with creatures that thrive in the depths of the apparent distance between us, those sometimes stormy, sometimes tranquil seas of relation that are as much illusion as the real world; for as each mountain is aware, at the foundation we are all connected.

[Oddly enough, a book titled Mountains of the Mind by Robert Macfarlane was recently published, reminding me of this old essay, herewith presented from the dusty stacks. First published in Kyoto Journal The Sacred Mountains of Asia issue, 1993; entire issue republished as a book of the same title by Shambala Press, 1995, ed. John Einarsen.]